Repeat After Me: Why would forgiveness ever be a gift?

Growing up I understood forgiveness as the thing that followed an apology. A sibling would say they were sorry for cutting my Barbie doll’s hair, and I would say, “I forgive you.”

This process worked great at home where my parents played the role of “encouraging” the sibling to apologize first, but how does forgiveness work when there’s no person there to kick off the process?

Recently, a friend and I were talking about how I forgave someone who may never apologize to me for what I felt was an injustice. That’s what we are called to do as Christians, right? We forgive others their trespasses against us because God first forgave us our trespasses against God.

But then, almost a year later something happened that triggered those feelings of anger in me once again towards this individual. I didn’t understand. When I forgave them, shouldn’t all of that anger be gone forever? What was I doing wrong?

One of the things I love about God, is that he wants to answer our questions. That very day, one of my professors was leading us in a discussion about forgiveness. Another student shares how she’s recently watched a clip on this very subject by Brene Brown. She says the clip drastically changed her understanding of forgiveness.

That night I went home and watched the clip. As I listened, I was struck with a new way of looking at forgiveness. Here’s the key: Forgiveness requires us to put something to death and then to mourn the loss.

When I looked back on the tragic Barbie hair incident of my childhood, I noticed there was a very important moment just before those three powerful words were spoken. Naturally, I was upset. In that moment I couldn’t hold back the tears and anger at my sibling for what they had done. In fact, I paraded those emotions around as loudly as possible, making sure everyone in the house knew how tragic this event was.

I mourned the loss.

Somewhere along the way I lost that art of mourning. And if I’m honest, I think I may have lost it on purpose. Who likes to acknowledge pain? Who wants to allow themselves the space to actually feel that pain?

I’ve always seen pain as a bad thing. Something to be avoided at all cost. Pain was a source of weakness, and it meant I had let someone hurt me. The thing is, I am weak and someone did hurt me. Pretending those two things weren’t true wasn’t helping me, and left me still carrying around this anger I couldn’t shake.

Forgiveness requires putting things to death and mourning the loss.

That night, after I watched the clip from Brene Brown, I opened my journal and allowed myself the space to put to death a relationship that meant a lot to me. I put down in words all of the pain and anger I was feeling. I cried over all the ways I needed this person to protect me, and they had failed. I came to terms with the fact that things could never go back to the way they were.

That relationship may never be resurrected. Or maybe it will. But by “putting it to death” I realized I was giving myself the opportunity to experience new life.

How amazing is it to know that God went through the act of forgiving us? God was anguished over us. He had to mourn the loss of a relationship that meant everything to him. And we had caused the pain.

This in itself was a gift to us. But the greatest gift is that He offered us more than forgiveness. He offered us reconciliation. God pressed the restart button, and allowed us the chance to have a brand new relationship with him. True forgiveness is the only act that leads to potentially experiencing reconciliation in our lives with God, and in the lives of others.

The next time you recite The Lord’s Prayer, remember the great gift of forgiveness that provides us the opportunity for new life.