I've spent a great deal of time thinking about forgiveness. I used to believe that forgiveness was about letting someone off the hook. Naturally, I was disinclined to let the folks I believed had wronged me off the hook. No way, baby.
Luckily, growing up tends to wring out such notions. It wasn't long before I realized that many of the "wrongs" I believed had been done to me were actually my fault. It wasn't until later, however, that I was able to see that forgiveness doesn't actual benefit the forgiven particularly--it benefits the forgiver instead.
In my experience, forgiving someone is like taking a heavy rock I've been carrying around and setting it down on the side of the road and walking away. I find my burdened lightened. It can be very freeing.
But it's miserably hard work. A few years ago I found myself sitting across from someone (an ex-boyfriend) who had wronged me considerably (he surprised me by moving out while I was at work one day, leaving me only a note) asking him to forgive me for the part I'd played in our breakup. This was nearly impossible for me because I still carried so much anger and resentment toward him for leaving me in the first place. As I looked at him, all I could see was the note (it said, "Cec, I thought about our relationship and moved." We'd been fighting a lot and I'd asked him to "think about our relationship" that morning). Apologizing to him was the hardest thing I'd ever done. He then told me he'd left that way because he'd feared I would injure him in a rage (yes, I was prone to rages in my drunken early 20's). In that moment, my anger toward him swelled even more strongly, then, suddenly, burst like a soap bubble. In that instant, I forgave him. I stopped caring that he'd hurt me. I let it go.
I haven't seen him since that day (at least not on purpose). I have no desire to. I don't want to be his "friend." In fact, I don't like him much at all. As a wise woman I met once said, this falls into the category of "Forgive you, but fuck you." My part is done. He's no longer on my radar. It's such a relief.
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I've been thinking about this again since I'd heard that the Amish attended the funeral of the man that murdered their daughters. Such is the nature of their religion; they not only invited the killer's family to the girl's funerals, they also went to his.
An act of forgiveness so huge I cannot fathom it.
The only vengeance the Amish will vent in this horrible story is on the schoolhouse itself. It will be destroyed, and they will build a new one instead. This seems entirely appropriate to me.
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Someone that has taught me a great deal about forgiveness is my husband.
We've been working on clearing out his mother's condo, now that she's living in a home. There is a lot to go through; it appears she stopped throwing anything away once she got sick with the Alzheimer's--there are hundreds of papers to examine and discard.
While going through them, we've come across some things. Charlie's mom was not a nice woman before she got ill. In fact, she was nasty. My very first impression of her came from the first time I visited Charlie's new apartment. I noticed a large finger smirch on the dust on the cover of his answering machine. I asked him about it, and he said, with a big sigh, "My mom." The first time she came to see our new house, I cleaned that place within an inch of its life. I mean, I scrubbed the baseboards. But when she came into the house, she made a beeline for the kitchen and put her hand on top of the fridge. At just barely over five feet tall, it hadn't occurred to me to clean there. Her hand came down sticky. The look she gave me! Ye gods.
Add that to the fact that I know she beat Charlie within an inch of his life when he was a kid (until he was 12 years old and he hit her back and said, "No more."), I found it hard to be fond of her before she got sick. Even now I find myself tolerating her more than actually liking her.
But Charlie, amazing man that he is, has set all of this aside to take care of her. All the pain she caused him, all the grief, yet he dotes over her nearly as much as he dotes over our daughter. It's a beautiful thing to see. He practices forgiveness daily with her.
In her papers we've found notes listing his grievances against her. Poems of his where she's written "No good" in the corner. Each time we unearth something painful, I watch him just sigh and set it aside, forgiving her yet again.
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This morning some jerk shoved me in his hurry to get off the train. He stepped on my foot too. Twenty minutes later I'm sitting at my desk still fuming over it when I remember about the funeral and the Amish. Maybe that man was ill and running to the restroom. Maybe a friend was in the hospital. Maybe he was just late for work. Whatever it was, it was such a minor offense. Yet these, I find, are the hardest to forgive.
Today, though, I took the lessons that Charlie and the Amish have taught me and said a quick prayer for the man. As soon as I did, my anger burst again and disappeared. I felt much better.
And that, I've learned, is the real gift of forgiving. Feeling better. Feeling lighter. Feeling clean.
Now, if I can just figure out how to forgive myself.
