Tagged: “forgiveness journey”
I am trying to forgive a family relative. My immediate family members keep saying negative things about the person. When I explain to my immediate family members that I am trying to forgive the person, then they intensify their negative judgements against this person. How can I forgive under this circumstance?
Your forgiving is being made more challenging because of the constant negative statements from people whom you love. Yet, please keep in mind that their choice not to forgive is not your choice. Their views need not stay as your view. Yes, you will have to struggle against those negative statements, but here is my suggestion: Every time you hear a negative statement about your relative, say to yourself—-to yourself silently—something positive about the person. Say privately to yourself, “I choose to forgive the person.” These exercises, repeated over time, should help you to forgive even if your family members continue with the negative statements.
If the person refuses to accept my gift, should I try something other than forgiveness?
This depends on your goal. Is your goal to reconcile? If so, and if the other refuses to accept your gift out of denial of any wrongdoing, then you need to have a heart-to-heart conversation of the wrong done and the person’s denial of this. Such a conversation may lead, or at least eventually lead, to a genuine reconciliation based on mutual trust. If, on the other hand, your goal for now is to reduce the resentment inside of you, then your giving a gift that is not directly given (such as the kind word about the person to others or donating to charity in the person’s name) is sufficient for a good forgiveness response. Under this circumstance, you need not “try something other than forgiveness.”
What if positive feelings toward the one who offended me do not emerge? What then? Do I give it more time?
Please remember that forgiveness is a process and we do not necessarily reach the highest levels of this process. If you do not develop positive feelings toward the person, but the strongly negative emotions shrink to manageable levels, then you definitely are on the pathway of forgiving. Yes, you can continue the process of forgiving with this person, but please know that you are doing well in your forgiving by reducing resentment.
Giving a gift to the one who hurt me sounds way too difficult. What do you suggest?
Giving a gift to the other in forgiveness occurs in our Process Model later in the process. You need first to try to think of the one who hurt you in broader ways than just defining that person by the unjust actions. From there you can practice bearing the pain or standing in the pain so that you do not displace that pain onto the one who hurt you or onto others. Once you begin to feel stronger as you bear the pain, then you can consider giving a gift to the other. This might be a smile or a returned email or even a kind word about the person to others. I recommend giving a gift because this is what the moral virtue of forgiveness is on a deep level: being good to the one who was not good to you.
I wonder if some people are more inclined to forgive than other people. In other words, might some people just have a natural disposition to forgive compared with most of us? I think of Maximilian Kolbe as my example here. He was in the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. He willingly gave himself up as a substitute for a Jewish man with a family. Fr. Kolbe was calm and did not fight his abusers, which suggests to me that he forgave. Most of us could not do that and so quickly. What do you think?
I doubt that this saint of the Catholic Church only had some kind of natural disposition to forgive. After all, his very life was giving to others as he became a priest. In other words, he had many times in which he engaged in smaller sacrifices for people, which likely gave him much practice in the moral virtues, particularly love and forgiveness. When it then came time for his momentous act of self-sacrifice, which probably included forgiveness, he was ready. Further, theologians in his particular faith would include God’s grace as a large part of why he could love in this way by giving up his life. So, did he have a natural tendency? He might have, but at the same time he had abundant practice in love and forgiveness and he had God’s grace to accomplish heroism.
