An Unnatural Act

The fury was building.

I was a new postpartum mom, exhausted with taking care of a sick baby, struggling with getting ready to bring her to New Hampshire for a first-time visit to my beloved grandmother ...and worried.  Our baby’s earache seemed to keep coming back and as a new mom, I was worried - and probably a bit scared. My husband and I were in the midst of a rather tense disagreement, and I don’t remember exactly what he said to set me off, to bring my anger to the boil, but all I remember is that classic “seeing red” feeling, a foggy ruby haze pushing out rational thought and reasoned action, and I lashed out in blind rage. We yelled, we screamed.  We both were full-out furious.  In a moment of sheer frustration, I picked up one of the Playtex baby bottles I’d been filling with formula for the trip, and with crazy-accurate aim, let it fly through the air with full force - directly towards my husband’s head. SCORE! 

Well - not quite.  The bottle did glance off the edge of his forehead, then continued toward the wall behind him, and burst into a milky-white shower That. Covered. Everything. Walls, floors, ceiling (oh, yeah, I was thorough), his clothes, the table and chairs. Baby formula dripped from everything.

That short explosive outburst quickly petered out, replaced by shock. After a few moments, I calmly said (at least that’s how I remember it... ) “You take the floor and ceiling, I’ll do the walls and furniture. “ And we did, and that was end of the fight - but not the end  of my simmering resentment and anger.  Forgiveness was far off.

Years later, I was the primary lay leader in a church that was in the midst of a major melt-down. The church’s former beloved pastor of 19 years had moved to a new parish, and the current pastor was not settling in well with about 40% of the congregation.  There were factions. There was infighting. There was malicious gossip. Accusations and whispered lies darted madly through the church.  What had once been a thriving, loving church (or so we thought) was now a hot-bed of discord and mean spirited behaviors. Within months of the his initial call, the pastor chose to leave in order to keep the church from completely falling apart, and was gone in mere weeks.  I left the church soon thereafter, resigning my leadership post a year before my term ended,  wounded, disillusioned, and heartbroken. My husband and I took 3 months off “church” to lick our wounds, and a few more years to risk being in church leadership again.  We went back to church, but forgiveness was a long time coming.

Forgiveness is hard. Forgiveness goes against our natural inclinations; it is an unnatural act in a broken, imperfect world. Pride and ego are often the very bedrock of our lives, and forgiveness simply has no place in that paradigm.  Except.

Except that forgiveness is real and necessary for our mental health, for our physical health, and with absolute certainty - for our spiritual health.  I know this from personal experience. I know all too well how unforgiveness leads to the festering of wounds, of deep-rooted bitterness that can color all of life and relationships, often for a lifetime.

I’ve spoken with friends over the years who’ve struggled with forgiving another person who’s hurt them, and the most frequent reason people use to hang onto their hurts is “I’m not feeling it. “I’ll forgive... when I’m not mad anymore, when my hurt feelings are better, ...when I can find it in my heart to forgive.”  Sorry to disappoint, but that will never happen.  Forgiveness doesn’t start in our hearts - that where it ends up.  Forgiveness starts with a decision. It’s a choice. Forgiveness starts in our minds, and ends up changing our hearts.

I know the feeling. I know the self-righteous anger that fuels unforgiveness, the pride that stands rock-hard solid between me and forgiveness, the bitterness that festers like a purulent wound in the heart.  But I also learned years ago, during a time when my own marriage was a rocky road of challenge after challenge, that forgiveness has nothing to do with feelings.  If one waits to feel it, forgiveness will never happen.  If we wait to feel it, we’ll never do it. Forgiveness is a decision we make long before we feel like forgiving. You may still be as angry as wild bull on the charge, your feelings may be bruised and raw, but waiting until you feel it won’t work. You’ll keep fueling that fire of self-righteous hurt, and the cycle will simply continue.

Choosing intentionally to forgive, regardless of how hard that may be, is the only way to forgiveness, and this requires grace.  We cannot do it naturally; we need supernatural grace to get us to that place. Grace is what gives intention to our forgiveness; grace is what gives forgiveness its voice. We need first to decide to forgive regardless of how we feel, and then hand our hearts over to a loving God Who will give us grace for the rest of the journey.  For make no mistake, forgiveness is a journey, a hard-fought road of two steps forward, one step back.  Our human proclivity to pride and selfish ego will always stand in our way to fully forgiving another, and there’s no way we can do that on our own without God’s grace.  Our egos will always tell us we are right, that we deserve respect, gratitude, loyalty; that whomever has betrayed us or offended us doesn’t “deserve” our forgiveness. And that’s a path that will lead us nowhere fast.

Forgiving another person is exhausting because it requires that I do something that is not easy, not natural; something that goes against my human nature to want my own way, to stroke my own ego.  I must choose to forgive, and that forgiveness must be given a voice— a voice that is first and foremost my voice, your voice. There’s something about voicing it, even when there’s no one to hear you.  There’s something about saying out loud, “I forgive you, Sally, for....” and being specific about the betrayal, the wound, the offense, that brings an immediate release.  It may not be much, but something inside shifts.  I believe this shifting is the Holy Spirit bringing about a healing within of the wounding, but it is also a mental shift, a letting-go of anger that is immediately freeing.  It’s hard to hang on to that bitter root of anger when you’ve voiced your forgiveness out loud.  (I’ve been known to yell it out into the wind, over an ocean wave, or deep in a forest - with tears, but also with an experience of great peace.)

Sadly, forgiveness is never a “one and done” action either. I may forgive today, and by tomorrow, I’ve slipped into that vortex of bitterness and resentment again, my ego and pride fueling another round of internal argument.  But the good news is that although it may need a few “re-do’s”, each time gets easier; each time the burden is a bit lighter, the anger less potent, the bitterness less bitter.  Deep wounds may scar, but they’ll never fester again if we keep at this business of forgiving.

Forgiveness is truly an unnatural act, and it is only possible when we seek God’s grace to give it. When we choose to forgive, God gives us the grace to do just that, and our decision becomes a grace-filled experience. I have never forgiven someone without receiving untold grace from God to not only forgive the other, but also the unseen and wholly amazing grace of God within my own heart for my own healing.

Decide to forgive. And be blessed.