The Art of Forgiving in 5 Easy Steps
Embracing Forgiveness Over Resentment
I’m sure most of you have forgiven at least one person in your life. It is nearly impossible to get through life without hurting a few people or being hurt by someone else. For those of you who haven’t had to go through the process of forgiving someone yet or if you are still working on your forgiveness chapter, then this post is for you. I like to think that I was lucky to have made it to adulthood, specifically the ripe age of 22, before I was ever truly wronged by another person. In the following years, I have had to learn the truth of what forgiveness actually is.
I would say that forgiveness is one of the biggest life lessons I’ve had to learn in my 20s. So this post will cover the meaning of forgiveness, its importance, ways to achieve it, and what happens afterwards. We’ll start by diving into what it means to forgive someone.
What does it mean?
As a Christian, I’d heard the word spoken many times throughout my life. From saying the Lord’s prayer everyday in school to hearing Sunday sermons and even my own parents reminding me to forgive my siblings for breaking my toys. I thought I knew exactly what forgiveness was. That was until I became an adult and had various people enter my life who would eventually end up hurting me in many ways. It was then that I realized I had never had to really practice forgiveness or discover its meaning. I figure there are plenty of others out there who are/have been in the same situation, so I wanted to define the meaning of this complex action.
“Forgiving
Def: The act of ceasing resentment and hating someone. Relieving someone of their duty to pay you for their wrongdoings.
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When someone commits a wrongdoing against someone else, naturally the wrongdoer owes that person. Forgiveness is literally saying a person no longer owes you for their transgressions and you will hold no hard feelings against them.
When I found out that's what forgiveness involved, I thought to myself, there is no way I’m going to be able to do that. The thought of letting that ex-friend off the hook for their mean and hurtful words or letting the guy who broke my heart get away with no repercussions, made me feel even more angry. It is often so hard to let go of the hurt and try to move on from what someone else did. I’m sure most of you know the feeling, but I am here to assure you that it’s possible and not as hard as you think.
The Importance of Forgiveness
There are several vital reasons why we should practice forgiveness and make it a primary value.
For one, it is important to remember that forgiveness isn’t just about the person who hurt you, it’s also about YOU. So start by asking yourself, what will forgiving this person do for me?
2. Secondly, when we are hurt, our peace is taken away and replaced by feelings of anger or sadness. Living a life without peace is certainly no way to live. It is important to try to forgive so that we can one day find our peace again.
LET IT GO!
After two years of hating someone, I realized I was so mentally and physically exhausted that I couldn’t go on living like that any longer. It’s totally within our control to put ourselves at peace again. They may have stolen our peace, but we are in complete control of taking it back.
3. Wasted time is another important reason to forgive someone. In the moment, we don’t realize how much time and space anger can take up, and you don’t want years of your life to go by before realizing it. Practicing to forgive will save you a lot of time in the long run. Someone once told me they knew several people who weren’t able to forgive and let DECADES go by before realizing they should have. It’s almost like letting the person win by wasting years of your life stuck in that holding pattern of waiting for them to make things right. In the words of Elsa of Arendelle, “Let It Go!”
4. As I mentioned before, the physical exhaustion of holding on to anger and hatred can literally take a toll on your body. Those heightened emotions can negatively impact the nervous system, endocrine system, and immune system. This can lead to serious and long term health problems. I just did a discussion post for school on how a damaged nervous system can be so detrimental to our lives. It’s one of those things that you may never recover from, if you don’t take care of it. I have had to come to terms with the fact that the trauma someone else caused and the years of hatred I held afterwards were most likely the cause of the many health issues I deal with today. That was a hard pill to swallow, and yet I still had to learn to forgive them and myself. Your body will certainly thank you for letting things go as soon as you can.
5. Freedom is probably the best part about forgiving someone. You will no longer be held down by the weight of your anger and the longing for them to make things right. You will free yourself from that baggage and be able to live your life without those things on your mind.
Now that we have an understanding of forgiveness and a few reasons why it is important to practice forgiveness, we can discuss a strategy for forgiveness. I am certainly no expert on how each individual should forgive someone, but I’ll share what helped me. However, I think it is also necessary to point out that it is important for you to be mentally ready to forgive. No one can make you ready for that. It has to be a personal decision to accept every hard truth and responsibility that comes with forgiveness.
How to Forgive
I don’t think there’s a right or wrong way to forgive someone, as long as the outcome is the same. There could be a hundred different ways to the path to forgiveness. I will tell you how my own journey with learning to forgive led me to the answer.
I found myself so desperate to do something about the anger and exhaustion from being hurt by someone years before. It was the kind of hurt that most people find hard to forgive and heal from. I still wanted to hold on to the anger, but I figured it would be best to try to forgive and move on. I opened my laptop one night to search for the answer to what forgiveness looks like and how to go about achieving it. When I typed into google, “How to forgive someone,” I wasn’t sure I would even find an answer. Luckily, I stumbled onto an online women’s bible study about the very topic I was looking for. I thought this would be the perfect answer since I prefer a Christian perspective to life’s problems. This bible study turned out to be exactly what I was looking for as it gave steps on how to forgive someone. I will share some of the advice from this bible study below.
The first step in forgiving someone is recognizing and admitting exactly what they did to hurt you. Personally, I was in denial for a long time about my pain and emotions. I tried gaslighting myself into believing I was overreacting and that I did not need to feel the way I did. Before moving to the next steps, it is important to be completely honest with yourself about why you’re hurting.
Once you’ve done some soul searching and identified where your pain is coming from you should write it down. Be specific. You can keep it short and simple or make it a long journal entry. I was then instructed to say a prayer and to say, “I forgive this person with the blood of Jesus,” several times. While doing this, I could feel myself resisting, but the more I said those words the less resistance I felt. Now, whether or not you want to say those words is up to you, but I do believe nothing happens without God’s involvement.
The next step is to destroy the piece of paper you wrote down. I was instructed to burn it, but to lower the risk of setting my room on fire I just decided to tear it into tiny pieces and throw it away. Whatever you decide to do with your piece of paper doesn’t matter, as long as it’s no longer with you.
Another part of forgiving someone, is opening up your heart to have compassion for the person that hurt you. It is extremely important to understand that we all make mistakes as humans and some people may have been hurt in their past and then go on to hurt others intentionally or unintentionally. Once we understand that they may be carrying a similar pain or worse, it makes it easier to have compassion for them. A soft heart makes forgiveness even easier to accept.
What you do after performing the act of forgiving someone is up to you and a personal matter. Whether you pray, meditate, or decide to shift your focus, it should be a time of self-care and tending to ourselves. Do whatever you enjoy and try to remind yourself of things that ground you and make you happy.
What happens when you forgive?
Now that you’ve forgiven, what should you expect? Forgiveness is such a personal and individual experience, so I’m sure everyone has a different story about how they felt afterwards. However, I will share my own experience as I’m sure many can relate to it.
Once I tore up, threw away my piece of paper, and let a few tears slide, I realized something felt different. It wasn’t until the next day that I could really describe how I felt. It was as if a giant boulder had literally been lifted from my shoulders and everything felt lighter. I hadn’t realized the pain and anger had literally been weighing me down and making my life feel heavy. It felt as if I could fly and many people said I had a glow of happiness afterwards. That’s when I realized, choosing forgiveness was the best decision I’d ever made.
From that day on, I decided to always choose forgiveness immediately and to not hang on to the wrongdoings. I will admit that some people still try my patience and it is an ongoing practice to forgive — even small things. They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and I think I am a much stronger person because of my experience.
