There is no question things happen in our lives that cause deep anger and pain.  However, forgiveness is not based on those emotions.  Just like love, forgiveness is a conscious decision we make which goes beyond our feelings.

Note: If you have not read Part 1, please click on this link Giving Yourself the Gift of Forgivness – Part 1 before reading Part 2.

I would say if there has been some kind of abuse in your past, (physical, emotional, verbal, sexual, or spiritual) there is a pretty good chance you have “seasons” where you spend quite a bit of time thinking about what that person did (or didn’t do), allowing yourself to repeatedly feel the painful emotions of that abuse . And that is very understandable.

But you won’t be able to get past it, if you don’t back up and allow the bitterness that is taking root in your heart to be removed.

Most of us already know this, but it needs to be said here as a reminder.

Forgiveness is not for the other person. It is for you. As long as you are holding on to unforgiveness, you are chained to that person through your anger and your bitterness.

When you make the choice to forgive someone, you are not saying that you are okay with what they did and how they wronged you. Forgiveness does not depend on whether or not a person deserves that forgiveness. It isn’t even based on if they are sorry for what they have done.

Choosing to forgive is making a choice to uproot the bitterness.  It is making the choice of refusing to continue to be dragged through the emotional mud by remaining attached to that person.

Why would you want to stay connected to someone who has hurt you so deeply? Unforgiveness is not hurting them, it is hurting you like an internal cancer eating you up inside and killing your soul.

Forgiving someone is not offering them a way out, it is giving yourself a gift. A gift you deserve to have and unwrap! The best thing we can do is to forgive the person who wronged us, and let them go. In doing this, we release ourselves to begin to heal from our wounds.

Often we find it is a process; a very slow and sometimes painful process.

You will probably find yourself having to choose forgiveness over and over again. I know of one woman who took 10 years of choosing to forgive the person who shot and murdered her son before the reality of forgiveness was a part of her life. Is it extremely difficult? Yes, for sure. Is it impossible? Only if you say so.

It truly is your choice to hang on to it and be destroyed by it, or to start the process of forgiveness and eventually find freedom.

Would you like to know who I find myself needing to forgive multiple times (besides the situation I shared about in part 1 of this blog)?

It is a doctor who came to see my daughter, a couple of weeks before she died. She needed to be put on the heart transplant list, but one reason she couldn’t get on it was because she was quite a bit overweight. Not being mobile (only having one leg plus having suffered a stroke) made it extremely difficult to take off the 60 or so pounds they said she had to lose.

This doctor was sent to discuss some options to help her with this. One thing he told her was that if she really wanted to lose the weight, she could. Obviously he would not do it, but he could lock her up in a room and feed her nothing but bread and water and she would lose the weight. At that point she pretty much quit eating. We couldn’t even get her to drink protein shakes. Since the heart is a muscle and hers was already so weakened and enlarged, it did not take very long for her heart to give out from lack of any nourishment, especially the lack of protein needed for her heart muscle to function properly. Yah, I can’t spend time thinking about that or I find myself getting angry all over again. I forgive him… I forgive him… I forgive him…

You have probably heard this many times, and you know it in your head, (along with the scriptures like Matthew 6:15 that tell us if we don’t forgive others our Father in heaven won’t forgive us) but how do you actually do it?

Don’t play the blame game. It puts you on the enemy’s playing field.

The person who is guaranteed to lose this game is not the person you are angry at for how they abused or hurt you. It is you, and everyone who loves you and needs you in their lives without the poison of bitterness and unforgiveness.

There is power in our words, much more than we seem to realize. Oftentimes, something we are thinking doesn’t become a reality until we either hear it said, or we speak the words ourselves.

I strongly encourage you to speak your forgiveness out loud.

Let the forgiveness and the healing begin with your words.  Speak forgiveness over the person who is responsible for causing such intense pain in your life.  Say it out loud, right now, right where you are.  Tell them, even though they can’t hear you, that you forgive them for ________ (and say what it is they did.)

It will probably be very painful, but in going through the pain you will be taking a step toward healing.

You may feel an immediate release, you may feel a deep stabbing in your heart, or you may feel nothing at all. But forgiveness is not based on a feeling, Say it out loud whether you mean it in your heart or not. Remember, it is not about feelings.

It is about setting yourself free from the chains that keep you attached to this person, which is preventing your healing and going forward into the fullness of life and what God has for you.

Remember, you are not forgiving them because what they did (or didn’t do) was okay.  You are choosing to forgive for your own sake; your own freedom and healing.  Make the conscious decision to refuse to remain connected to that person, allowing him or her to continue dragging you around in your darkness and pain.  Release their hold on you as you choose forgiveness.

You may have to come back to this over and over again like I have shared in my own personal stories. You may need to come back and state your choice of forgiveness multiple times a day at first. Say it once, say 100 times if you have to. But keep saying it.  “_____________, I forgive you for _______________________

Make a conscious choice to forgive, as many times as it takes.

You will find yourself having to come back to forgiving this person less often, until one day you suddenly realize you truly have forgiven them and you are free of the painful grip they once had on you.

As you determine in your heart to take these steps, God will be faithful to meet you.

What a wonderful day that will be!

Is there something that has helped you forgive in a difficult situation? Share it with us in the comment section below.

Abuse, abandonment, rejection, not understanding, piercing words, false accusations…the list is endless of how we are hurt by those around us. Let’s get right to the point!
Unforgiveness can completely paralyze a person. And there are so many different paths unforgiveness can take. We might need to forgive

•Other people for physical, emotional, and/or spiritual abuse
• God, for allowing something to happen (or not happen)
• Ourselves, for a whole variety of reasons
• You may even have to forgive someone for dying and leaving you here without them

Let me share with you an area in my life, where I need to live in a place of forgiveness for an issue that runs very deep in my family.

