Meridian Magazine :: Articles: What Forgiveness Is and Isn’t

What Forgiveness Is and Isn’t
By Fay A. Klingler

Editor’s note: This is one of a series of articles about recovering from betrayal. Read the first article here. All names shown here in italics are pseudonyms, used to protect the identity of the writers.

A lot has been written about forgiveness — the physical and emotional healing power of making peace.

For some, giving up the anger and resentment that comes with holding a grudge can reduce back pain, limit relapses among those battling substance abuse, and slash one’s stress level by up to 50 percent. Studies have led researchers to conclude that harboring bitterness and anger can actually be toxic, whereas letting go can improve a person’s energy, mood, sleep quality, and overall physical vitality. Just thinking about forgiving your betrayer may lower your heart rate and blood pressure! (Statistics taken from Lisa Collier Cool, “The Power of Forgiving,” Reader’s Digest, May 2004, p. 93.)

Time and time again, forgiveness is shown to be one of the most effective tools to improve life following a traumatic event, such as betrayal. Susan Granger told me forgiveness “is the primary key to everything else in one’s life. How can we consider holding others in unforgiveness and claim to be a child of God?”

However, let there be no misunderstanding about what forgiveness is and isn’t. Forgiveness cannot fix another person’s problem. Forgiving someone doesn’t mean you accept or condone the offense. “Nor does it mean you are willing to continue in the role of being abused or victimized.

Forgiveness is not about pretending that things are any different than they really are. Forgiveness is not simply forgetting that the betrayal ever occurred. Nor are you admitting you were wrong. Your negative feelings toward the betrayer will not necessarily be replaced by positive feelings.

Forgiveness does not mean you have to trust the other person again. The other person is still accountable for his or her actions. Your act of forgiveness does not pardon him or her for wrongful acts. The right to pardon is only God’s — He who fully understands what happened and the intentions of the heart.

“Forgiving is a choice; it is all about letting go, refusing to summon up the fiery darts of anger and revenge. It is willfully dropping the practice of obsessing over the injury, and consciously choosing to move on, releasing the other person in order to create for yourself a new life with new experiences to think about instead of the old ones. When you forgive, you don’t necessarily forget how you were wronged, but you allow yourself to stop dwelling on it. You might continue to see the damage, but only as a part of the whole picture that includes the loving times as well.” (Shattered: Six Steps from Betrayal to Recovery by Fay A. Klingler and Bettyanne Bruin, published by Mapletree Publishing Company, pp. 130-131.)

Kimberly Olson related to me what she learned about forgiving her former husband. “If I focus more on myself and what I need to change rather than on what he did to betray me and is still doing, then I’m much better off. That mindset allows me to see forgiveness in a different light because I know his actions are his own and he has free agency.”

Paul Gadden and Alicia Smith sum up this message on forgiveness in the face of betrayal. Paul wrote:

Foregive? Hmmm… how does one do that when one is bleeding and sore and knowing that more torment is still to come?

I have found a way that works best for me. I try to see my life from looking backwards 1000 years from now, more fully understanding the nature and difficulty of the "test," and wanting to perform well now so that future look-backs will be filled with a sense of accomplishment and righteousness rather than shame and regret.

That perspective, coupled with a new habit of seeing myself laying my bundle of cares for today on the altar before the Savior and saying, "Here is my gift to Thee, and I accept Thy gift to me.” The objective here is not so much to win, but to heal as He would heal, nurture as He would nurture, and love as He would love, even to my enemies.

Knowing and imagining that He is my friend and that He stands beside me in all the experiences of life, and that honoring Him and pleasing Him are more important to me than trying to win another earthly battle that I cannot win anyway, gives me a sense of sorrowful, but peaceful joy, which is something that seems contradictory, but is indeed, I think, a heavenly feeling. This is a new discovery for me: compassion, graciousness, and positive prayers in the face of a sometimes vindictive and mean enemy.

Interestingly, a side effect of all this new discipline, is that I feel more freedom because I have more power and control of ME, and take that power and control away from others. Forgiveness, I believe, in the end, is liberating for all involved as we are no longer bound down by the ugliness of the evil that would bind us in our thoughts and hearts.

Alicia Smith commented:

Until recently, I measured my progress in forgiving by how hurt I felt. To add to my pain, I felt the added burden of not following the Savior's admonition to forgive everyone. This weighed heavy on my mind, and try as I might to let it all go, it still hurts. The good news is I have since learned forgiveness has nothing to do with how hurt I am. The two are totally separate and have nothing to do with one another. I can forgive even though I am still hurt. Getting over the hurt takes time. Healing takes time. Especially if the betrayal left a big void in my life. I can now spend the energy I used to give on beating myself up for not forgiving and spend it on healing the hurt and moving forward with my life. This has set me free!

So if I can't measure how I am doing with forgiveness by the level of hurt I still feel, then how can I measure it? By asking myself some hard questions and answering them honestly. Do I have feelings of revenge against the betrayer? Do I wish him harm, either in this life or the life to come? Am I actively trying to get back at him? Do I hear myself say things like "I will NEVER forgive him"? Is the betrayal affecting how I live my life today? Is it affecting my plans for the future? Does the betrayal affect the kind of person I am? If I can answer "no" to just one of these questions, there is good news ahead. I AM on the path to forgiveness!

When you forgive someone, you accept the other person for who he or she is, whether you choose to preserve the relationship or not. And in the process, you give the most incredible gift to yourself — putting resentment and hostility to rest, handing over the hurt and the judgment to God, and moving on with power.