I have been thinking a lot about forgiveness lately, which means that I’ve been trying to have greater forgiveness in my own life. For the most part, it takes a lot to make me angry and I forgive easily. My pride is so powerful that it’s almost tangible, but forgiveness is not something that I struggle with on a regular basis. With that being said, when I do struggle with unforgiveness, I find myself unable to move forward. So, I hold onto it and wallow in the emotions, with hope that it will magically resolve itself. So far, this is an unsuccessful solution. One of the difficulties to forgive (for me) is the deep connection to the past.
Ties to the Past
Any unforgiveness is rooted in the past, even if the situation is ongoing. Something happens that wounds us in that moment. These wounds represent a variety of emotions, but the weight of those emotions is something that we can carry with us. Unforgiveness becomes the baggage that we lug around; this maintains the emotions and guards the wounds. But, the luggage doesn’t allow us to travel freely– we aren’t able to roam through life while we lug around our unforgiveness.
Yes, life will always continue to move forward, but a piece of our soul remains planted firmly in the past. Our luggage chains us to the past and there is limitation in forward motion. We are always in range of our past. Every time we try to distance ourselves, we jerk back, as the chain reigns us towards the very place left behind. To drop the baggage is the simple, yet almost impossible solution. The weight somehow has value it doesn’t deserve.
Ground to the Past
A piece of ourselves rests within that luggage, with the blanket of unforgiveness and pain of the past, but it’s not our true self. It’s the version of us with wounds. Every time we get a pull towards our past, that version of us comes flying out of our baggage and we become who we were before. Every time the unforgiveness takes charge, we return to the memory and become a different version of ourselves.
While unforgiveness feels lonely, this is not something done in isolation. Someone was wielding the weapon that hurt us and someone is the target of our unforgiveness. We link them to our chain– we try so desperately to leave them behind, while tying them to our lives. The problem is that time has moved forward. They are not the same people they were before, in the same way that we are not the same person we were before. We hold ourselves to a version of ourselves with wounds and hurts and hold them to a weaponized and harmful version of themselves.
Remembering our Unforgiveness
Speaking for myself, I can do a decent job of feeling fairly forgiving. I can convince myself that I have let go and no longer harbor ill feelings. That is, until I see that person again. The person becomes associated with the wound and I can no longer see them without feeling unforgiveness. That unforgiveness brings out a different version of me. Growth I’ve made is fleeting and I start to act as though I’m back where I was, all over again. “I never act like this”… yet, I am. Habits and bad behavior that I thought were long cured return to the surface and I no longer recognize myself.
Release the Unforgiveness
The only way to truly experience freedom for myself is to also release freedom over the very person I have deemed my enemy. Easy enough, yet the most painful action I can take. Forgiveness is so often depicted as a simple statement (“I forgive you”) that settles the matter in a moment. This is so far from the truth in the reality of forgiveness. Those chains may be worn, but we have given them strength over the years. Forgiveness is not a single decision made in one simple moment. Forgiveness is a long arduous process of cutting through the chains we’ve made. We have to be committed to the process, and reaffirm our decision to offer freedom to our enemy over and over again.
