Forgiving

So this book...

Let me back up to the day before I started reading it.

There was a restlessness in my heart. The past two years have been growing years for me. In that, I have really become more aware of who I am. By that, I mean what I like, things I enjoy. I've found my personality. Those things in me that could only be found when the past was stripped away and I could begin to find my identity.

Along this journey of healing, I had forgiven everyone except my parents. There were a lot, well into the 100s of people. Most of them were unceremoniously forgiven through time and maturity. Others came after big aha moments. Regardless, there were two left.

I had vowed to hate them until they died and then I'd think about forgiving. I had rationalized that God knew and wasn't shocked by my unwillingness.

So here I was a few days ago. Feeling that restlessness. It didn't take much prayer or searching my heart to know exactly what it was. It was my parents.

Let me start by saying that I am in no way advocating a relationship with them. EVER!

I knew it would take a lot of prayer, but I knew I was ready. I was ready to let go of that anger that bound me to them. That anger that still allowed them to indirectly exert control over me.

I made a commitment to pray about it as long as it took. I didn't share this with anyone. Really, I didn't have it in me. My first attempt was a failure. I couldn't bring myself to even ask the Lord to soften my heart. I had to back up. My prayer those first few days were merely asking for the want to. Even though I knew I needed to, I didn't have the desire.

It really is ok that I didn't have the desire. Forgiving the biggest atrocities ever committed against you at the hands of the people who were supposed to love and protect you, I'm convinced is something nobody just wants to do. It has to be super natural.

So the days went by and I continued to pray and read this book.

Again, I'm sitting here in a little disbelief that this book was recommended by coincidence right now.

As I came to the end of the book, it was clear that unforgiveness ravaged the mind of this former POW. I think that's an easy thing when you've been brutalized.

This paragraph spoke mountains of truth straight to my heart:

The paradox of vengefulness is that it makes men dependent upon those who have harmed them, believing that their release from pain will come only when they make their tormentors suffer.

Read that again.

Nobody, and I mean nobody, who has suffered trauma ever wants to be bound to the perpetrator. Just the opposite. They desperately want that tie severed. In holding onto the idea of vengeance and not forgiving, we are stuck.

Another excerpt from the book adequately describes exactly how it is to feel that hatred so deeply:
 In prison camp, he’d been beaten into dehumanized obedience to a world order in which the Bird was absolute sovereign, and it was under this world order that he still lived. The Bird had taken his dignity and left him feeling humiliated, ashamed, and powerless, and Louie believed that only the Bird could restore him, by suffering and dying in the grip of his hands.

Page after page, I found myself wanting to release the anger that has had a firm grip on my heart. How can I truly be free to move on with life or know my true self if that anger still owned a wedge of my heart?

Simply put, I cannot.

The subject of the book eventually forgave his captors. It took a process. A process of downward spiral and becoming a Christian. The Lord did a work in his heart that allowed him to let go of the anger and forgive.

I spent a great deal of time slowly reading and rereading the graphic details of everything this man went through. I didn't know why at the time. I'm usually a once through reader and then moving into the next book. Not this time. I took it in. I spent hours reading through details that would normally have triggered my own flashbacks.

As I read, it was clear that this wasn't so that I could do some comparative reasoning. It wasn't so that I could sit here at the end of the book and deduce that if he could survive all that and forgive then I should be able to forgive. No. I am convinced that it was so I could see the work of God throughout the story.

The Lord allowed free will in the lives of my parents. However, He never allowed them to kill me. It was His plan for me to survive.

In the book, Louie Zamperini says that if he knew he'd have to relive it all again, he'd choose to die. I definitely feel that way, but that wasn't my story.

When I think about my life, the one thing I want the most is to be free from the past. I believe I'm there.

It's one of those gifts. Those gifts God gives because He loves us so.

As I finished the book, tear stained cheeks, I sat in prayer. Praising God that the unforgiveness that held my heart captive was gone.

Nothing earth shattering happened, my anger and hatred were just gone. It's not likely that my parents will ever know. This wasn't for them, it was for me.

Forgiving doesn't delete the past. It doesn't minimize what God has done. It doesn't negate what I've survived. But it does untether me from my parents. It allows me to finally be free. It allows me to live more obediently and more fully enveloped by the love of God.