Healing Yourself Through Forgiveness
Author: J. Bailey Molineux

A woman who as a child was emotionally abused by her father is filled with hatred for him and herself. Several years after it occurred, a man is still depressed and angry because his ex-wife left him for another man. The parents of a young boy killed by a drunk driver are unable to get over their grief and bitterness.

What all these people have in common is the undeserved emotional pain caused by the actions of another person. What they must do to heal that pain, states Lewis Smedes, author of Forgive and Forget: Healing the Hurts We Don't Deserve (Harper & Row, 1984), is to learn to forgive those who hurt them so deeply.

A theologian by training, Smedes admits that to forgive a great hurt is not an easy thing to do. Forgiveness is a process which occurs in fits and starts and may take years to complete. It is not uncommon for people to fluctuate between hatred and forgiveness during the forgiving process.

Nor is the process of forgiveness completed without anger. One can forgive another and yet still periodically be angry at him.

In saying this, Smedes distinguishes between hate and anger. While anger can be used constructively, hate is always destructive. While anger can energize, hate poisons the hater. While anger can be a positive act of self-affirmation which proclaims, I deserved better treatment than I received from you, hate is eventually self-defeating.

It is the poison of hate which must be removed by what Smedes calls the spiritual surgery of forgiveness. Forgiveness always benefits the forgiver more than the forgiven. It frees the forgiver from the pain of her past and allows her to get on with her life.

At the same time, however, forgiveness is not an act of forgetting or excusing what the forgiven did. It says to him: You were fully responsible for what you did to me and it was wrong. But I am willing to let it go for my sake as well as yours.

Forgiveness occurs in four stages, claims Smedes. The first stage involves the recognition and expression of the deep hurt which the other has caused us. If we do not acknowledge our pain, if we try to avoid it instead, we will not be able to begin the healing process involved in forgiveness.

The second stage involves the recognition of the hate which usually accompanies undeserved pain. Having been deeply hurt by another person, we must acknowledge the natural human tendency to want to strike back in retaliation.

The act of forgiveness which occurs in the third stage is contrary to this natural human tendency. This is why forgiveness can be such a long, difficult process. Understanding that the hurtful behavior of the other person was often caused by his own emotional pain may help us to forgive more easily.

Reconciliation constitutes the final stage of forgiving. Having worked through our hurt and hate, having healed ourselves through forgiveness, we are ready to be reconciled with the forgiven.

With a person who is deceased, however, or one who doesn't care to be forgiven, reconciliation is not always possible.

That's still O.K, claims Smedes. Reconciliation is an ideal anyway. If we've reached the third stage of forgiveness, at least we will have healed ourselves.










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About the Author: J. Bailey Molineux, a psychologist with Adult and Child Counseling, has incorporated many of his articles in a book, Loving Isn't Easy, Isbn 1587410419, sold through bookstores everywhere or available directly from http://selfhelpbooks.com. Copyright 2002, J. Bailey Molineux and http://selfhelpbooks.com, all rights reserved. This article may be reprinted but must include authors copyright and website hyperlinks.

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