“I’m sorry, but…”

 

My eyes rolled as I read the message.  I scoffed aloud.  “She’s not sorry,” I thought to myself. “She’s full of excuses.”

 

I reread the message that was sent to me, a message that detailed everything except this woman’s responsibility of the issue.  “I’m sorry, but’s,” were littered throughout the text, excuses and justifications for dishonoring and discouraging behaviors filled the rest.  I took a deep breath.  “Have grace for her,” the Lord encouraged.  “She hasn’t learned to communicate like you.”

 

That was it.  Grace.  Everyone needs grace.

 

For days, whenever I would consider the wrongs that this woman committed against me, I would chant that repeatedly.

 

“Grace” became my mantra for healing and forgiveness, but neither of those were happening.  I couldn’t begin to understand why I didn’t just have more grace.

 

“She hurt me,” I’d think to myself.  “She lied, she stole, and she dishonored.  She was selfish, she allowed her own issues of authority to rob me. She is the problem.”

 

With gentle chastisement, but with chastisement nonetheless, the words “have grace” would convict and condemn me, bullying me into dismissing my feelings so that I could just have grace.  Yet all my endeavors were in vain because bitterness never left my heart.

 

Normally, I am the first person to apologize.  In a situation where I commit a wrong, I bring it to the Lord immediately. I humble myself, asking the Lord how He sees the other person and how He sees my response, and any residual pride or pain from that wound expressly dissipates.

 

God never stops to dignify my haughty, hurting heart that claims judgement on another. Normally, the mere sight of His heart for others inspires me to drop my charges and love increasingly more instead.  I see grace everywhere that I go, because everywhere that I go, I am reminded of all the ways and times that I have been shown grace.

 

It is not difficult to apologize, for I have a deep understanding for the Lord’s grace for me.  An understanding of His grace for others, however, frequently evades me.

 

When met with people who are unable to admit their wrongdoings in a situation, the friction and irritation of an already open wound only serves to deepen the divide between forgiveness and my weary heart.  When continued behavior shows no remorse and no humility, I struggle to find the same grace for others that I so easily find for myself.

 

Faced with a situation that looks much like many others that I’ve experienced in the past, the struggle remained the same.  When met with someone who refused to accept responsibility for their actions, I became someone who refused to offer forgiveness.

 

I didn’t want to, but I did.

 

Grace.  Why can’t I just have grace?

 

The thought plagued me until the Lord stopped me.  “Because the way that you are understanding grace…” He paused provokingly, “is wrong.”

 

More questions than answers arose from my raw and chafed heart.  The word “grace” seemed self-explanatory.  It came clad with its own illustration of the cross, reminding all those who would call upon it what real grace was.

 

“What?” I asked quizzically. So many questions collapsed into that one word.  “What?” I asked again in disbelief.

 

“Grace does not subtract from one to give to another.  Grace is not promotional over people: grace is simply the favor of God, not the prominence of God’s favor.”

 

“Giving someone grace should never cost you yours.  If allowing yourself to share grace with someone means that you show yourself and your own feelings no grace, you are merely bestowing the appearance of grace: a pardon of words without the pardon of a heart.”

 

Little by little, it started to make sense.  To forgive, I had stuffed down my own feelings and my own hurts.  Religion had told me that that was the right thing to do.  Church had told me that forgiveness was the apex of our journey.  However somehow, the understanding that wronging myself and dismissing my own needs was no different than doing it to another, was lost.

 

This “grace” that I had been fighting for had made a mockery of my feelings, belittling them to be more like Christ.  I had heard the word of the Lord, one word that encouraged me to have grace and patience and to let forgiveness flow from those things, but I took that word and misinterpreted it through conditioned ears.

 

He gave me a word, but I beat myself up with it.  He told me to have grace for her, but He also desired for me to have grace for myself as well.

 

In my rocky relationship with forgiveness, I had always seen it as something given up as an act of humility rather than a willing act of genuine love and desire.  I saw forgiveness through broken eyes and with a broken heart.  I wanted to be a forgiving person, but I found that every time that I forgave someone from that place and from that mindset, it cost my heart in a detrimental way.

 

It cost my heart, until the Lord opened me up to a revelation on forgiveness that changed me.

 

Withholding forgiveness from yourself is the same as withholding it from someone else.  At the end of the day, you are still a person, and you are as deserving of forgiveness as the next person is.

 

Truth skewed by pain had told me that I had to forgive to be forgiven, rather than seeing forgiveness as a fruit of being forgiven.  Verses like Ephesians 4:32 and Matthew 6:14-15 and Luke 6:37 were written as encouragements to share what had been freely given— not as curses to be called down on you if you took too much time to forgive.

 

While forgiveness is the end goal, God appreciates the importance found in working through the process.

