Forgiveness, by Gillian

You all remember that old sexist joke from the seventies?

New hubby and bride ride off after the wedding down the trail in the horse buggy. The horse is very skittish and rears up, almost upsetting the buggy. "That's one," says new hubby. The horse takes off at a gallop, stops suddenly and almost dumps them both on the ground. "That's two," says new hubby. All goes well for a while, then suddenly the horse bolts off the road and comes to a halt after just missing a tree. New hubby takes up his rifle and shoots the horse. "That's three."

"What on earth did you do a crazy thing like that for?" asks the horrified wife.

"That's one," replies new hubby.

Now there is an unforgiving man! And I have to say, if anyone ever physically abused me, which I'm fortunate enough to say has never happened, that would be one. And I doubt we'd get to three. Not that I would ever shoot anyone; but I'd be gone.

I actually don't like the word forgiveness. It somehow implies that the forgiver is superior to the forgivee. I have never said the words I forgive you to anyone. But maybe that is simply because I have been lucky enough not to have had anything terrible occur for which I needed to consider forgiveness. Nor has anyone said it to me. I perhaps have committed an occasional transgression which required forgiveness by my loved ones, but I knew that I was forgiven by their actions rather than from any words of forgiveness. I am sure that my eventual coming out at middle age required some forgiveness by my family, as it meant I was leaving. Destroying that family in it's current form. For some it took a while, but I now know, again without words, that I am forgiven.

John Ortberg says, "Forgiveness means giving up the right to get even."  To me that is a dreadfully superficial understanding of forgiveness. It is so much more than that.  "Forgiveness," says Desmond Tutu, who certainly had to do plenty of it, "says you are given another chance to make a new beginning." That sounds much closer to the truth to me.

And Bernard Meltzer claims that when you forgive you cannot change the past, but you sure do change the future. You change yours, if in fact no-one else's. You cannot control whether the one you have forgiven changes his or her ways, but you can set yourself free, at least. You can go forward, free of the heavy baggage of anger and resentment engendered by un-forgiveness.

Oprah Winfrey has said, “True forgiveness is when you can say, Thank you for that experience.”

Now that's a hard one. When you find out your spouse has been 'playing away' or indulging in a gambling addiction which lost all the family nest egg, are you really strong enough to say to yourself, with complete sincerity, I am grateful for that experience?

What I am very grateful for is that I have never been put to that test, and firmly believe I never will be.

© 2 March 2015 

About the Author 

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 28 years.