It's interesting how you can find valuable insight from unexpected sources. I was listening to a home improvement show this morning (available by podcast or live radio). The host is Dean Sharp, who refers to himself as "The House Whisperer". He has a tendency to add a few pearly words of "wisdom for life", within his shows that focus on home design and improvement/maintenance.
At the end of his show this morning, he shared some wisdom about
"forgiveness". He didn't share a back story, about who he forgave - he just shared. Thought I'd pass it forward. I liked the way he described "forgiveness"
PS: Forgiving someone doesn't necessarily mean that you tell them that you forgive them. It, also, doesn't mean that you resume contact with that person.
When someone wounds us it only seems fitting and just that they be responsible to heal those wounds. You know, whoever made the mess should clean it up. And in a perfect world I suppose it would happen. Then again, in a perfect world no one would’ve wounded you in the first place. So much for perfect worlds.
Wounds happen, and those who cause them are often not present or ever willing to make them right. So what are we to do? What fills the holes left in us by imperfect people in this imperfect world? Will it be finding justice? Taking vengeance? An eye for an eye, and all that? Honestly, I’m not always sure. I wish I could tell you I was wise enough to know, but finding the solution to so many of this world’s wounds is usually well beyond my grasp.
But I can tell you something about healing my own wounds. The key for me has been an awkward, uncomfortable, and unnatural thing called forgiveness. And even though it has been preached at me my whole life, I’ll confess, it never soaked in until I realized forgiveness isn’t so much a choice to let someone off the hook as it is a choice to take responsibility for my own healing.
We misunderstand forgiveness, you know. I certainly did, for a long time. I thought it was about mending connections between people. Sometimes it does, but only sometimes. No, the real power of forgiveness is not to mend but rather to sever. To irrevocably and permanently sever one very important connection …
For those who’ve wounded us, forgiveness fires them from the job of making us whole.
And it is the cutting of that connection that makes all the difference. For, as long as it’s the job of those who’ve wounded us to heal us, they continue to have all the power and we continue to play the victim.
Just like receiving a cut in our flesh, the real danger is usually not the cut itself but the infection that follows. And after our soul has been wounded, hurt turns to anger, anger to bitterness, and bitterness infects us day by day by day as we wait and wait and wait for someone else to do something to make it right. That’s the infection that kills, and that’s why forgiveness cleanses a wound.
So then, despite the way it benefits others, forgiveness is the great gift we give ourselves. Forgiveness frees the one who offers it. Frees us from waiting for someone else to make it right. Frees us to take responsibility and get on with living. Frees us to begin to heal without needing anyone else’s permission. Which means, forgiveness restores your power. Never power over others, but over your own life.
So maybe you’ve been wounded. And maybe you think you’re holding a grudge. You’re not. The grudge is holding you. If so, maybe it’s time to fire the one who hurt you and hire yourself instead.
Consider the severing power of forgiveness … to cleanse you from infection, restore your own power, and free you to get back to building yourself a beautiful life.