 

Forgiveness is grounded and substantiated by realizing why you were forgiven.  We, as a race of blatantly sinful humans, have committed the worst and most offensive acts against God.  We have lied and cheated and slandered His name and image.  We have done the worst, yet we have been shown the best.

 

God saw us, recognized His feelings— His very real feelings of anger, jealousy, and sorrow— and He chose to still forgive us .

 

Our process of forgiveness should mirror His.

 

When someone wrongs you, it is ok to have feelings about it.

 

How you feel is not inherently sinful; but how you respond to those feelings can be.

 

So, go ahead.  Feel your feelings.  Feel all the anger, sadness, the rage.  Feel it all.  Feel it and share it with God, be careful not to dismiss it, but rather, to simply let it go.

 

His desire is not for you to deny your feelings for the sake of forgiveness and grace, but rather, to acknowledge that they are real and that they are valuable, and then give them up to Him.

 

Forgiveness doesn’t mean that your feelings are unimportant.  It doesn’t mean that the other person is right.  It certainly doesn’t mean that, by forgiving a person, you are condoning what they did.

 

Forgiveness is an act that frees both you and the person who committed a wrong against you.  For such a long time, I would rush to the act of forgiveness in a desire to free the other person, but I would deny my feelings and leave myself in a position where I needed grace for myself. I imprisoned myself to free someone else from bondage.

 

I rewrote the script, claiming that I was doing what was right, but I wronged myself, my needs and my emotions in the process, I “forgave” one person but created a new need for forgiveness in myself.

 

An offense for another person was merely replaced with an offense against myself.

 

The truth is that forgiveness is a choice.  It is a choice with weight and with power behind it.  Religion offers up the image of God as someone who cannot be unforgiving, but if that were true, then the cross would be void.

 

Jesus was the stand-in for our sins, and God had the opportunity to choose if He wanted to forgive our iniquities or not.  He made a choice: God chose to allow His Son to die for us. He then chose to forgive, and now we are empowered with the very same choice.

 

Grace, forgiveness, and all that both entail are completely dependent on you and your position.  You do not need the cooperation of anyone else to forgive, and you do not need the apologies of the offender to experience that freedom.  You only need God and His process of healing.

 

I encourage you to not rush the process to get to the goal.  I encourage you to feel.  I encourage you to be honest.  Don’t lose sight of what the goal is: grace and forgiveness, but also, don’t feign a response to get a result.

 

Think deeply about what it means to forgive and make your decision from that place.  Like God, consider the cost, so that ultimately you might know the reward: love.

 

I encourage you to forgive just as much as I encourage you to feel.

 

Right now, I encourage you to feel.  Experience it.  Recognize the pain caused and the sins committed against you.  Know that it is part of the beautiful process of forgiveness.  You’re not alone.  You have support.

 

When I say that you’re not alone in this, it’s because you truly aren’t.  The very first thing that God shared with me for this piece is what follows: what you deserve an apology.

 

So often in the process, we seek out apologies as a form of closure, but so often they never come.  My desire is to partner with your process, and I’d like to do so by apologizing to you.

 

Although I might not be the person who wronged you, I would like to stand before you and repent on behalf of those who did. I cannot change your situation, but my prayer is that through this, God will.

 

 

So now I stand in the gap and present my apology to you:

 

 

 

Friend, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for all the people who weren’t sorry before me. I’m sorry for all those who padded their apologies with excuses and evasions. I’m sorry for those who struggled to take responsibility for their actions. 

 

I can’t change what has been done, but on behalf of those who will never tell you, I say that I am sorry. 

 

I am sorry that I wasn’t man enough. I’m sorry that I wasn’t woman enough. I’m sorry that you came looking for validation and confirmation, but instead I you gave dismals and discouragements. I am sorry that I told you that you were never going to be enough. You are enough. 

 

On behalf of all the mothers out there who failed: I am sorry.

 

On behalf of all the fathers out there who left: I am sorry.

 

On behalf of all the friends who ran away instead of trying: I am sorry.

 

For the children who abandoned you and the rest of your family instead of fighting to find reconciliation: I am sorry.

 

For the children who stayed in abusive families because they thought that they could fix what was broken: I am sorry.

 

I cannot change what happened to you, but I can say sorry. 

 

We all want closure. As someone who has spent years fighting to obtain it, I know that seldom does closure come from the people that caused the need for it in the first place.

 

But just because it doesn’t come for them, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t come at all.

 

If you wanted a sign to give it up to God: here it is.

 

If you wanted proof that it was time to forgive here it is. 

 

If you just simply wanted to know that God knows the brokenness of your heart… this is your sign. He does. He hears. He’s here. 

 

You are forgiven.  I encourage you to forgive.