There is an unforgivable sin in my books. It's harming one of my babies. My mother bear instincts want anyone who even comes close to that to suffer the consequences. You hurt one of my babies, and you will regret it, so says Mama Bear. But what happens when one of my babies is the transgressor? When NOT forgiving is NOT a choice? This was the sad reality I found myself in this week.
My oldest impulsively but intentionally threw a toy at her youngest sister that caused a nasty forehead gash. Apparently, forehead wounds bleed like you wouldn't think possible because within a minute or 2, my youngest child was covered from head to toe in her own blood. This is a sight no mother wants to see. After an ER trip, my youngest was all patched up and back to her playful self, but I remain a bit traumatized, and honestly, I feel a disconnect with my oldest now as a result. How could she hurt my baby like that!? I know the answer. She's a young child herself. She's not in control of her own impulses yet. Heck, I could start talking about frontal lobe development if I really wanted to get in the nitty gritty of the why, but this Mama Bear is still reeling. And just like my oldest had the impulse to lash out and make her sister pay, I have the impulse to lash out or at least check out of relationship with this transgressor. But, I can't. I love her, and I have to forgive her, not someday down the road, but immediately. She needs to know her mama loves her no matter what she does. And so, I forgive. I forgive the same day. I forgive as I move toward her to talk, before she has even said she's sorry. Not only do I forgive, but I know I have to now go out of my way to make sure I'm showing love to her because it's not coming so naturally right now. I feel a bit distanced now, honestly, from her, but she needs love, so I give it. And in that giving of love even when I don't feel like it, I start to get hints of those warm fuzzy places of connectedness coming back.
Forgiveness, as a concept, has some mistaken notions in our culture. Some people think that to forgive you have to forget. That's nonsense. Amnesia is not required for forgiveness to take place. I doubt I will ever forget seeing my child covered in blood. Some people think that forgiveness takes time...sort of like healing takes time, that somehow the 2 of them are intricately connected and that you have to heal before you can forgive or they happen concurrently. Well, forgiveness and healing do seem to be intricately connected, but in my experience, the forgiveness doesn't follow the healing. The healing starts when I choose to forgive. Finally, some people think that forgiveness requires an immediate dropping of all associated hurts and a putting on of some mysterious warm, fuzzy forgiveness feeling before you can legitimately claim to forgive. I don't think I have ever, as an adult, felt warm fuzzy feelings for someone after they hurt me and BEFORE I forgave them. Forgiveness is always a choice for me, and the choice can be harder when the hurt is stronger. The hurt is usually stronger the closer that person is to me.
If I can be hurt the most by the person that is closest to me, then forgiveness would seem to be the biggest issue with my spouse. And at first glance, that seems quite accurate. I have had deep wounds in my relationship with my husband. I have felt hurt, betrayed, neglected, attacked, ignored, and more. This isn't because my husband is a terrible spouse. It's because we're both human, and while some of the hurts took only minutes to heal, others took days, weeks, months, or even years. Forgiveness didn't start when the healing was completed though. The healing started when the forgiveness was started. The forgiveness didn't take time. It took a decision. I chose to move forward instead of checking out, instead of staying put and wallowing, instead of going backwards to continue to throw his mistakes in his face. I made a choice to accept the apology and move forward even when I still felt agony over the consequences of his mistake. Our marriage has not only survived but been strengthened as we've both learned to extend forgiveness, mercy, and grace to each other. However, I'm not sure my spouse is the person I've had the hardest time forgiving. I think my deepest disappointments have come from myself.
I find it harder to forgive myself than anyone else. Within the same day, I can often choose to forgive someone else for even deep hurts. However, I don't seem ready to extend grace quite so quickly to myself. I don't feel that I'm allowed to let myself off the hook that easily. I don't deserve forgiveness. I should have known better. I did know better. In these moments, do you know who I identify the most with? Paul. Not my brother-in-law Paul, but the apostle Paul. In these moments, I have opened up Romans 7 and wept with understanding.
My oldest impulsively but intentionally threw a toy at her youngest sister that caused a nasty forehead gash. Apparently, forehead wounds bleed like you wouldn't think possible because within a minute or 2, my youngest child was covered from head to toe in her own blood. This is a sight no mother wants to see. After an ER trip, my youngest was all patched up and back to her playful self, but I remain a bit traumatized, and honestly, I feel a disconnect with my oldest now as a result. How could she hurt my baby like that!? I know the answer. She's a young child herself. She's not in control of her own impulses yet. Heck, I could start talking about frontal lobe development if I really wanted to get in the nitty gritty of the why, but this Mama Bear is still reeling. And just like my oldest had the impulse to lash out and make her sister pay, I have the impulse to lash out or at least check out of relationship with this transgressor. But, I can't. I love her, and I have to forgive her, not someday down the road, but immediately. She needs to know her mama loves her no matter what she does. And so, I forgive. I forgive the same day. I forgive as I move toward her to talk, before she has even said she's sorry. Not only do I forgive, but I know I have to now go out of my way to make sure I'm showing love to her because it's not coming so naturally right now. I feel a bit distanced now, honestly, from her, but she needs love, so I give it. And in that giving of love even when I don't feel like it, I start to get hints of those warm fuzzy places of connectedness coming back.
