What forgiveness is
• Choosing, not feeling. If you have
been badly hurt, forgiving may be the last thing you feel like doing.
Fortunately, forgiveness has very little to do with feelings and
everything to do with choice.
Forgiveness can be tough – none of
us would deny this – but it’s essential for any marriage to develop,
grow and last. In their new book, The Highway Code for Marriage, Hilary
and Michael Perrott give useful insights and practical suggestions into
how choosing to forgive can make such a difference in a marriage.
A
man told his friend, “Whenever my wife and I have an argument she
becomes historical.” “You mean hysterical,” the friend replied. “No, I
mean historical. She reminds me of everything I ever did!”
Little
everyday injuries are so trivial we hardly notice that we forgive or
are forgiven. He treads on her toe and says, “Oh, sorry!” and she
replies, “That’s all right.” It was not deliberate. It hurt for only a
few seconds. It is never referred to again and they both forget about
it. Unthinkingly, she lets out a sharp word. He feels a momentary prick
of pain, but he realises she is under pressure and makes no comment. He
does not think about it, and after a few days there is no hurt and, in
the end, no memory.
But what happens when there is a really big
hurt? Every time you think about it you smoulder inside. It may have
been a single act or the collective weight of a hundred small
grievances. The anger does not go away. It grows into a long-term
resentment that you have been treated this way. You feel you have been
let down, embarrassed, deceived, betrayed. Your anger may be red-faced
and loud-voiced or it may be as cold and hard as ice. There is a wall of
bitterness between you. How can you forgive? Anyway, what is
forgiveness?
What forgiveness is not
• Condoning. Forgiving them does not mean you approve of what they did.
•
Forgetting. Forgive and forget? If the offence is small, yes, you will
probably forget all about it. But if it is big, you may never forget,
even if you forgive.
• Denying. For some, the pain is too great
to take on board and so they deny that it happened at all, not only to
others but to themselves.
• Pretending. You will not admit to
anyone that you are hurting and you claim everything is fine, but the
fact that you are not shouting or screaming does not mean that you are
not angry.
• Losing. The person who forgives is not necessarily the loser. Forgiving may be winning.
What forgiveness is
•
Choosing, not feeling. If you have been badly hurt, forgiving may be
the last thing you feel like doing. Fortunately, forgiveness has very
little to do with feelings and everything to do with choice. Just as you
choose to talk when you would rather be silent, to be kind when to do
so would be an effort, to be unselfish when the opposite is much more
attractive, so to forgive is more a matter of choosing than feeling.
•
Choosing not to dwell on the hurt. You cannot help the thought coming
into your mind. Bang, it is there. Uninvited and unwelcome. But you are
responsible for what you allow your mind to dwell on. The more you
rehearse the hurtful words or deeds, the more indelible they become in
your mind.
• Choosing not to talk about it. If you talk about
it, you think about it. If you think about it, you feel it. If you feel
it, it will hurt you. Each time you remind your wife how she hurt you,
you hurt her – and yourself.
• Choosing not to retaliate.
Justice may say, “An eye for an eye” – “If you do that to me, I’ll do it
to you.” Forgiveness says, “I could, but I won’t.”
• Choosing
to let it go. Some people find it particularly hard to let go of past
hurt, but in the end it is a choice. One wife wrote, “I used to replay
the video tapes of what he said and did over and over in my mind. Then
one day I let it all go and I was free.”
• Choosing to go on
choosing. One husband, when he forgave his wife for her unfaithfulness,
said, “I felt all the pain go away.” But later he began to replay the
tapes in his mind and all the pain came back again. He unforgave!
Forgiving is not a one-off act, it is an ongoing attitude.
A final note
Forgiveness
is for the forgiver as much as for the forgiven. Refusing to forgive is
like shooting oneself in the foot. Forgiveness brings peace to a
marriage and creates the attitude necessary to make a new beginning. It
allows a couple to move on together.
You have a straight choice:
pain or peace. Hold on to the hurt and it corrodes everything. Replay
it in your mind, over and over, and the pain will grow and perhaps
become hate. Let the hurt go and, though it may take time, the pain will
go. It’s forgive or fester.
A wife and husband who are going to
be best friends and enjoy a really deep companionship will learn that a
good marriage is made up of two people who are not only givers of
themselves but also forgivers of each other.
Adapted from ‘The Highway Code for Marriage’, by Hilary and Michael Perrot, published by CWR.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Highwa...errott/dp/1853453315
http://www.lookingatlife.org.uk/article_172
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