Forgiveness

It’s hard to forgive people who’ve wronged us, especially if the wrong has lasting effects in your life. Normal reactions toward a personal attack are either fight or flight. I typically lean toward the latter of these two, but I always root for those who choose to fight; revenge always makes a good story. But then there’s forgiving, a seemingly unnatural reaction that is probably always the long term solution. It’s easy to picture yourself fighting back or cowering away, but how does forgiving work?

When I was a kid, maybe nine years old, I befriended a stray puppy in my neighborhood. I fed him some leftovers, played with him for a little while, and had to trick him to stay out in the abandoned little league field where I had found him since I knew my parents would never let him bring him home. The next day I came by with more scraps but couldn’t find him. After searching, I found the puppy dead near a storm drain. He had bike tread marks on him and his head was smashed apart. I could hear the echoing laughter of some neighborhood kids that I knew to be rough and notoriously destructive and I knew immediately they had done it. Months before I had witnessed them tossing about four or five hamsters underneath the tires of passing cars watched them laugh hysterically with every pop. For months and even years afterward, I hated these kids for killing this stray puppy that I barely knew. I’d glare at them whenever we crossed paths and in my heart I wanted to toss them under a few cars.

Now here I am, decades later, how do I feel about this group of kids? Or better yet, how should I feel? It’s one thing knowing what to do, but living it out is a different story.

This may seem like a weak comparison, but the families of murdered victims ask themselves the same questions. How should they feel if their loved ones are killed? I’m certain that time, the healer of all, gives these people an answer: forgiveness. The problem is how is forgiveness fair to the people alive who still suffer? But the people who live this out know exactly how it’s fair. The fairness comes from the freedom of letting go the resentment, finally giving yourself time to breathe.

I realize that this is only a blog, a brief verbal burp of thought, and I’m peaking into Pandora’s Box and expecting to reveal all the answers. But for those of you who have such experiences in your life, even if it’s as little as a puppy dog, this may hit close to home. Hopefully, like all of these blog entries, it’ll give you something to ponder as you lie in bed tonight.