Getting to Forgiveness

In my dysfunctional family, forgiveness equals acting like nothing ever happened.  It doesn’t involve apologies or acknowledgements or even healing.   Forgiveness has everything to do with letting it blow over, sweeping it under the rug, and never mentioning it again.  If you aren’t successful in supplying the forgiveness (and the faster the better), well . . . to borrow the words of Abi Sutherland of Making Light, it “becomes a stick to beat [the sufferers] over the head with.  Holding grudges.  Unforgiving.  Hard.  Bitter.  Angry, with the subtext of unjustifiably.”  

I have been beaten with that “unforgiveness stick.”  Wow, it is hard to rush getting over something, especially while protecting yourself from that flailing stick!  I don’t want to linger in a state of resentment any more than anyone else wants me to.  Even so, all I have ever gained from “hurrying up to forgive” is a good case of suppression.  By the way, suppressing feelings and needs doesn’t leave me in a very functional place psychologically; it takes a huge amount of emotional energy to hold back my feelings and needs, and ultimately, it just doesn’t work out very well. 

So how do we get past resentment and get to forgiveness?  Rob Voyle, a psychologist and Episcopal priest experienced in guiding groups through the process of forgiving, says this: Resentment “is a current demand that someone or something in the past should have been different.”  Obviously, such a demand is futile.  The past can’t be changed.  So why do we hold on to these insane demands?    

Voyle explains that when we feel hurt by someone, it is because one of our values has been violated.   It seems to me that muscling our way through forgiveness often ends in our violating that value even more. 

So if our resentment is protecting a value, and the inability to forgive results from resentment, how can we move forward without further violating the value? 

This is the best part!  It’s easy and profoundly effective.  Voyle says we simply have to change our demand that the past should have been different into a preference . . . just a simple alteration in our thinking.  The preference affirms our values while releasing us from the impossible demand. 

Voyle suggests we do this by going through visualization exercises in which we tell our perpetrators our preferences.  Voyle says to be very specific in our requests during these visualization exercises.  (I should add that Voyle guides people through healing exercises that deal with trauma before he takes them through visualization exercises in which they speak to their perpetrator.  Voyle’s process includes significant foundational work to prepare people for this step in the forgiveness process. Here is a link to his website if you want to learn more: http://www.clergyleadership.com/).

So through visualization, we revisit our painful memories, expressing our preferences for how we would have liked to have been treated.

I love this!  I can actually do this!

Here is a very simple example.  Thinking of my mother becoming my cheerleading sponsor against my will and the pain that resulted from that throughout my high school years, I might say to my mother:   “I would have preferred that my boundaries had been honored, and that you would have heard my pleas that you not become my sponsor.  I would have loved it if you would have said, ‘If you would rather me not be your sponsor, I won’t do it!  I just want you to enjoy your experience as a cheerleader.’ I wish that you could have seen me as a separate person and could have seen that cheerleading belonged to me.  I wish you could have seen my cheerleading as my amazing opportunity to spread my wings and experience my teenage years in their fullest.”

One of the beautiful things about this exercise is that when I do it, I don’t feel myself getting wound up by the crazy details of the experiences.  Rather I feel the calm of hearing myself composing some amazingly compassionate and kind responses to myself.   I also hear myself articulating some powerful values.  It seems that in this process, I acknowledge and honor the good that God has planted within me.  It is a life-giving and loving process.

For me, this process moves forgiveness from an exercise in trying to “overlook” to an exercise in trying to “inward look,” with questions such as, “What value is it that I would have loved to have had honored?  What would I have loved to have had happen?”  It seems that rather than pushing forward, I am settling in.  Rather than turning my eyes the other way in order to get away from the pain, I am looking closer and naming the pain.  Even better, I am naming the actions and words that would have felt good and would have respected the values within me.        

I can do this kind of forgiveness!  It is authentic, genuine, rooted, and it honors everyone.

Ahh, but here is the crux!  If you are trying to forgive while existing in a corrupt system that continues to violate your values, that forgiveness is going to be short lived as you continue to suffer and as resentment continues to arise to protect your values.  Here is where it is so important to distinguish between forgiveness and reconciliation.  Voyle says this:

“Forgiveness is purely about how I personally resolve what has happened to me in the past. Reconciliation is an agreement between two people about how they will live and work together in the future. And here is the big rule:

Never be reconciled to someone who does not share your values. 

Jesus forgave the Romans, he forgave the Pharisees, but he was never reconciled to them or their mission.”

Even after reading Voyle’s work over and over for a couple of years, this statement, “Never be reconciled to someone who does not share your values” still leaves me spinning.  Here, I think of the rules of a dysfunctional family.  These very rules that my family lives by violate my value system.  Never be reconciled to someone who does not share your values.   This looks, sounds, smells, and tastes like permission to step away from this crazy-making three-ring circus that is my family of origin.  But then I find myself gasping for air as panic sets in, Is this the end? Is it over with my family? And . . . is this loss or gain?   

I know that for now, I long for peace.  The pain by far outweighs the joy.  But wishing my family well and departing is bittersweet.  Fortunately, Voyle has a step by step process for dealing with grief as well.  Maybe I will tackle that in my next post.