Forgiveness Blog
Nov. 15, 2012:
Tonight I sit in Mary town after listening to an amazing circuit speaker. I'm thrown into the Big Book looking for answers. She so eloquently quoted from here and I am more clear than I was a year ago and more clear since I wrote out my fourth step. How do I get rid of my resentment towards the man who molested my daughter?.....her grandfather. I cannot change him. I cannot make him remorseful. What can I do?
What am I afraid of?
I am afraid of emotion. I am afraid of forgiveness. I am afraid of compassion. I am afraid of expressing anything other than complete hatred for this man. It scares me. Freedom, success, limitlessness scare me. My light shining so brightly I cannot even recognize myself. Overcoming this is scary. Can I do it by making jewelry and T-shirts and planting sunflowers?
God only knows.
Nov. 18, 2012
"...as Christians in recovery, as we attempt to pay our own way and cover our debts and make our amends, we know we cannot even come close to settling the score. we know the ultimate payment plan. Our Savior has paid with his life; he submitted to the cuts, lashes, and kicks of his tormentors. From the cross he gently looks at us in our poverty and says,'You don't have to pay, I just did.' "--The Recovery Bible, excerpt from the Wounds of Healing by A. Phillip Parker pg. 797
This brings up something for me as I am basking in the glow of making an amends last night and considering the possibilities of this blossoming friendship that I am growing with an ex-lover. I have never been mature enough to maintain frindships of any kind much less a friendship with someone I used to have sex with. It was the most bizarre thing. I used to be in love with her. But do I love her now? I don't know how to describe it. I want to say its an affinity. The dictionary definition of affinity is "a natural liking for or attraction to a person, thing, idea, etc." I know things about this woman. I know she buys CDs from Starbucks. I had sex with her in her car after her father died. We ducked out of her family activities to be alone as she was in denial about her family knowing she is gay. I selfishly had an orgasm instead of holding her and saying nothing to reassure her that it was okay to have feelings about her father's death especially since I could hardly bare to let myself have feelings for my own father and his early departure from this life.
My amends to her was both financial and emotional. I was so insensitive back then as you can see from the above paragraph. She absolved me from it all and asked for her own forgiveness. As I later tried to bring up another financial issue which she didn't even remember, she told me to let it all go. Wow! That's it?!
Today I am daydreaming about how it would go if Howard made an amends to my daughter, to me, to our family. He goes over his transgressions and asks how he can make it up to me. What would I say? This is a person who can never be trusted again. How can he make it up to me? Stay locked away forever. Suffer for your actions. Find God. A part of me want to say work on your rehabilitation, but our culture doesn't believe that this problem can be cured. I don't know what I believe in regards to that. I like to believe all things are possible with God, but I would be being completely naive if I ever trusted this man again. Our culture also doesn't believe alcoholics can be cured. I don't know what I believe about that but I make a spiritual covenant everyday declaring myself an alcoholic. I make my pact with God to keep me sober each day and make me useful to others. Could sex offenders do this? It makes my stomach turn to think of a 12-Step meeting for them and what their conversation would sound like because I still want to believe they are sicker than me, not sick like me. I am self-righteous and without capacity for grace in this regard today.
Nov. 18, 2012
"Where we really get ourselves into spiritual trouble over the law, according to Jesus, is not when we forgive but when we cave in to the temptation of making personal righteousness over a developed capacity for mercy." --Forgiveness: Following Jesus into Radical Loving
"...to accept what is fair without caving to the temptation of revenge is actually a form of humility....justice ultimately rests in God's hands; humility is the much-valued Hebrew virtue of knowing one's place before an almighty God."--
The two quotes above really spoke to me and were exquisitely demonstrated in the discussion in my woman's group the following day
Personal righteousness--I realize this is my problem. And my society, my tribe backs me up in this. If I were Amish and unable to forgive it would be a different story. but in the women's group we speak every day about how hard it is to forgive and so it is hard. I am right not to forgive anyone who has harmed my kids. A roomful of women agree that it is harder to forgive when someone has harmed your children.
One woman shared about forgiving her ex-husband and how hard it was to forgive him because he hurt her and her kids. but she did it and it was the best thing she ever did, a weight lifted from her. but again I hear the personal righteousness in her story. It was difficult to forgive because of all he had done to her kids especially. A part of me felt an inauthenticity in her story as if she hadn't forgiven because of how she shared it. It was something to do with her self-righteousness or victimhood. Maybe that's it. There's this feeling that a victim does not need to forgive. An innocent victim who did nothing wrong but was wronged, why should that person forgive? How can Jesus ask such a thing of us? I'm a victim. I'm entitled to wallow in my self-pity and squander my usefulness to God and others, right? If I stated it that way in my mind maybe I could keep the blues away because then it seems so ridiculous and wasteful.
I confuse myself by thinking I am the victim when really it was my daughter. I take it on as my own. Normal for a mother especially now wanting to protect her daughter from future trauma. Give it to me instead. When I take on this victim role and entitled self-righteousness I lose my usefulness to God. That is not who I want to be.
God, grant me the humility to let go of my righteousness and find forgiveness in my heart. Thank you for lightening the load. Continue to take away my burdens and show me in each moment how I can be most useful in doing Your Will. Amen.