When one of our sons was just becoming a teen, he got involved in something that wasn’t good. We found this out because he came to us himself. He felt trapped and wanted to be released from it. This led to involving a counselor, which eventually led to having the law involved. (I was “tipped off” by a case worker, so I could rush to pull him out of school and drive him to the sheriff’s department to turn himself in, to avoid a public arrest. THANK YOU!)

This started us on a path we never dreamed we would be on. And it also unfortunately showed us firsthand how the justice system is so messed up.

There was a six month investigation to prepare for a trial, and during that time, our son was locked up in the county juvenile detention center. Every afternoon I would go sit in a tiny cubicle with my son on the other side of the glass, and every evening my husband would go visit him.

There was no question that my son, who was now living in the detention center, was guilty of something. (Remember, he was the one that started this whole thing, asking for help.) In our being naïve and believing the system wanted to give our son the help he came forward asking for, Dave and I were totally open and honest during the investigation, not knowing our own words would be twisted and used against him. Unfortunately, we were unaware that from the very beginning the county wanted him incarcerated. It was all very political and devious.

There was overwhelming evidence presented to the judge against sending him to the state juvenile correctional facility (which is a nice way of saying “juvenile prison” including double gates, barbed wire, and guards). This included a professional psychologist who works with criminals in that specific area, is highly respected, and is put on the stand in courts around our state. He evaluated our son and testified that he was not a criminal. He could see there were some triggers in my son’s life that caused him to commit this crime, and once the triggers were dealt with, he would be fine, but there was a high risk of an incarceration turning him into an actual criminal. There were stacks of letters from people giving strong character references like his teachers, our pastor, a neighbor who was involved on the victim end of his crime, and even officers from the detention center (saying he was a really good kid and they should not risk messing him up by locking him up with criminals – he just needed some in-depth counseling in this one area).

Our lawyer had contacted two boys’ homes, asking them if they would do an evaluation to admit our son in their program, as an alternative to being locked up. Instead of responding to our lawyer, one of these places called the prosecuting district attorney to say they would not take our son. Now why would they call the DA to tell him that, when WE were the ones that requested the evaluation? Like I said, it was political and devious…

The judge himself wanted to send our son to one of these boys’ homes instead of a correctional facility. During the trial he even requested a phone be brought to his bench so he could talk to the facilities directly and find out why they would not take him. One facility gave a legitimate reason (they didn’t have a proper program at the time) but the one that called the DA gave the reason that our son was too large and intimidating to be with the other boys. (Really??? He was “towering” over me at the time at a full 5’5” And yes, I typed it right, five feet and five inches). Even though they had a bogus reason, it was a reason, and they refused to take him.

This left the judge with no choice but to declare our son guilty of certain things that would require him to be sent to the state juvenile correctional facility and locked up. That guilty verdict manipulated by the county affected him during his two years of incarceration, affected the process of his release, caused him to be on an ankle bracelet for a season, affected the course of his life with decisions forced on him by a parole officer, and there are direct parts of it that still affect him over a decade later.

Not only that, there were some important events in our family that happened during the time of his confinement.

Our oldest daughter got married, and our son was not able to be at his sister’s wedding because of his incarceration. It was a very bittersweet day, and when the photographer called the bride’s family to come up for pictures, our daughter said she didn’t want them because her brother wasn’t there; we all agreed. (He was eventually allowed to watch the video of her wedding with an officer sitting next to him.)

Several months later the same sister was in a literal life-and-death situation with her heart during the pregnancy and birth of her first child. He was not able to be with the family through that time, which was hard on all of us.

While locked up, he excelled in his classes and actually graduated early at 17. But there was no graduation ceremony where we could go and celebrate with him. However, we were given a photograph of him in a cap and gown holding his diploma…um…thanks?

I am so very thankful that during his time of being in the correctional facility, he took responsibility for his actions that placed him there, and he did not allow being in that kind of an environment to corrupt him. When the judge sentenced him, he looked at my son and said, “Son, your strong faith will get you through this.” And it did.

This is a part of our life that we can never get back, all because of a political system overstepping the justice system. (Our county could brag at how tough they are on this kind of crime) and because they didn’t want to have to deal with all the cost and paperwork that would be involved in the following couple of years as he received treatment in a boy’s home. (Being incarcerated meant that he became the state’s finance and paperwork issue. I say that because it was actually brought up by the county prosecution to the judge as another reason for choosing the specific guilty verdict that he ended up being given!)

I think it is easy to see that if I did not choose and force myself to forgive those involved in this huge messing with our lives, that I would be a very angry and bitter woman. And in the natural, I think I have a right to be, don’t you?

Thankfully, I have learned that forgiveness is not based on our rights. It is a choice we make in the face of being wronged!

When it comes to the depth of our painful circumstances, we can find we don’t have what it takes within ourselves to forgive. But God already knows that, and he has made a way for us to be able to forgive in His strength, which is a strength far beyond our own.

You have one of two choices to make. You can keep dwelling on how you were wronged and hurt, giving yourself all the reasons why you have the right to remain bitter and why that person (or system) does not deserve to be forgiven, or you can choose to release that person in your thoughts and tell yourself you choose to forgive, smack dab in the middle of that wrong. And yes, I know it is so easy for me to say, but so very hard to do!

In the next blog, I will share some specific things to help you get to this place of actually doing it.

But in the meantime, if you have someone you need to forgive, and you are ready to take the first step of wanting to make the choice to do so, write in the comment below, “I choose to forgive!” (And I will join you.)