Unforgiveness

     Have you ever had a fight with a roll of duct tape?  I have.  You have the scissors on the table in front of you as the tape is wrapping around your fingers and stuck to the hair on your arm, but you believe you can manage without having to cut the tape.  "I can still use this piece, I just have to straighten it out and pull the hair off of it."  Then there are people like me with long hair (head hair) and I can get some tape stuck in my hair.  I've lost the cap to my pen in my hair.    Admittedly some of us have more trouble with duct tape than others.  There are those who don't even know what I'm talking about and then there are those who have had their arms and legs bound together, with their knees pulled up to their chest and as they peer through the break in the tape wrapped around their head you hear a muffled, "I got this."
     This is how I see unforgiveness.  Being bound up in unforgiveness is like being bound in duct tape.  As you are trying to break free of the bondage you are in, guess who skips by?  The person you are not forgiving.  They don't even notice your arm is taped to the back of your head.  They are just going on with their life like nobody's business, while you have two fingers free reaching, stretching for the scissors. 
     When my kids were little I tried to teach them to put themselves in someone else's shoes before judging their actions.  They are all still good about it, most of the time.  When somebody cut me off on the freeway, I would explain to the kids that they might be on their way to see their dying mother and so we just let them go by.  (To be honest, most days I taught my kids by the "see what I just did?  I don't ever want you to do that" method)  Forgiving starts with understanding. 
     I realized unforgiveness not only stopped me from growing as a person but it stopped me from growing closer to God.  Also it continued to feed all my negative feelings of anger, depression, and sadness.  It was also the most powerful weapon the enemy had to use against me.  Everytime I would take a step toward God, toward recovery and freedom he would whisper in my ear, "You can't trust people.  They will hurt you." 
     As suggested in the book "THe Bondage Breakers", I spent a weekend locked in my room determined I was going to do some heavy forgiving.  I first prayed asking the Holy Spirit to make my list of people I needed to forgive and He did.  If a name popped in my head, I wrote it down.  When my list was complete, I started back at the beginning and asked Him to reveal everything I needed to forgive that person for.  He did.  The most difficult part of it for me was that I actually recalled more memories of abuse.  (I was warned this may happen)  I couldn't deny the memories, because when I tried, the Holy Spirit would point out how it affected me and basically proved it.  I took a few minutes to think about it.  I e-mailed the pastor and I kept moving forward with my list.  Of course I didn't complete the list, but I got through the toughest part that weekend.  Whenever I found myself not wanting to complete it, I thought about some of the things I had done to others over the years and decided I would want them to forgive me, so I kept going.
     It actually took the whole week to get through it, because I kept having to go back and re-forgive because of the memory recall.  When I got through the list, I treated myself to a nice dinner and had a good cry.  I sat out on the deck and enjoyed the quiet when I realized, "Wow, I don't feel any different".  I barely had the scissors between two fingers, but I had them and I was willing to start cutting.  Everytime something that I have already forgiven pops into my head, I try to forgive it again immediately and I do 47% of the time.  I'm a "Work in Progress".  It gets easier and I get freer. 
     I watched two women I love very much experience the brutal murder of a family member within six months of each other.  Both these women have very big hearts and love deeply.  Whenever I think I can't forgive, I think about them and what they are faced with forgiving.  Whenever I think the abuse I suffered is too big, I know for a fact, I would rather go through that again than what these two women have had to experience.  I might add that even though they had days full of anger at God, they both continue to love Him and trust Him
   Forgiveness is not an event.  Forgiveness is a process, sometimes a very long process.  Like layers of an onion you peel them away.  I could forgive the abusers for the abuse, but then I had to forgive them for the things I missed out on in life because of the affects of the abuse.  Then I had to forgive them for affecting my parenting skills and my people skills and my self esteem and so on and so on.  When I was younger I use to think the abuse was a great excuse for the awful things I did and said to others, but if I was going to live by that rule, then I have to accept that others had hurt and pain in their lives and thats why they hurt me.