Tagged: “Forgiving”

What is the difference between forgiveness and acceptance and does the first one truly have an impact on the angry feelings? What is the mechanism that help us forgive someone who made us angry? Thank you.

To forgive is to deliberately decide and to actually do good toward those who have not been good to the forgiver.  One can accept a situation by having indifference or annoyance toward the offending person.  In other words, while accepting the situation, a person might say, “The one who offended me is at so low a moral level that this is not worth a fight.  I accept what happened and I move on.”  Forgiveness includes seeing the inherent worth in the other.
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Research shows that as people genuinely forgive, their anger can go down significantly as can anxiety and psychological depression.  The “mechanism” for forgiving includes a number of steps in the process of forgiveness that are detailed in my books, Forgiveness Is a Choice, The Forgiving Life, and 8 Keys to Forgiveness.  The gist of the “mechanism” is this:  The forgiver commits to doing no harm to the offending person, struggles to see the inherent worth of the other (not because of what was done, but in spite of this), and then patiently awaits the development of compassion toward the other.
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Is Forgiving for the Forgiver or for the One Who Offended?

So frequently I hear this: “Forgiveness is for you, the one who was injured.”

I think this actually can be a distortion of what forgiveness is.  We need to make a distinction between:

  • the end point or goal of forgiveness, and
  • a consequence of forgiving.

These are different.  The goal is that to which forgiveness actually points.  Given that forgiveness is a moral virtue, it is concerned about goodness toward others.  Justice as a moral virtue is not primarily for the self but for all with whom you come into contact directly or indirectly.  Patience is directed toward those who are moving slower than you would like.  Yes, one can be fair or just to the self and patient toward the self, but these are not the primary goals of either virtue.  They are outwardly directed to others.  It is the same with forgiveness because, like justice and patience, it too is a moral virtue.  The end point of forgiving is to reach out in goodness directly toward the one or ones who have been unfair to you.

Yes, there is such a thing as self-forgiveness, but notice that the wording is intended to expressly direct the attention toward the self.  In the case of forgiving as it typically is used, the word “self” is not included.

 

A consequence of forgiving, shown frequently by our research, is that as a person extends goodness toward offending others, then the one who forgives experiences considerable emotional relief.  Excessive anger, anxiety, and depression all can go down in the one who genuinely forgives.

These emotional-health consequences, while very positive and desirable, are not the ultimate goal of engaging in the moral virtue of forgiving.  If it were, then this would be the goal for all of the moral virtues and such practice likely would degenerate into self-serving activities and therefore not be virtuous at all.

Is forgiving for the forgiver?  No, this is not its goal.  Is a consequence of forgiving emotional relief for the forgiver?  Yes.  And this distinction between goal and consequence makes all the difference in understanding what forgiveness is and what it can accomplish within the self.

Robert

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Forgiveness: A Good Night’s Sleep Depends On It

On an average night, 60 million Americans cannot sleep. If you are one of them, here’s help.

by Jane Walsh

In today’s overworked and overstimulated world, getting a good night’s sleep is easier said than done. In fact, 1 in 3 adults don’t get enough sleep, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports. Missing the recommended seven hours a night puts people at higher risk of developing obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, and frequent mental distress.

The causes of poor sleep are multifaceted ranging from poor sleep hygiene to mental health issues — including, stress, anger, and resentment. Forgiveness therefore plays a crucial role in restoring health and happiness and getting a full night’s sleep.

Main causes of poor sleep

Poor sleep is often the result of poor sleep hygiene: healthy habits necessary for deep, restful sleep and optimal alertness during the day. Good sleep hygiene can include getting enough exercise and sunlight during the day, unwinding in the evening, and creating a peaceful and comfortable atmosphere in your bedroom. Additionally, shift work can cause frequent sleep disruption and fatigue. In this case, it’s essential to practice good sleep hygiene and stick to a sleep schedule that works for you.

Moreover, insomnia and poor sleep are frequently caused by psychological issues, such as, stress, resentment, holding grudges, and the desire for revenge. When you harbour these negative feelings, your adrenal glands release hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. As a result, you’re too stressed, angry, and fired up to sleep.

