Man is it beautiful out...
Forgiveness....Hmmmmm, what exactly is that?
Last night I watched a PBS program on the necessity of forgiveness and the steps that must be followed in order for this state of peaceful resolve to be attained.
It was interesting to say the least as the examples provided ranged from a Mother who left her children in order to find her true self, to the Rwandan genocide and the German burden of guilt for the Holocaust. It was heavy pre-sleep material to put it lightly.
I woke up this morning in a continuum of the thoughts I was in before my much needed slumber was finally attained. My mind was racing as I tried to find calm and snooze.
The documentary basically asserted that forgiveness is necessary in the face of pain or basically you re-live the wrong-doing again and again. If in fact death is involved, you die another death (an emotional one)
I would agree that forgiveness is essential to living a full life.
That however, is a lot easier said than done....
One absolute, is the necessity of proper steps to a legit apology. These are (for the wrong do-er) accept responsibility, apologize and ask forgiveness.
My question is what do you do, if the wrong do-er doesn't take those steps?
Is there a way to really forgive if the crime is not admitted and owned?
What if the wrong is denied and ignored and worst of all, put on you?
Then what?
I have had to forgive a lot of people in my life and I have had to beg forgiveness a few times myself.
This whole process, from either side of the coin, is extremely difficult, pain staking and life altering.
There are a few people I need to forgive, their crimes live deep deep in the recesses of my hidden, private heart.
There is one person (who I will not name), whom I desperately want to forgive but she won't let me.
And here I feel stuck and helpless because I just do not know how to get over that hurdle, that step of accepting responsibility.
I know that for her, she CANNOT face the blame and WILL not, EVER...
I know that no tragedy, illness or death-bed goodbye even, will cause her to budge from her safe place of denial.
I wish it were not so, but I would bet my life on it, she is permanently un-moveable.
And so, I am left holding the bag of pain, and in her sad, lonely eyes all the blame.
This totally sucks for me.
I mean totally, totally sucks.
I would like to say that now because I am a grown up girl and can better understand all the pain that this person had to go through in her life, that it makes it easier to forgive and forget - BUT,
that just isn't so, at least for me in this particular circumstance.
I understand her so much better than I did and that DOES relieve me of some of the fault I placed on myself for her lack of love - but it just doesn't = forgiveness, at least it sure doesn't feel like it when I am completely honest with myself.
(And of course you in blog land...)
So, what I have come to in my head for today, is that for now, I haven't quite moved on...
I want her to say she is sorry and she never will.sigh.
In order for me to be a part of her life, she has to do this - at the very least accept SOME responsibility for the burden she has given me. Until that happens (won't) I will have to continue to work on this process inside myself and try to find some state of peace minus that piece of the puzzle and her.
I will say, that for the most part I am not angry anymore.
I feel a great relief from being able to understand her even where she fails to understand herself and that makes all my rage dissipate in the flood of knowing...
And, I love her.... I always will. Regardless of, and in spite of, the broken off arrow that hangs out of my heart which her very bow has driven there.
This weekend I got in a small car accident - totally my fault.
I plowed in to a young lady driving her dads car as I backed out of my driveway, my stupid windshield wipers wouldn't shut off and I was distracted, I looked away.
I got out of the car and asked if everyone was okay and then proceeded to do the steps
1. accept responsibility
2. apologize
3. ask forgiveness...
I hugged these people like a million times until it occurred to me that maybe me being nice was annoying.
I said, "Is it making this better or worse that I am so sorry, cause if you need to be mad at me, I can totally take it?"
they laughed and told me I was sweet, and Dad, well when he showed up, pulled away from his fishing trip, there to assess the damage, well he hugged me too.
I thought to myself - well I did that right, if there is one thing I am good at, it is saying what needs to be said.
Forgiveness is so much easier minus the anger, so maybe I am getting closer with she who won't be named.... Maybe one day the hurt will dull like the anger did and maybe then forgiveness will appear before my eyes and say, "the steps aren't necessary if you practice them yourself"
I don't know if that will happen, but I sure hope so.
And so, if I had to sum up my thoughts for the day - if I had a message to deliver to those who want to hear it,
Do the steps.
Just do them and save the pain for when it counts for something that you have absolutely no control over.
God Knows (or Allah or Buddha) there are plenty of those circumstances to go around, lots of shoes in the air getting ready to drop....
Just do the steps....
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