The Grace to Forgive

"To err is human, to forgive, divine."— Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism

Forgiveness may be the hardest thing we are ever asked to do - not because other people deserve it, but because we deserve to be free.

There are names I can still say that tighten something inside me. Faces I can still picture. Conversations I still replay years later, wondering what I should have said differently. We all carry them.

Over the years, I've been hurt by family members, disappointed by friends, and let down professionally by people I believed I had helped. Some wounds were intentional. Others came from people who probably never knew they had inflicted them. Time has healed some of those hurts. Others took something more than time. They required forgiveness.

But perhaps the greatest act of forgiveness isn't directed toward someone else at all. Perhaps it's the forgiveness we owe ourselves.

For years after Matthew, our first son, died at eighteen days old of a heart defect, a question lived quietly in the back of my mind. Did Peggy and I do something wrong? Was there something we missed? Something we should have seen? Grief has a way of turning love into guilt. Parents are experts at finding ways to blame themselves, even when there is nothing to blame.

Years later, when both of us were diagnosed with cancer within months of each other, another familiar voice returned. Maybe we caused this somehow. Maybe we didn't eat well enough. Exercise enough. Notice something soon enough. Guilt has an astonishing ability

to survive facts.

No human being is perfect. We all make mistakes. Whether one approaches life through faith or not, it is difficult to ignore that one of Jesus' central teachings was forgiveness. There is wisdom in that. Without forgiveness, we remain chained to the very people or moments that wounded us. Hatred has a way of becoming its own prison.

People often say, "Forgive, but don't forget." I understand the wisdom in that. There are wounds so deep that forgetting isn't possible and perhaps shouldn't be. Forgiveness doesn't require pretending something never happened. It simply means refusing to let that hurt continue to define us.

Listen, I am not perfect. None of us are. And yes, there are things that I have maybe forgiven but not forgotten. But even that little, tiny piece of grace I have given to the offender and myself has made a difference. Even when the offender is me.

Forgiveness does not change the past. It does not erase loss or undo betrayal. It simply loosens the grip the past has on the present. Perhaps that is why grace feels so miraculous. It gives us permission to stop carrying what was never ours to carry forever.

Sooner or later, the person most in need of your forgiveness may be the one looking back at you in the mirror.