The power of forgiveness for sleep

Whether you’ve fallen out with your other half or are harboring a long-term grudge against a relative, conflict and resentment can have a negative impact on your health — and consequently your sleep. Taking steps toward forgiveness can transform your health — it lowers blood pressure, cholesterol, and risk of heart attack — and will allow you to fall asleep easier for longer periods of time.

Forgiveness is such a positive thing for health largely due to its power to decrease or eradicate those negative feelings of tension, anger, anxiety, depression, and fatigue. When you choose to forgive, you let go of hostility, anger, and ideas of revenge surrounding past events. As a result, your body is allowed to heal. Stress hormones decrease and feel-good endorphins are better able to flood the body.

 

Ultimately, feeling resentful is a choice — one that negatively impacts your physical, emotional, and mental health. When you choose to forgive, your whole quality of life will improve. When your head hits the pillow, there’ll be no more mental barriers separating you from sleep.


About the author:

Jane Walsh is a freelance writer whose articles cover a range of topics that can only be described as diverse. Here are a few examples of her work:

“Cracking Down On Boiler Room Fraud – Self Defense Tactics To Fight Off The Crooks” Forbes, Sept 9, 2017

“Teachers Who Care Have the Potential to Turn Failing Students into Successful Adults” Nov. 14, 2017

“What Banks Do Not Want You to Know — The Huge Markup They Pocket on Your Currency Exchange” Sept. 24, 2017

“The DIY Generation Embraces Technology-Based Learning” Oct. 6, 2017

After spending more than a decade working as an emergency nurse and first-responder, and after starting a family, Jane took a step back and now spends her time working as a freelance content manager and writer. You can reach her at Jane.Walsh.Writer@gmail.com.


 

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After Near-Fatal Shooting, Woman Forgives Husband Who Hired Hitman to Kill Her

BBC (UK) World Service Website, Carrollton, Texas – When Nancy (Shore) Howard drove home from church one day in August 2012, she was confronted in her garage by an armed masked man who grabbed her around the neck and demanded her purse. As she struggled to get free, the man shot her. The bullet traveled through her head and pierced her left eye before lodging in her right lung.

When she recovered consciousness, Nancy could barely breathe and was in excruciating pain. Somehow, miraculously, she struggled into the house and was able to call emergency services.

At the hospital, police were able to contact Nancy’s husband– John Franklin Howard, known to everyone as Frank–who quickly flew home from an out-of-town trip. The three children the couple had raised during their 30-year marriage were also soon at their mother’s bedside.

While Nancy is undergoing painful repairs to her face, throat, and  paralyzed right arm, detectives aggressively pursue suspects, including Frank. They first discover that Nancy’s husband has been having a three-year affair. A few days later, they uncover connections between her CPA husband and a group known as the East Texas gang. The story becomes increasingly bizarre as evidence surfaces of a murder-for-hire conspiracy initiated–to Nancy’s horror–by her husband.

Investigators eventually uncover evidence that Frank has been paying large sums to the criminal gang–apparently to kill his wife–and that gang members were exploiting him for more and more money. The money source is Frank’s rich client, from whom he has extorted over six-million dollars, some of which he has used to give his mistress extravagant gifts. Frank is arrested and charged with attempted capital murder.

At Frank’s trial, the jury took only two hours to find him guilty. He was sentenced to life in prison and will have to serve 30 years before he will be considered for parole. By then he will be about 85 years old. A year later, the shooter is tried, found guilty, and sentenced to sixty years.

“I have forgiven him,” Nancy says of her husband. “The Bible says that if we don’t forgive those who have harmed us then we are unable to be forgiven and I couldn’t afford not to forgive him because I couldn’t live with bitterness.”

She goes on to say, “It’s because I still loved him at the time, and you know I have to say I still love him, not in a romantic love, but in a love that he’s the father of my children, and there’s always going to be a love there.”

Nancy says she “vigorously” celebrates every birthday she has had since the shooting and still experiences joy singing in the church choir. Nearly six years after the horror of the attack on her doorstep, she is moving on.

“I’m able to be thankful once again for how God has saved my life and the healing that’s happening in my children’s lives, it’s awesome,” she says. “I’m excruciatingly happy.”


