Forgiveness

As I remembered my life at home with my parents, I grew angry all over again, and I swore to myself, “I will never forgive you.” Then I went about my day harboring the remembrances of those years, the abuse, the pain, the humiliation of those years. At the end of the day, I was exhausted. I could barely even walk, I was so tired. It was like that every day following. Day after day, it was the same: get up, go to work, perform the duties of the day, and come home exhausted, still promising myself that I would never forgive them. I seemed to be angry all of the time. This went on for years.

I went to church and listened to talks about forgiveness. I read articles about forgiveness and I closed my heart to all of it. I wasn’t about to let them off the hook for all the suffering they caused me. They didn’t deserve to be forgiven.   My life is consumed with hatred for them, but I read on Facebook that they are going out to fun places and having fun times. That made me even more angry.

Have you ever heard about people who have to have a rock fall on their heads to wake them up? Yeah, that’s me. Along the way, I often read several stories about forgiveness. Stories where people were wronged, and at the moment of forgiveness, they became free from the darkness that comes from holding a grudge and filling your soul with darkness, but until fairly recently, those stories didn’t mean anything.

A bishop in my stake lost a son to a pedophile rapist. I can’t conceive of pain more significant than when your child is murdered. I would have conjured ways to torture and kill the murderer of my child, but this Bishop, in court, told the killer of his son that he forgave him. I could not comprehend such a thing but thought about it constantly.

Finally, it dawned on me. I don’t have to carry this weight on my shoulders, I don’t have to carry all this hate in my heart, and I didn’t have to (this is hard to explain) beyond telling them I forgave them. I didn’t have to do anything. Telling people that you forgive them is not even a prerequisite to forgiveness. It is better if you do, but you cannot always do so for one reason or another. Forgiveness is also about you.

I have seen and dealt with many horrible things that people do to each other. Many of those things I had to get involved in broke my heart, but I had to get involved anyway. When you get involved in such evil, you must find a way to let it go, or it will destroy you.

I began looking at the dynamics of those acts. I saw the heartache of the parents whose children have perpetrated these evil acts and the devastation of seeing their children put in prison for a very long time. I saw the perpetrator who has lost his/her freedom to make decisions or to act for themselves, and I saw the victims of these acts. For me to be able to let it all go, I had to forgive. That is not to say I  felt obligated to look the other way. If you buy the ticket, I firmly believe you should take the ride. What changed is that I no longer acted in anger or hate. I think that is the foundation of forgiveness. Do what you must, but do it with love in your heart, which will bring you closer to God.

And so, to my parents, “I forgive you.”

One more note about forgiveness: Consider Matthew 22:36-40

³⁷ Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.

³⁸ This is the first and great commandment.

^{39 And the second is like unto it; Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.}

⁴⁰ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

In these verses, we are told that the second commandment is equal in importance to the first commandment. The second commandment has two parts. First, we have to love ourselves, and to love ourselves, we must forgive ourselves.