Forgiveness, resentment, etc. - 05/21/10 12:08 AM
I guess every now and then the threads roll around to "How do I forgive?" or "Why do I still resent my FWS?" or other questions along those lines.
I've been around here awhile (around 4 and a half years). Over my lifetime, I have had some "opportunities" sent my way to practice resenting others, and also to practice forgiving. I guess I have to look at it that way, because it's the way things have worked out in my life. If you are a Christian person and lived my life, you might say that God had a plan in sending me these "opportunities". If you were of other religions or beliefs, you might say that the universe had a plan to teach me what it was I needed to understand about life. (Whatever your belief system, I respect it because I have studied many approaches to religion and spirituality, and all have offered me something toward this "learning process", to tell you the truth.)
I've spoken some about my history here. My past contains rapes and long-term molestation in my childhood, physical and mental abuse (felony level) as a child, and the multiple affairs of my husband. My marriage also has been scarred by my own ONS. I have also been involved prior to my marriage in a relationship in which I was the victim of a physically abusive lover, which involved police action and protective custody placement for me, as well as stalking by him.
I also was an alcohol abuser during my later teen years. I have been homeless twice in my life, once in fourth grade, and once as a young mother.
I suppose you can say I have run the gauntlet of just about everything a person could "never want to experience".
In the end, I have come out the other side of my adversities with LOTS of experience - and somehow I think I have made it with my psyche fairly intact. At least I kept my sense of humor (there are those who might disagree.... )
My story does contain some hard truths.
The actual and final truth that saved me each and every time?
Forgiveness.
I just wanted to say that. In spite of what I have endured, I managed - through forgiveness - to repair the relationship with my father, and my husband. I actually can face one of the rapists without any emotional upheaval whatsoever, because I have forgiven him (he "was" a family member, and although technically still is, my ties to him are no longer - in my mind - valid). If I were to ever see the other rapist, I would not care, because I understand his brokenness, too.
As far as the other offenses, the abuse by the boyfriend, he too was broken.
And resentment - maybe I view this in a strange way, but resentment is something like carrying a desire for some sort of "evenness" to me.
How could it ever be "even" for me?
It couldn't. I cannot choose anything else but to forgive it - to be done.
There is nothing to make even, as no restitution could possibly make things "even" for me.
I guess this is just the way my world has come to be understood in my head. I see the brokenness - the complete and utter brokenness - of those who have sinned against me.
And in the moment of my realization of their brokenness, I fully understand that I actually am somehow stronger, somehow in the position to have mercy, for they are pathetic in their sin.
It is with this thought, in seeing their true brokenness and pathetic crisis before God, that I can only forgive and let them figure out how they will right things for themselves.
It is not for me to repair, and they cannot make it "even". I do not want anything from them - because
they already have NOTHING.
In their brokenness, I see that they have nothing.
And I actually have my own power, my own worth, my own sense of connectedness to God, through forgiving them.
I hope this makes sense.
Schoolbus
I've been around here awhile (around 4 and a half years). Over my lifetime, I have had some "opportunities" sent my way to practice resenting others, and also to practice forgiving. I guess I have to look at it that way, because it's the way things have worked out in my life. If you are a Christian person and lived my life, you might say that God had a plan in sending me these "opportunities". If you were of other religions or beliefs, you might say that the universe had a plan to teach me what it was I needed to understand about life. (Whatever your belief system, I respect it because I have studied many approaches to religion and spirituality, and all have offered me something toward this "learning process", to tell you the truth.)
I've spoken some about my history here. My past contains rapes and long-term molestation in my childhood, physical and mental abuse (felony level) as a child, and the multiple affairs of my husband. My marriage also has been scarred by my own ONS. I have also been involved prior to my marriage in a relationship in which I was the victim of a physically abusive lover, which involved police action and protective custody placement for me, as well as stalking by him.
I also was an alcohol abuser during my later teen years. I have been homeless twice in my life, once in fourth grade, and once as a young mother.
I suppose you can say I have run the gauntlet of just about everything a person could "never want to experience".
In the end, I have come out the other side of my adversities with LOTS of experience - and somehow I think I have made it with my psyche fairly intact. At least I kept my sense of humor (there are those who might disagree.... )
My story does contain some hard truths.
The actual and final truth that saved me each and every time?
Forgiveness.
I just wanted to say that. In spite of what I have endured, I managed - through forgiveness - to repair the relationship with my father, and my husband. I actually can face one of the rapists without any emotional upheaval whatsoever, because I have forgiven him (he "was" a family member, and although technically still is, my ties to him are no longer - in my mind - valid). If I were to ever see the other rapist, I would not care, because I understand his brokenness, too.
As far as the other offenses, the abuse by the boyfriend, he too was broken.
And resentment - maybe I view this in a strange way, but resentment is something like carrying a desire for some sort of "evenness" to me.
How could it ever be "even" for me?
It couldn't. I cannot choose anything else but to forgive it - to be done.
There is nothing to make even, as no restitution could possibly make things "even" for me.
I guess this is just the way my world has come to be understood in my head. I see the brokenness - the complete and utter brokenness - of those who have sinned against me.
And in the moment of my realization of their brokenness, I fully understand that I actually am somehow stronger, somehow in the position to have mercy, for they are pathetic in their sin.
It is with this thought, in seeing their true brokenness and pathetic crisis before God, that I can only forgive and let them figure out how they will right things for themselves.
It is not for me to repair, and they cannot make it "even". I do not want anything from them - because
they already have NOTHING.
In their brokenness, I see that they have nothing.
And I actually have my own power, my own worth, my own sense of connectedness to God, through forgiving them.
I hope this makes sense.
Schoolbus