Anonymous
I have been practicing as a holistic doctor for over 20 years. My expertise is healing that results from rapid emotional release. By 1994, I had discovered that walking through forgiveness statements with people with chronic pain or chronic depression had an amazing effect that either instantaneously eliminated or greatly reduced the symptoms. While this has been a blessing, and I have built a practice using forgiveness within a healing technique I developed (EPTworks), my greatest personal experience with the miracle of forgiveness came while I was working with my brother-in-law. My sister came to work in my office as a way to escape an unpleasant home life and in hope to heal things in her life. By working in my office, she had access to the emotional work I was providing to my patients on a daily basis. Over the course of a year, her health improved and she lost 60 lbs of the more than 100 lbs of excess weight she carried. It became obvious that her husband was an abusive man. She wanted to divorce him. I advised to forgive first. As she transformed, becoming more at peace with him than ever before, he became more angry and controlling and even began verbally assaulting me in their conversations. He hated me for helping his wife and I began hating him. I hated him for hurting my sister all those years. I hated him for the hypocrisy of pretending to be a good may while verbally beating down his wife and four children on a daily basis. I hated him for not responding in love to the healing that was happening in his wife. I could go on and on–the truth is I really hated him and felt I had every right to continue to hate him. After all it was what he deserved. I was just helping my sister and waiting for the day she had the power to walk away from him in the power of love and forgiveness. She was almost there but I knew we had to offer her husband to opportunity to forgive and heal. That meant he would have to come see me—the doctor he hated. I never imagined he would take me up on this offer to help him save his marriage. Looking back, I think it was more of an offer for my sister than for him–kind of a hollow offer at best. My sister drew the line and told him if he wanted to improve their relationship he would have to do some work with me. Otherwise, she would be leaving. Both of us were shocked when he showed up at the office the next day for the appointment we set for him. I literally thought I might throw up and headed for the bathroom only to find myself praying to God to let me be at least neutral to this abusive man and sincerely help him. I got myself together and met them in my treatment room. We openly, calmly discussed the issues and he agreed to let me work with him through EPTworks and forgiveness. Almost immediately in the process, he was breaking down like a child, having been abused by his father. We walked through forgiveness statements and he seemed lighter than I have ever seen him and even grateful to me. After about an hour, I didn’t know what to think. I still did not like the man. I thought I could be around him without hating him but I didn’t think I would ever feel more than just tolerance. Over the next few weeks, my sister was reporting that he was kinder and more loving, overall, lighter. Over the next year, there were ups and downs. He came to see me, usually in the downs and always reported he felt a lot better. My sister had put her divorce plans on hold. At the end of that first year, she was getting weary of the good husband/bad husband chaos and wrote her husband a letter that she would be leaving. Her letter functioned as an intervention of sorts. He broke down and cried, apologizing to her for so much of the hurt that had happened and begged her forgiveness. They cried together and she forgave him. He insisted on driving to where I was (over an hour drive). When they showed up together. My brother-in-law looked different than he had ever looked to me. He was light and smiling with dampness of tears in his eyes. He rushed over to me and hugged me. He told me when he read the letter, it was like he had been in the dark and a light went on. He realized everything we had worked on he had done and how much he loved my sister and our family. He poured gratitude over me in a miraculous way. Even though I had done much forgiveness in my own processes with him, this was the final key that washed away all the toxic hate . I realized that changing from hate to love is more difficult than healing cancer but then they may be the same thing. Years later, there are no traces of the hate I had for my beautiful brother-in-law. I am so grateful that my relationship with him taught me that you can heal and love what you have hated. For me that is the greatest miracle of forgiveness I have experienced. My brother-in-law is now my good friend. He has become a loving devoted husband and father. We are grateful for each other and when this story is remembered in family gatherings–we both just look at each other with tears of gratitude and love.
