To Forgive
Turning a bad experience into a positive lesson can be forgiveness
My dad‘s mother Anita had a difficult time with forgiveness. It’s possible she couldn’t forgive. She even punished her Catholic saint’s statues if they didn’t answer her prayers in her way. She possibly resented and could not forgive her husband’s family. And if it is true that my grandmother escaped the Mexican Catholic Purge, she could never forgive that. Her anger explained the early negative attitude that my dad had about Mexico.
My mom also would not forgive. Many times over the years she criticized me for not holding a grudge. She could not forgive the Bañales family for turning their backs on her, her siblings, and her mother. Recently hearing details about her father’s death, I can see the family‘s reaction. And I could see how my mom was in denial about the story, and that made forgiveness a tangled mess.
@ ancestors. Details of that story on page
My mom and grandmother knew how to hold a grudge. They knew how to hold on to hurts, slights, and words. They could not allow old wounds to heal.
I’ve seen when a person defines themselves by their pain, it seems that they have the need to pass that pain along.
Just an interesting observation… my dad‘s mother couldn’t forgive, and my dad‘s wife couldn’t forgive. We live in our own patterns.
@ My dad also had a problem with forgiving his father. He felt abandoned. He actually was abandoned, and the many issues and the circumstances were complicated.
Details of that story on page ). 2places?
Once someone described forgiveness to me. It is a useful way of thinking about it, or at least it has been useful for me.
First, you don’t hold the person who offended you as being responsible for what they did. Not keeping them responsible for what they did to you.
The easiest way to forgive this way is describing that person as a jerk, immoral, or a narcissist, or a coward. If they were any of those things, maybe they really didn’t have much choice in offending you.
Second, you no longer hold the offending person as being responsible for how you yourself feel.
That one can be more difficult for me. Yes, it is all truly more about my reaction than their offense. It seems to me if someone said or did something that offended me, writing them off as being a jerk is easy enough. Why give that power to a jerk? Forgiven.
@ My grandmother's anger was beyond my understanding until writing this volume. The death of probably most of her family and her home town in 1932 had an effect on her. The effect of her country turning on her religion must have been painful.
Details of her story on page )
Being dependent on my grandfather’s family must have been hard. She was never more unpleasant to me than anyone else. Maybe she was even a bit nicer to me. But this new perspective did help me soften my memory of her.
While my mom acted tough, she was actually very fragile. All of those miscarriages had an effect on her. Finding out about my serious illness, only a couple years after the death of her nephew Carlitos, had an effect. Also, that I was similar to her brother, Tony, and not a compliant child, pushed buttons. Looking forward to me being blind by the age of 30, has to have been tough. I know she coped with her feelings by emotionally distancing herself from me.
Realizing these situations helped me understand a little why she was the way she was. Why she did what she did.
But she was cruel to me, and said cruel things to me. She deliberately tried to make me feel bad, and she succeeded. It is difficult for me to say she was not responsible for how I feel.
A few of my cousins would begin any conversation with me by asking, What was the latest mean thing she said?
I guess the big question is, How can you hold someone not responsible for how they made you feel, when they deliberately tried to hurt you?
I guess my big question is, How do I hold someone not responsible for how they made me feel, when they deliberately hurt me?
To forgive is to set a prisoner free and
discover that the prisoner was you.
Lewis B. Smedes