Forgiveness, as a concept, has some mistaken notions in our culture. Some people think that to forgive you have to forget. That's nonsense. Amnesia is not required for forgiveness to take place. I doubt I will ever forget seeing my child covered in blood. Some people think that forgiveness takes time...sort of like healing takes time, that somehow the 2 of them are intricately connected and that you have to heal before you can forgive or they happen concurrently. Well, forgiveness and healing do seem to be intricately connected, but in my experience, the forgiveness doesn't follow the healing. The healing starts when I choose to forgive. Finally, some people think that forgiveness requires an immediate dropping of all associated hurts and a putting on of some mysterious warm, fuzzy forgiveness feeling before you can legitimately claim to forgive. I don't think I have ever, as an adult, felt warm fuzzy feelings for someone after they hurt me and BEFORE I forgave them. Forgiveness is always a choice for me, and the choice can be harder when the hurt is stronger. The hurt is usually stronger the closer that person is to me.
If I can be hurt the most by the person that is closest to me, then forgiveness would seem to be the biggest issue with my spouse. And at first glance, that seems quite accurate. I have had deep wounds in my relationship with my husband. I have felt hurt, betrayed, neglected, attacked, ignored, and more. This isn't because my husband is a terrible spouse. It's because we're both human, and while some of the hurts took only minutes to heal, others took days, weeks, months, or even years. Forgiveness didn't start when the healing was completed though. The healing started when the forgiveness was started. The forgiveness didn't take time. It took a decision. I chose to move forward instead of checking out, instead of staying put and wallowing, instead of going backwards to continue to throw his mistakes in his face. I made a choice to accept the apology and move forward even when I still felt agony over the consequences of his mistake. Our marriage has not only survived but been strengthened as we've both learned to extend forgiveness, mercy, and grace to each other. However, I'm not sure my spouse is the person I've had the hardest time forgiving. I think my deepest disappointments have come from myself.
I find it harder to forgive myself than anyone else. Within the same day, I can often choose to forgive someone else for even deep hurts. However, I don't seem ready to extend grace quite so quickly to myself. I don't feel that I'm allowed to let myself off the hook that easily. I don't deserve forgiveness. I should have known better. I did know better. In these moments, do you know who I identify the most with? Paul. Not my brother-in-law Paul, but the apostle Paul. In these moments, I have opened up Romans 7 and wept with understanding.
"I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do... For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?" (Romans 7:15, 19-24)
This is how I feel in these moments when I have done exactly what I hated to do. I feel wretched. I feel desperate to be free of myself. I feel desperate to not have to deal with myself anymore, to be instead free from myself, free from my own life because it feels worse than death to me.
I left out an important cultural misconception earlier in this post. Some people believe that there is a specific group of people and/or mistakes that do not deserve to be forgiven. I think they're wrong. I think NONE of us deserve to be forgiven. I wasn't lying when I said that harming one of my babies feels like an unforgivable sin to me. It's just that the reality is that we've all made "unforgivable" mistakes, whether intentional or accidental. We're all ultimately wretches.
Here's the crazy part though...here's the unfathomable truth. Paul leads straight from this into one of the most hopeful, glorious, victorious, and bountiful descriptions of life. How does he get from despair and wretchedness to hope and victory? By answering the question that he ended with. There's an actual answer to that question. There's an answer to that despair. There's an answer to that wretchedness, and it's Jesus Christ. Romans 7:25 starts with "Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!" We need freedom from our own wretched selves! And God, in His unfathomable grace and love, has offered us that freedom through Jesus.
Romans 8 begins with this: "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death." I cannot tell you how many times I have needed to cling to these verses, not because God was condemning me, not just when I've felt condemned by others, but primarily when I have felt condemned by my own self...when I haven't know how to forgive myself. When I have done the unforgivable.
To find freedom, I have to recognize that forgiveness is available through my relationship with Jesus. God has already chosen to forgive me, and I can choose to walk forward in that even when I don't have the warm fuzzies for myself, even when I know I will never forget what I've done, even when I'm still feeling the ripple effects of my actions. I can choose to walk forward with Him. It's the only way my life of death can be transformed to true life and freedom. I don't forgive someone because he or she deserves it. I forgive because I was forgiven when I didn't deserve it.
Do you need forgiveness in your life? Are you in a place where your feelings can only lead you to checking out completely, or staying stuck in despair, or fruitlessly re-hashing past mistakes in anger or hurt? I want you to know that God offers another choice: Forgiveness. Freedom. NEW life. Unmerited grace. Unconditional and boundless love. All given freely through Jesus.
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
wandering from the fold of God;
he, to rescue me from danger,
interposed his precious blood.
O to grace how great a debtor
daily I'm constrained to be!
Let thy goodness, like a fetter,
bind my wandering heart to thee.
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