Christ's Call to Choose Forgiveness

I’ve been hurt. I’ve been through it in my life. Like really been through it. I tend to have difficulty processing these tough, and sometimes even traumatic, experiences. I’ve come to recognize that my coping mechanism is to push forward and fake it ‘till I make it… I try to let myself feel what I need to in order to continue on with my life in a healthy fashion, but my brain simply makes light of the situation and sees the situation as less serious than it is, so I simply don’t process it at all… until the minor stressors in my life all add up, and everything comes to a head. I realize that I haven’t processed the situation, and, despite my convincing myself that I’m fine and moved on, I haven’t.

In fact, I have even gotten mad all over again about past experiences, even some small, not traumatic events. I came to the realization the other day in one of the classes I teach that I’m still upset about my high school GPA, which I used as an example to explain what was taking place in a piece of literature. I took Algebra I in 8th grade and got a B (92.6% when a 93% was an A) one quarter and it was the only non-A score keeping me from a 4.0 my entire high school career. My students called me out… “Miss A., you still sound pretty salty about that. You’re really still mad at that teacher for not rounding that grade up? Does your high school GPA even matter anymore?” Okay, so I felt a little attacked. They had a great point; it didn’t matter anymore. I thought I was over it… so why does it still bother me? Perhaps it’s the perfectionist in me. Perhaps it’s because I peaked in high school (what a sad thought!). Or… maybe I need to look more critically at the cause of this persistent saltiness..

That leads into my biggest spiritual, and overall, struggle: forgiveness. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus calls us to radical forgiveness. If we are hurt 7 times, we are to forgive 77 times. “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matthew 6:14-15). This verse has always stuck out to me; it’s inherent to the faith, but it’s also frightening for me, a critical struggler in the forgiveness department.

And, of course, I’ve taken this to prayer. Lord, reveal to me how to forgive so radically. Give me the grace to forgive and continue on (I loathe the idea of forgetting after forgiving… how can you learn and grow if you forget?! But I digress). Obviously, when Jesus spoke these words ages ago, He knew it was easier said than done. But, I have wondered… did He really know how hard it is? He hasn’t been through the struggles of a modern person, or the struggles that I’ve been through. But, I mean, He had to have understood, based on His experience throughout His life, especially in the consistent persecution and His death. The verbal abuse, the beating, the scourging, the spit, the humiliation, the asphyxiation on a cross. I may not have been through experiences like that of our Lord, nor has He been through mine, but He does know. Not only did He come to us in the humble form of Man and live a human life, but He walks with us, day by day, whether we feel Him or not. He’s there. He knows our hearts and how we hurt and struggle.

When I say He knows our hearts and our struggle, it goes beyond that empathy we so deeply crave. Not only does He hurt for and with us in our strife, but He knows just how to speak to us when we need it most. I recently had a dream that moved me, and when I woke up, I knew I had to document and share it.

I was confronted with the biggest roadblocks in my road to forgiveness; people, experiences, words, feelings, all culminated in a personification in front of me. This personification was, for some reason, wearing my clothes, perhaps to identify that it had some relation to me. By the end of the dream, after continually trying to fight this personification of my struggles, I finally grabbed that person by the shoulders, looked them in the eye, and, exhausted, whispered breathily, “I have loved and cared for you, I’ve been hurt by you, but it’s time for you to go and for me to move on.” The person melted away, disappearing from existence. My good friend was standing next to me, and I turned to her, holding my clothes in my arms. I looked up at her tear-filled eyes, the truth coming to me: “When you let go, what you have left is part of you that you get back.”

I woke up in the morning, admittedly a little misty-eyed. I’d been waiting for Jesus to show me how He wants me to forgive. That prayer, “Lord, teach me how to forgive and give me the grace to do so as You have instructed,” had been repeated in my heart for quite some time. The beauty of the Lord’s love for us is, in His intimate knowledge of each of us and our needs, that He reveals to us what we need to know, exactly how we need it communicated to us. I know that I didn’t get the simple realization in my mind out of nowhere because Jesus had in mind the most perfect way to reveal this to me. He, in His perfect timing, has brought me peace and a profound understanding of the forgiveness He calls us to.

Forgiveness, as I’ve come to realize, isn’t the idea of no longer hurting due to an experience, forgetting it, and going on with life as if nothing happened. Forgiveness is when, as Fr. Mike Schmitz said in a recent homily, the debt owed is the debt paid. It’s a matter of who takes on that debt to pay it. If Jesus can take on the debt we owe, which is huge due to our sinful and imperfect nature, we can learn from His example to forgive, as well. You can still hurt when you forgive. You can still not be “over” the way you’ve been hurt but still forgive. You don’t have to tell someone who’s hurt you that “it’s okay.” It’s okay for a situation to not be okay. The only way to move forward is to acknowledge how you feel about what’s happened, take it to the foot of Christ’s cross to give to Him, and ask for the grace to learn from the situation and continue forward with life.

Friends, THIS is the forgiveness we’ve been called to. One that frees us of burdens, allows us to receive a piece of ourselves back that is held hostage in that resentment, and blesses us with the grace to follow our greatest call: to love one another as Christ has loved us.