Forgiveness

"Forgiveness is the miracle of a new beginning. It is to start where we are, not where we wish we were, or the other person was. It is to hold out a hand; to want to renew a friendship; to want a new relationship with husband, father, daughter, friend, or indeed enemy. It may not take away the hurt. It does not deny the past injury. It does not ignore the possibility and need for repentance and a change in the relationship. It means being willing to take the initiative in dealing with any barriers that I may be raising towards a restored relationship. It means that I am willing to have a relationship with the other party that is based on Christian love and not on what has happened in the past, if the response of the other person makes that possible. " Dick Tripp

What made me come to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous? PAIN! The pain and anguish that I felt prior to walking into the halls of A.A. was unbearable. Years of drinking and using had blinded my reality. Somehow, someway what I thought had started out as social drinking had finally brought me to my knees. I had caused so much pain in my life and the lives of those around me, that I was finally ready to let someone, anyone show me how to fix it. Recent events in my life have brought me back to the early days of recovery, one day specifically, the day I asked for help. I was so mad, so angry, so hurt from years of bad decisions. I was filled with resentment that my family had turned their backs on me...or so I thought and at break time during a meeting with my sponsor, I turned and said to someone I knew very well, a friend of my family, "please help me!" "I can't live like this any longer, I don't want to live like this anymore, just tell me how to forgive."

The advice this person gave me, was probably one of the most important pieces of information I have received in this program to date. It is certainly a piece that I know changed my life and more often than not keeps me coming back, even when I want to walk away for good. He said to me, take everything that you are mad and hurt about, and write it all down on paper. When you are finished, next to all the things you wrote down, try to look beyond what that person did and find your part in it only. What did you do. He said do this and I'll talk to you on Sunday, our conversation took place on a Wednesday.

Without question, but still having no idea how this was going to help me to forgive, I went home and wrote everything down. Some things came easily, some were not so easy, but I got them all down and when I was done, I re-read the whole thing. Once I re-read everything I had written, I found that I was not so hurt and angry anymore. Why? Well, what this man did was show me that in all of my resentments, I had played a part big or small it didn't matter, I had played a part in them happening, so how could I be so mad at someone or something that I had helped create?

As the days passed, and Sunday came around, he asked me how I felt, I told him I fet a little better and he said, there's something else you have to do with that list. He said if I wanted to feel better, I needed to pray for the people on that list for the thing that I wanted for myself. Forgiveness. OUCH. How the heck was I going to do that when I was so mad. He said, "trust me, just do it, even if you don;t mean it, do it and you will find that eventually you will mean it." So I did.

Some of the resentments began to pass right away, others took longer, but I continued to pray for those people everyday until finally they weren't so big anymore. I had begun step work, only I didn't even know it at the time, maybe in the wrong order, but this man knew that I was desperate and that I needed to do something. Maybe it wasn't in the wrong order and he knew it. I had admitted I was powerless over alcohol by coming to AA, that my life was unmanageable by asking for help, I was believing in something greater than myself and I had turned my will over enough to begin to listen to someone other than myself. I was openminded enough to listen and willing enough to do the work I needed to do to remove the pain.

Time and time again over the past couple of years, I have been presented with people, places and things that have hurt or angered me. Each and every time, when the pain got great enough and sometimes before the pain was to much to bear, I began to pray. I began to look at the situation and my part in it. Sometimes I had no part, it was simply accepting a situation as it was, but other times indeed there was a part that I had played and I needed to look at that. Why? Well before I could forgive someone else, I needed to be able to forgive myself and only in doing that was I able to move past the hurt and pain and forgive. I needed to be able to do this so that I could begin to make ammends to these people. In making ammends to these people, I began to receive forgiveness as well and began to heal.

I love the opening quote to this post...forgiveness means starting from where we are, not the past or the future, just from this moment forward. Not where we wish we were. An important part of forgiveness is getting out of the story, staying away from those people who refuse to see your pain, who instead want to feed that pain, to keep you in it. It means being able to set boundaries with people in your life, to let them know that hey, we may not be on the same page, but I can accept where you are and you can accept where I am. I still have people in my life who want to feed the events of the last few weeks. I have moved past the pain and into the healing and forgiveness, if I choose to, I can continue to let these people raise self doubt and insecurity in my life, but just for today I choose to live in the solution and not in the problem. Letting go and letting God do the work is such an important part of my life today. I don't need to be in control, I don't need to be around people who are not good for my heart and soul.

I'm growing again, and it feels good....

God Bless