The work of forgiveness 10

Step four in the forgiveness process I am using is a time for rest, for quiet contemplation, for waiting on the Lord.

4. Bring steps 1-3 before the Lord, resting in him to help me forgive and gain insight into the person and situation.

One reason you can rest calmly in this step is that you have worked hard and devoted time in steps 1-3 to consider the person and your expectations of them, list their behaviors that need to be forgiven, and explore why those behaviors require forgiveness. You have been honest about the person and honest with yourself.

Now you can lay all of this before the Lord in trust that he will know what to do with it, and help you to proceed to forgiveness.

I find it helpful to imagine all the things on the lists I have made are gathered together in a kind of satchel or backpack that I can carry to God and leave with him. Sometimes it is good to imagine you are leaving these things before God's throne or his altar. Or you could picture leaving them at the foot of the cross. Use whatever kind of image is helpful to you.

You have done the best you can at considering the issues, and you have now given them to God. What will he do with your concerns, your feelings of hurt, your anger, your sense of being wronged? What will he do with the person who has done the things that have hurt you and possibly others?

You can trust that because of his character, God will be just, righteous, faithful and merciful. This is a good time in which to contemplate God's holiness, his character, his call to us to forgive, what Jesus said about forgiveness, and Jesus' passion and death on the cross. Read portions of scripture on these subjects. Recall hymns on these themes. Spend time in prayer, being open to hearing God's voice.

It is fine to let this step take a while—several days or longer than that if it feels right and necessary. Here is where a lot of healing can happen for you.

It's only 'Shopmas' if you let it

FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT, 2013— I like Christmas. I don't like Shopmas. I had not heard of this term before I read this column in The Washington Post today, but it fits the situation perfectly.

With all due respect to my conservative Christian friends, I don't think it is people saying "Happy Holidays" that constitutes a War on Christmas(TM). Whatever war there was on Christmas was fought and lost back in the late 1800s when the gift-giving and Santa Claus-y stuff started taking control.

This year, I think, a new boundary has been crossed and obliterated. It's the Shopmas incursion on Thanksgiving, one of the last fairly pure holidays we have in this country. This year Shopmas crossed the Thanksgiving midnight barrier and bled well into the day of rest itself. Thanksgiving, not "Black Friday," is now the official start of the Shopmas lunacy.

Who are these people that fall for the Shopmas hype, that go for the doorbuster deals and camp out and stampede, and all that other stuff we see on the news? Why is shopping news anyway?

The commercials are especially insidious this year, whether they are Walmart's endlessly repeated ads or Target's "be a better competitive shopper than everyone else" offerings. The point seems to no longer be giving gifts to those you love, but beating those you love at at the gift-giving competition.

What competition? Are real people actually in competition with each other to see who can have the most perfect season of excess? To be the most clever at shopping? I am not sure I know people like this, but they sure seem to be all over the TV ads.

Some day I would like to see wide swaths of Americans rejecting the Shopmas hype, dialing it back, and living more sanely. Perhaps this is already happening, but it is not getting noticed through all the hype of our retail industrial complex.

For myself, I am focusing on Advent this year. Preparing myself quietly for the coming of hope into to our human mess, once again. I am reading the passages from Isaiah, the Gospels, and yes, the apocalyptic verses that are part of the Advent Lectionary but often get overlooked. Because with the coming of the infant Messiah, one of our tasks is to remember the second coming of Christ and the Day of the Lord he brings with him.

I'll buy some gifts, and decorate my house, and be with my family, yes. But it's only Shopmas season if you let it. I'm not going to let it. A quiet protest, focusing on where my hope lies, is how I plan to spend the next four weeks.

The work of forgiveness 9

In my process, once I  uncovered my expectations of the person I need to forgive, and then listed what behaviors needed to be forgiven, I was surprised to find I needed to add a step before I could continue to forgiveness.

3. What was it about these behaviors that made me angry or hurt?

While I knew the behaviors on my list made me angry, one thing I have learned over the years is that I often do not know why I am angry. Or hurt. Or happy. Or sad. Or any emotion, really. I have to think very honestly about the cause of my emotion before I understand it.

I used to think emotions were these pure things that come upon you very suddenly, and that they were always true and trustworthy. I thought they could be counted on in life to steer you in the right direction.

I was very wrong. I have learned from experience that emotions are easily manipulated and can come upon you so suddenly that sometimes you can't handle them. They are raw things, and they can be very untrustworthy.

So when I am in this process of forgiveness, this step forces me to look at why the person's behavior has made me angry, or hurt, or sad. What has happened because of the behavior? What are the effects? As I contemplate these things, I also check my emotions, to see whether they are self-serving or genuine.

Step 1 helps you understand what you expected from them. Step 2 compiles a list of what they did. Step 3 looks at the damage resulting from the person's actions.

I have been surprised as I go through this process how often I am not angry or hurt because of what happened to me. More often I am upset at what happened to others. So as you go through step 3, do not hesitate to look beyond what was done to you, and include the bigger picture of how others were affected in your consideration.

As with the first two steps in the process, take your time, be thorough and honest, and bathe your thinking in prayer. Ask God to show you what really needs forgiving.

When you are finished with this step, you should have a pretty good idea of what it is you really need to forgive.

The work of forgiveness 8

A look at the second of the items in the process of forgiveness I am using.

