Years ago I wrote a poem called “Forgive.” It was published in my first book, The Difference Now, and was about the end of a certain struggle. I had gotten to a point in my life where I was tired of being angry at people who had hurt me. Sound familiar? I think we’ve all taken on anger and hurt and worn them like a heavy cape around our shoulders, expecting someone else to lift it off and give us freedom to run again.

Forgiveness is such a simple and blessed concept, and yet it is so very difficult. I think we wait for the people who hurt us to be sorry before we forgive, and this is a mistake. Very often the people we have to forgive aren’t all that sorry. Or they deny things. Or they don’t care. Or they are sorry but they’ll never tell you that because pride will get in the way. So then we withhold forgiveness thinking it will punish them, and instead it only punishes us.

God knew we needed forgiveness. The Christian faith is built on it. But personally, for each one of us individually, he knew we needed to understand forgiveness so we could be free. He forgave us and showed us how to forgive each other.

But it is difficult. I’ve seen people waste years on anger and hurt, to the point where they can’t embrace anything good in their life because their arms are full with harmful thoughts of the past.

You can forgive people, no matter what they did, no matter how big and hurtful and evil. Yes, even that.

Forgive

I embrace this life,
as a child of God.

You may knock me down,
but His love lifts me up.
You may bring pain into my life,
but He comforts me.
You may laugh at my mistakes,
but I embrace them, my personalized lesson.
You may hurt me,
but I’ll forgive you.

I’ll forgive you
because I’m loved by Him.

I’ll forgive you
because He will.

I’ll forgive you
so I can forgive myself.

I’ll forgive you
so I can be free.

From my book, The Difference Now.

As I write this, I’m working on the final stages of my ecourse Word of the Year Mixed Media Painting and this poem popped up in one of the projects we did. I’ve found that doing mixed media art centered on my word of the year has helped me focus on it that much more.

When I wrote the poem “Forgive” it was a couple years after my dad died.  A year before I went through something that caused me to make a choice. I chose, in that moment, to forgive my past… my alcoholic family and all that came with it, God and all the anger I directed his way, friends who didn’t get it, and myself, for all the mistakes I made as a result of everything.

All of it. To everyone. Forgive.

It was like lighting one final match and throwing it on the heap of pain and hurt and letting it all burn away.

But you see, that’s the first step. That’s the step many of us don’t do because we’re waiting for something to happen that will allow us to forgive. The reality is, you cannot wait on someone to be sorry or apologize. You have to make the choice to forgive. First. Everything else comes after.

Forgiveness comes like a gentle wind at first. You simply open the window, and little by little, you feel the breeze of forgiveness. It tickles you slightly. You might feel it lightly cool your face and even become annoyed at first because that feeling, that simple caress is foreign to you.

Eventually, the wind blows stronger and stronger until you learn to stand strong as it sweeps the hurt and pain away. Suddenly, perhaps years after that first time you made the choice to forgive, you notice how cool and comfortable the room is, how you’ve got space to add good things, and sunlight streams in from that window now. Your life looks cleaner and brighter.

I wrote this poem a long time ago but I’ve been thinking about it lately, because for 2017 I chose my theme word of “embrace.” When I did, I noticed how often I had used that word in the past, and how it had already inched its way forward little by little in my life.

I saw that embracing your life, all of it, means also forgiving.