I'm not talking about eating right, exercising, getting enough sleep and drinking water; though those things matter that's not the kind of care I'm referring to in this article. Forgiveness is. There are two objects of forgiveness: those who hurt you, and you yourself. Pain, as I once read in the book The Fault In Our Stars, demands to be felt. It will shame you; it will silence you; it will burden your heart; keep you awake at night, taint and destroy your relationships. It's a virus, starving its host (you). Sometimes other people inflict it upon you, sometimes you inflict it upon yourself. When that happens, we start building up grudges against the source of that pain. It is just as possible to hold a grudge against yourself as it is to hold one against someone else. No matter what, a lack of forgiveness perpetuates our pain. It hardens our hearts, turns us from God and separates us from love.
And it's hard to fight that. Being angry is easy, so easy that it seems right. Of course justified anger does exist, and we should feel it towards things that also anger God. But more often than not, we're desperately holding onto unjustified anger. I've come to learn that the root of this anger is fear. When we refuse to forgive, we're admitting that we're afraid to let go of the thing that hurt us. That sounds ridiculous when I say it like that, but it's true. Holding a grudge means we still have power over the situation. We're controlling our feelings, controlling the outcome, becoming comfortable in disunity. And I'm guilty of it just as much as the next person.
But when we start to forgive, and I mean truly forgive, we lose control. Our hearts soften, we let go of our pride and our need to be right. We loosen our grip on the very thing that's hurting us and we surrender it to a God who can handle it much better than we can. We're freer, more loving, and more willing to get messy for people who want help cleaning up. When forgiveness becomes habitual, pain is no longer a threat to our joy. We become independent of our circumstances and focused on growth. Why don't we forgive more? Because it's not natural. Our nature doesn't want reconciliation, it just needs to be right. The good news about all this is that we can change our nature.
Well, we can't. But Jesus can. He gives us a new identity, washes us clean and we are made new. We don't have to live a life of hatred and anger if we don't want to. He offers us a glorious alternative, forgiveness, and it's much healthier than what we're trapped in right now. So take care of yourself; learn to forgive others. Learn to forgive yourself. So much growth and maturity and joy will come of it, if only we can get over our pride.
It's not easy, but then again Jesus never said it would be. But He did say it would be worth it. Discover His alternative with me; I think it's going to be really, really awesome.
