Forgive your mother....that is just the way she is, you have to love her.
Ugh! I couldn't do that. It seemed all wrong. Scriptures were thrown at me like well aimed darts that hurt. I was confused by an incongruity of a loving Heavenly Father expecting me to suffer abuse. I went with the gut feeling that what I was taught was missing key elements.
After my studies this is my perspective, imagine that someone gave you a ball with pins sticking out of it. They told you that you had to hold that ball close to your heart, but you kept getting poked. Finally, you recognize that the ball is painful and you put it down. Being given that ball of pain is now in the past. I could choose to hate and hold on to the hurt for the person that gave it to me. Why would I want to give the person that gave me the pain the satisfaction of that much thought and feeling? It takes energy and work to hang on to hate and hurt. To me forgiving is deciding that it hurt, I set it aside, and I am free to go on with my life healing and repairing the damage but no longer feeling a need to hurl pin balls back at them or anyone else. I stop playing the "I'm hurt so I hurt you back" game.
Now, imagine the person giving you that ball of pins is a parent. You set the ball down, they pick it up and hand it back to you telling you that you are only their child if you hold this ball of hurt. This is no longer about the past. This is about aggressive hurtful behavior now. The parent doesn't want you to drop their ball of pain because it is more comfortable for them for the child to hold it. However, now the child is an adult. Adult children of abuse can continue to hold the pain or let it go. To me, letting it go is forgiveness. Protecting myself from further pain is my responsibility. If my relationship with anyone, depends on me holding on to their pain, it is time to end that relationship for my safety. Forgiving does not mean I embrace them or their ideas. It means I recognize what they did was hurtful to me. I set it aside, out of my life. I don't spend any more energy or time trying to get them to take the hurt back nor change them. Their pain is their problem not mine.
My mother did many hurtful things to me growing up. It is now in my past. I recognize what she did to me is not acceptable. She demonstrated repeatedly she has no intention of changing. I forgave her for what she did. Her actions no longer have power to hurt me. I stepped away from the relationship. I am never alone with her where she would have opportunity to hurt me again. I am fortunate that she prefers to hurt me when no one else is around. It is a clear cut criteria to keep myself safe. Other people I met are not so easy to read. If a hurtful person is in my life, I decide how close I wish to be. Not associating with them is not about lack of forgiveness of things in the past. Not associating with hurtful people is about protecting myself in the present.
Forgiving for me is a slow process of healing from the inside out. Protecting myself from more hurt speeds the process. I set boundaries designed to protect me from others that hurt me. I am thankful to NewCounselor teaching me the visual of gates and fences on a farm of how far you let a person into your space. If they are marauding cattle rustlers, I keep them clear off my property. I am not being unforgiving, I am protecting myself from current harm. I now have an arsenal of scriptures that teach me the importance of protecting a city and that city is me. I also met other bloggers that step away from people that hurt them. Being a family member does not give them the right to inflict pain. I became one of Kiki's Grizzlies. No Grizzly bears are allowed in my life. Look on the side bar down the page and you will find the link to no more grizzly bears. I am finding and embracing the peace found in forgiveness and protecting myself.
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| Don't need to hug a cholla to be forgiving. |
6 comments:
Beautifully put Ruth. When we carry hate, hurt and anger around with us it’s like drinking poison and expecting the abuser to suffer.
Forgiving is for ourselves. They couldn’t care less. If they thought anything of us, they wouldn’t have hurt us in the first place.
Molly xx
Thanks Molly.
I like your concept of letting go of the pain. That is what I do, too. I know my abusers are sick, broken, crazy, maybe spiritually opressed/pssessed. I assume that they are probably doing the best they can with the mess that is them, and I leave the judging up to God, because I believe that only God can truly know what is in a person's heart, as to whether they are aware and culpable and choosing to be evil, or whether they may be deluded or in some way too crazy to really know that what they are doing is evil. Maybe they are "not guilty by reason of insanity?" Thank heavens it's not my job to figure that out.
The respectful difference I have with what you are saying is really just one of semantics. I personally do not like to call my way of thinking and feeling about abusers, "forgiveness." When a person sincerely repents, then I gladly and fully forgive them. But in the absence of genuine repentence, I call it "letting go, letting God, and moving on with my life."
The reason I have a need to split hairs over the semantics of the forgiveness issue is because my abusive father was a fundamentalist minister, and my abusive mother is a holier-than-thou Bible-basher. Meaning she bashes people over the head with the Bible, using hellfire and brimstone scriptures taken all out of context.
She has sent me letters in the past that began with "Dear Charity," then went straight into handcopied Bible verses, page after page after page of nothing but Bible verses, literally dozens of pages of nothing but Bible verses, and finally signed, "Love, Mother."
Last year she sent me her longest letter to date, this time instead of Bible verses it was 62 handwritten pages of twisted half-truths, one-sided out of context misunderstandings, the making of mountain ranges out of ant hills, never giving me the benefit of the doubt for anything, outright blatant evil lies about me, and assigning the worst possible motives to everything I have ever done, even my most selfless and caring deeds, because of course she can read my mind... she also sent copies of that insanely long verbally abusive letter to her sister/my aunt, and to my siblings. My younger brother told me that he asked our mother why she had written that letter, and he said she told him this: "I wrote down everything that I know of thast Charity has ever done wrong in her entire life, and then at the end of it I told her that Jesus will forgive her of all these things if only she will repent."
The miracle is that, no thanks to my wolf-in-sheep's clothing parents, I am indeed a Christian believer. I have JOYFULLY told my mother this, in years past. But she cannot believe it, apparently because she HAS to continue hating and blaming me. I am her eldest and her #1 scapegoat, and my rabidly religious mother can only hate me if she assumes that I am a fake Christian.
So I let go, and I let God be her judge. Only God knows her heart and mind and knows if she is sane and culpable or not. But I do not call my attitude toward my mother forgiveness, because I have been beaten over the head with my "Christian obligation to forgive" so many times in my 59 years on this planet, that it makes me want to SCREAM, when it comes to nonstop abusers like my momster.
If a person sincerely repents, I joyfully and fully forgive. But in the absence of any repentence, and particularly when that perosn continues to be abusive, to keep from being eaten up from the inside out with pain and anger I let go, I let God, and I go on with my life without that person taking up (much) space in my head.
Charity
Thank you for writing Charity. Your example is what I mean when scriptures are used as darts to harm. Let go, Let God is powerful.
Ruth, my husband and I really enjoyed your post, particularly the 'pin-studded ball' analogy.
You have blessed me SO MUCH with this view - I suddenly 'saw' the difference between hurt in the past and hurt in the present with the pokey ball example. I get it - I'm not 'holding a grudge' as my NParents say! I'm still getting hurt! And I had no way to explain that until I read this post on pin-studded balls. :-)
I'm quite glad I didn't have scriptures chucked at me the way you and Charity did! Yuck.
Quercus, I am glad what I wrote helped. Moving forward and letting God takes practice and does get better.
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