Read the full story on BBC World Service: “My husband hired a hitman to kill me – but I forgive him”

Listen to Nancy Shore speaking to Outlook on the BBC

Read Nancy’s story: The Shooting of Nancy Howard: A Journey Back to Shore
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Son Forgives Abusive Father Who Fractured the Boy’s Skull 14 Times in 3 Years

Ciril Čuš, who grew up during the ’60s in Žetale, a small Slovenian parish on the border of Croatia, comes from a traditional Catholic family with two brothers and a sister. But there was nothing traditional about his childhood, his abusive father who nearly beat him to death, and his long journey down the path to forgiveness.

Ciril’s  father worked as a builder and one day took a fall from 16 feet, spending a month in a coma. After the accident, he wasn’t the same. He started drinking, becoming very aggressive — and young Ciril was often the target. Between the ages of 7 and 10,  Ciril’s head was fractured with a blunt object 14 times.

When his father was sober, he was a wonderful man; he taught his children a lot. But when he was drunk, he wasn’t safe to be around.

Ciril had to escape through the window several times and spent many nights in the barn. He was afraid to sleep because he had terrible nightmares. He had learning difficulties and barely finished school. When he was 10, he contemplated suicide. At 12, he took a job picking produce so he could get away from home and pay for his education. At 14, he wanted to run away from home but felt he had nowhere to go.

The abuse and distance from his father led Ciril to take up karate in school. Determined to prove himself — and protect himself — he won the national Slovenian kickboxing championship and became a kung fu coach.

After secondary school, Ciril got a job and moved to a nearby town. But, with a lot of time on his hands, he would often visit the local library. It was there that he started reading the Bible. ”I was drawn to the word of God, more and more every day.”

Convinced by a neighbor to accompany him to a Sunday church service, Ciril was revulsed by what he saw as the antics of the charismatic worshippers and he decided never to enter a church again. But his friend convinced him to try it a second time and that was when he heard a woman speaking about her husband who beat her and cheated on her, but she was still able to forgive him.

“For the first time in my life, I realized what my biggest problem was — that I was not able to forgive my father.” Ciril remembers.  “I was so angry that I even considered killing him.”

In order to be able to forgive, a priest suggested that Ciril pray so he prayed a Rosary for his father every day and even made a solemn promise to God that he would pray until he could forgive his father. After a year and a half he realized that prayer alone was not enough, that he had to go to his father and tell him he forgave him.

Although he was somehow able to generate the courage to go meet with his father, there was no mutual forgiveness but from that point on Ciril prayed two rosaries a day instead of one.

After three years of praying, Ciril approached his father again. He apologized for everything he had done wrong. He told him that he was his only father and he loved him very much. In response, his father grabbed a knife and shouted, “I will kill you like a pig!” Ciril escaped while his father ran to the garage to get a chain saw. Ciril’s response: he began praying three rosaries a day instead of two.

Nine months and more than 800 rosaries later, Ciril learned that his father was suffering from cirrhosis of the liver, coughing up blood and that his doctors told him he only had a month to live. Determined to forgive him before his father died, Ciril approached him once again.

“I took his hand, looked him in the eyes, told him I forgave him, that I was sorry for everything, and that I loved him,” Ciril recalls. “I held his head close to my heart. It was the first time in my life that I hugged my father.”

From that moment on, Ciril’s father stopped drinking and peace returned to the family. For the first time ever, Ciril saw his father embrace his mother and heard him tell his brothers and his sister that he loved them. His father lived another 16 years.

”Once I forgave, I was happy, joyful. This real encounter with God is more powerful than any hatred, curse, suffering or distress,” says Ciril. He never stopped praying, either. Today he is a parish priest in a small Slovenian town.

Ciril now says he realizes that he had to walk his path of suffering to be able to understand and help people who go through similar experiences. His life bears a powerful witness. He travels a lot around the world, witnessing about his experience of forgiveness.

”If we do not forgive, we stop God’s blessing from entering and God cannot work within us” Ciril says. “Forgiveness means establishing a new relationship with another person. And that is a great gift from God. But everyone has his own path. Sometimes it takes a long time.”


Read the full story: His father abused him, fracturing his skull 14 times, but he was still able to forgive – Aleteia, June 6, 2018

Aleteia (aleteia.org) is an online publication distributed in eight languages (English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Arabic, Polish and Slovenian). Its website “offers a Christian vision of the world by providing general and religious content that is free from ideological influences.” With more than 430,000 subscribers to its newsletter and more than 3 million fans on Facebook, Aleteia reaches more than 11 million unique visitors a month.


 

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