Forgive and Forget?
I’m not sure where this old adage came from. Contrary to popular belief, that phrase is NOT in the Bible. The concept of “forgive and forget” is, but not to the extent that to forgive you must completely erase the wrong from your mind. Instead, I think the best interpretation is that to forgive, you have to forget or overlook the wrong, but not the lessons learned from it. Forgiveness is a completely private affair, our choice to forgive someone doesn’t need to be shared, not even with the person who wronged us. Forgiveness is for our sanity, for us to let go so that we are free to move on.
I have struggled with forgiveness my whole life, that’s a long time to hold grudges. I always secretly hoped that people I felt had wronged me would get their comeuppance. But, I’m a passive aggressive type, not one for actually taking revenge, more the type to sit back and let karma get to work. Since I’ve started forgiving people though, I’ve found that I really don’t care what happens to them. In fact, I hardly think about them at all, and therein lies the freedom and peace that I had so desperately been searching for so long!
Forgiving family takes an extra amount of confidence and empowerment. Families are a complicated thing. Unfortunately, we can’t just cast them aside and move on with our lives without them. They are with us for the long haul. I have recently forgiven family members for various things that have been building up over the past few years. I had been holding in the hurt from every criticism, attitude I’d received and every disagreement I’d been involved in for my whole life. I realized that I was allowing that to control my life. It affected who I was and how I interacted with others. Freeing myself from that has made me a better mother, daughter and sister. It’s allowed me to shake that constant need for their acceptance, and realize that I don’t have to please anyone as long as I am comfortable with what I’m doing.
How did I do this, you ask? Learn to forgive, when it had alluded me for so long? I wish there was an easy fix for it. I’d love to be able to share with you that I read this book or that book, but it’s been a combination of things. I am a Christian and I have to credit that foundation for being the building block for all the other steps. I’ve been going through a period of introspection over the past year or so and I’ve had the idea of forgiveness thrown at me from various angles during that time. I have a few friends that have worked on the movie “A Christmas Snow.” The main theme of that movie is “forgiveness”. The movie has been adapted into a stage production since it’s release and I have seen both numerous times. The idea of forgiveness finally seeped into my brain and got me thinking. Therapy helped too, so it was just a gradual idea of letting go. As I let go and felt that hold release me, it encouraged me to continue forgiving. It really was a conscious decision just to forgive and be done with it all. Along with the release came the unexpected realization that not only had I forgiven these people, but I no longer really thought about them much. Where I had almost been obsessed with things like “what would so and so think?” or ” why can’t this person just accept me for who I am?”, now I really don’t care what they think.
Forgiving people that are not family members has it own challenges. Even though it’s easier to cut the ties and move forward without them, the scars left behind can be difficult to get over. I recently experienced what someone has referred to as an atrocity at the hands of a friend. Dealing with the emotional wounds from the actual act itself were easy to get over. The scars created by losing a friendship were devastating. Believe it or not, I went through all the stages of grief. Fortunately, I already had a therapist on hand and she was able to guide me through those stages and help me put that behind me and move forward. I have forgiven her, I feel partly to blame for some of it. The last things she said to me were things that I had done to hurt her feelings, as unintentional as it had been I can understand that she didn’t think I was a good friend. Some people have different definitions of what a friend is, and I didn’t live up to her expectations. So, I shoulder some of the blame for the friendship failing. That doesn’t excuse what happened, but it does help me understand why she chose not to be friends with me anymore.
I have chosen to forgive her, but I cannot forget. I cannot forget what happens when I am too trusting, when I am so desperate for a friend that I will let my guard down against my better judgment. I cannot forget what happens when I allow someone else to take over, when I sacrifice my own happiness for someone else’s agenda. That’s not to say I will never trust anyone again, nor does it mean I will be even more of a control freak. What it does mean is that while I have forgiven, I have also learned from those past mistakes, learned to treasure the few close friends I have, learned that while I’m not perfect there are a few people out there in this world that love me and I should be happy and thankful for them. I can forgive, but not forget the valuable lessons I’ve learned about myself that show me who I am. I can forgive, but I cannot forget.