Falling Into Forgiveness
Even though this is only the second week of September, I still feel the change in the air. The nights are becoming cooler and the days seem a bit shorter. Stores are selling Halloween apparel and Starbucks is creating pumpkin spice and apple cider drinks. Whether you are a summer lover or hater, there is no denying that summer is winding down and fall is preparing to make an appearance.
Personally, I prefer fall and have no problem falling into the season just as one might fall into a bundle of leaves. I like rocking my boots with leggings and searching for the best sweater dress in the most fall-y colors (and matching my hair to that attire)! Also, being a foodie, it is finally soup season for me, which is something that I also love. However, there are other things that I don’t necessarily fall gracefully into...forgiveness.
Prior to September, I felt that I was pretty good at forgiving. I have experienced traumatic events at the hands of family members. I have felt abandoned by those that I never wanted to leave. I have felt betrayed, discounted, and a sense of injustice. I say all of this to say that I am human and because I live among other humans, I have been hurt. However, I always thought that I was okay with forgiveness. Some transgressions took years to resolve, but I like to think that I try to forgive because logically I know that I need to, however, I also recognize that I am not always as quick to forgive as I would like to be, and savoring my justifications for not forgiving, often does more harm than good.
So, as I mentioned, I felt pretty good about my forgiveness skill set until something happened and I was actually able to observe my response only to discover that I had been previously falling into unforgiveness instead of forgiveness and peace.
This story starts a couple of weeks ago when I discovered that my dad’s side of the family was finally having a family reunion. My father was not around very much during my childhood, so as an adult I try to soak up as much time with him to learn about my paternal family. I envisioned that this weekend would be great-I could get to know cousins that I was only social media friends with, have some good BBQ, and hear stories from “back in the day” from my elders. Since my maternal side of the family doesn’t necessarily do family reunions, it seemed like it was finally my opportunity to be a part of typical family tradition. I was super excited about this, which meant that I went into my “super excited visionary mode”-all I could see was how great this reunion was going to be.
I was also excited about my friends who are also family to me coming to my home soon to visit in October. I was just thrilled that I have so many opportunities to be with those that I love and I wanted to make sure that everyone felt comfortable in my home, so I enlisted a friend who is a contractor to help prepare my house for guests. You may be wondering where the forgiveness comes in-it’s coming, but I need to say that the biggest feeling here was excitement (and some anxiety), which can cloud judgment in some situations.
So, in my excitement, I ask my friend to come help me do some flooring work in preparation for my friends the week before I am to leave town to go to this reunion. We start working on the project and I think everything is fine, until the following day he informs me that he has COVID.
At this point, I am super angry. My first thought is, he should have told me that he wasn’t vaccinated prior to coming into my home. Or, why didn’t he wear a mask? From here, my focus of the excitement went to frustration that an expectation (which hadn’t been previously communicated) had not been met. I figured that since he is a father of school-aged children, of course he would be vaccinated (assumption). At this point, I had a choice to make: either I would choose to be angry and blame him for my now change of plans, or I could choose to change my perspective.
So, I chose to change my perspective. Here are a few things that I learned:
In order to forgive others, you need to forgive yourself. In this case, I had to accept some responsibility. I had not asked him to wear a mask because I had made an assumption. This does not mean that I needed to shame myself, but part of forgiveness is acknowledging the role that you played in the situation. When I realized that there were things that I could have done to protect myself better, I knew that I needed to apologize to myself (and the other person) for not taking action.
Forgiving others may take time. I needed to cycle through my anger and frustration. If I hadn’t acknowledged that need, I may have developed resentment that would further damage the relationship (and cause me additional distress). Taking time to cycle through your emotions is important. The sooner that we can learn to acknowledge, the sooner we can let it go.
Forgiveness is a gift, even if someone does not ask for it. Even if my friend had not asked for forgiveness, I would have still had the opportunity to give that gift to myself. At the end of the day, I learned something from this experience-now I know that I need to be diligent about setting boundaries specific to where we are right now, particularly during a pandemic.
We could probably spend years talking about forgiveness. This example of forgiveness doesn’t compare to the types of forgiveness that perhaps you have had to take on yourself: forgiving an abusive family member, forgiving someone who betrayed you, forgiving someone or something that brought about loss, etc. Those levels of forgiveness sometimes take many cycles to bring some sense of closure about. From my own experiences and testimonies from others, I have learned that forgiveness is not an easy task, but it is needed and worth it. Maybe you decide not to start your forgiveness journey with the most difficult traumas, and that is understandable. Forgiveness is a practice and it is okay to start with smaller things. Observe how things change over time as a result of you engaging in the practice. Maybe you notice your perspective changes, maybe you notice that you aren’t feeling as bound to that pain, perhaps you realize the opportunities that you have now that you aren’t as focused on the pain. Sometimes we end up having a better relationship with someone el Whatever it is, take note for yourself and continue to find ways to forgive (while also holding your boundaries as needed). The more you can practice it (and there are always opportunities to forgive), the stronger that practice becomes. Most of all remember to practice forgiving, and thus freeing, yourself.