A Story of Love and Forgiveness
Many years ago, while I was experiencing the pain of being betrayed by someone I loved, I turned to Bill, one of my mentors who had gone through the same thing earlier in his life. He told me, "When trust in a loved one is violated it causes the most devastating pain in existence. First, you go through shock. You fell so violated. Then you just hurt. I felt like someone stuck a knife in me and ripped my entire insides out."
I asked him how he recovered from such a loss. His answer was, "It takes a long time. But we have to learn to deal with it, and we have to learn to move on. If we don't, we let it destroy us, I had the support of some great friends, talked to my pastor several times, read two powerful books, and saw a professional counselor for about three months. All of it was helpful."
He said the hardest part was learning to forgive. Both his pastor and his counselor told him it was the only way he'd be able to heal. His first reaction to both of them was, "No way! I'll never forgive her for what she did. But he more I was counseled, the more I read, and the more I thought about it, forgiveness made more and more sense. I learned that forgiveness is letting go of the pain, not letting it cripple you, and not giving the person who hurt you the power to continue to hurt you. It was sound advice spiritually, and it was sound ad vice psychologically. I felt like a huge load had been lifted from me when I finally learned how to forgive. Then I moved on with my life."
Bill added, "I hope you'll remember what I said about the power and freedom of forgiveness." Then he reached in his wallet and pulled out a small piece of paper that had been laminated with a thin plastic cover. On one side was the quotation by Lydia Maria Child at the beginning of this chapter. His counselor had given it to him, and he knew he needed to look at it often, so he carried it with him everywhere he went. On the other side was a verse from Scripture that his pastor had given him. It said, "For if you forgive other people their failures, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you" - Matthew 6:14.
Learning to forgive was even harder than I thought it would be. I remembered Bill saying, "First, you go through shock. You feel so violated. Then you just hurt." I did, indeed, hurt for a long time. And there were times, like my mentor, when I thought learning to forgive was impossible. It was, without question, the hardest life lesson I ever learned. But it was also one of the most valuable. It helped me put the pain behind and get on with my life.
The practice of forgiveness is our most important contribution to the healing of the world.
Marianne Williamson
It means being humble, developing empathy, showing compassion, having patience, giving of yourself, and forgiving those who have hurt you.
Eventually you will come to understand that love heals everything, and love is all there is.
Gary Zukav
Hal Urban
cripple:
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