2. What specific behaviors by this person violated my expectations?

Early on I realized I couldn't just call a person to mind with only a general sense of what they had done, and then forgive them. Whenever I tried to do it that way, I later would remember some specific incidents and behaviors I hadn't earlier considered, but which were definitely part of the picture. Then I would feel like I really hadn't forgiven them because I had not forgiven them for those specific things.

The result was that I felt as though I had gotten nowhere and that they were still on my "still to be forgiven" pile.

Since general forgiving wasn't going to work for me, I realized that for each person I needed to make a list of specific things that had been done that needed forgiving.

How I compiled my lists

This takes some time; don't rush things. It may take several days or weeks of consideration for you to come up with a good list.

You should find a quiet space to draw up your list.

It helps tremendously to pray before, during and after the list making time. Ask God to show you the real truth of the matter. Ask him to help you be fair. Ask to see things in a new way—the way he wants you to see them. Ask to be shown which things are the most important, and which are more minor.

Stay as concrete as you can and focus on specific actions, incidents and behaviors. If these things seem to be part of a pattern, try to figure out what the pattern is. I found that at the end most of my lists consisted of patterns of behavior, and that individual incidents were just examples of those patterns.

Once you have what you feel is a fairly comprehensive list, allow yourself time to reflect and edit. I find I typically add a couple more things upon reflection, and also modify some of what I already have written down, clarifying, being more fair or more precise, seeing things in a different way, etc.

It is OK to cross things off the list that you realize are not a big deal. It is OK to suddenly realize something new and add it to the list. The point of making the list is to figure out the scope of what needs forgiving.

Once you have a settled list, it is time to move to the third step of the process.

The work of forgiveness 7

Here is a closer look at the first step in the forgiveness process I am using.

1. What do I expect from a person with this kind of relationship to me? (My expectations of a co-worker, for instance, are different from what I expect from family.)

I noticed it was much easier for me to forgive some kinds of people than others. I could not figure out why until it dawned on me that I had different expectations for someone who was, say, a friend, than someone who was, for example, a paid professional.

I realized that if I had few expectations of someone, they were a lot easier to forgive. If I had a lot of expectations, even if I wasn't really aware of them, I found myself struggling to forgive without quite knowing why.

It hit me one day a few weeks ago that I was treating one group of people differently than another. After sitting with this for quite some time, I threw up my hands and said in exasperation, "So-and-So is easy to forgive, because they didn't know any better, but Person XYZ absolutely should have known better."

I had a different, higher standard for Person XYZ than I did for So-and-So. Was that fair? When I looked at my relationship with and expectations of each of the two people, I realized it was. They had done similar things I needed to forgive. But one person was in a position of authority and leadership, while the other was not. I had legitimately different expectations for each person.

That's when I realized that what I expected needed to be a kind of baseline to factor into forgiveness. Knowing my expectations helped me to understand why behavior that didn't live up to them was so troubling to me. It gave me a context and a key to moving forward with forgiveness.

The work of forgiveness 6

I should issue a warning about this forgiveness business.

I have found one of the most important, and healing, things about it is a willingness to be completely honest and to seek God's truth in the matter, wherever it takes you. And that includes being shown that sometimes you are more than the victim. Sometimes you had a part in what happened and need to ask God for forgiveness for your role before you can move on to forgive others.

I suspect this is part of the reason why we put off forgiving. We know, somewhere deep inside, that we were not 100 percent the victim, that some of the fault lies in ourselves. When I have been at least open to this possibility, sometimes I sense things I could have done differently or attitudes I harbored that contributed to what went wrong. Other times I sense no fault on my part. But it is good and pleasing to God to be open and available to the real truth of what happened.

As difficult as it can be, if you did have a part in things, discovering what it was, coming to terms with it, and bringing it before God can be very freeing for yourself, and can help you on your road to forgiving others.

Important note: I want to be clear that I'm not talking here about forgiving emotional or physical abuse, rape, incest or other heinous acts where there was a clear aggressor and a clear victim. For that I believe seeking professional counseling and legal help is essential, and that you should not be searching internally for what you might have done to "lead on" the aggressor or do any other such blaming of yourself. You may actually have been in this situation for years because aggressors in these circumstances often pull that ploy. It is part of their abuse. In your case, getting better may actually mean learning to stop searching for "your part" in what happened. Trained professionals can help.

The work of forgiveness 5

Why did I need a step-by-step process before I could forgive?

I found that once I had gotten a place where I wanted to forgive someone, I was looking at a tangled-up ball of thread. There was what they had done, how I and others had been hurt, the ripple effects and collateral damage that had ensued, residual feelings of fondness I had towards them, how God was in the situation, my anger at the sin itself, and on and on and on.

I simply did not know how to look at this jumble of emotions, anger, judgment and love and just forgive.

I wanted to be fair. I did not want to leave something out. I wanted to bring God into it. I wanted to be honest. I wanted to acknowledge that I and others had been damaged. I wanted to show compassion. I did not want to let the person off the hook by pretending what they did was OK.

Just looking at the tangled ball of thread and trying to forgive the whole thing was not going to get me anywhere. I needed to untangle it. And the only way I knew how to do that was to go step by step, figure out what my expectations had been (one pile of threads), what specific actions had violated them (another pile), and why this had made me so angry (yet another pile). Only then could I move on to resting in God and moving towards forgiveness.