Forgiveness

Everyday we find a way to learn to forgive others who have wronged us. But what about the men in our lives who do so much harm and cause so much chaos that it basically destroys our will to forgive them?

Many people speak on forgiveness being for their own sanity and peace of mind. While we cannot control another's actions, we certainly have the will to control our own.

I was recently asked how I forgave my child's father for all the hurt, pain, and mistrust he caused both myself and my child. All I could think of was the word, "time". As cliche, as that might sound, it is true for the most part. I had to deal with a lot of anger and hurt inside myself that I didn't realize was there until I was completely free from the person I thought I loved.

I first started to look at the reasons why I was so angry and hurt and came to one common denominator, my insecurities. I was young and weak minded which led him to be able to control and manipulate me into feeding his ego and abuse. I continued to look deeper into why I thought it was okay. I came to the conclusion that I had abandonment issues from my own childhood. I had let him abuse me for close to 3 years and his cheating was just the icing on the cake. Isn't it odd that many women would take abuse but the moment they find out their man is cheating they find the strength to leave?! Check out this post about the relationship between cheating and abuse. In my personal opinion, I think many women land the "Stepmom" title because they were the husband/boyfriend's mistress.

After a couple of years of self loathing, I began feeling better about myself. I began counseling myself and praying every chance I got to be a better mother and person. Any time I felt the anger rise, I prayed and told myself, he isn't worth the headache. When I saw that his choices to leave our child on the backburner, I would cry and ask God why this guy couldn't love our child enough to be around.

Eventually I had to take a look at my own actions, this was the hardest thing to do. This was hard not because my actions made me ashamed, but because if I wanted to become a better mother, I had to learn to forgive myself for the time I spent angry and hurt. Forgiveness doesn't happen overnight. It takes many days, months, even years for some people. But I could no longer hold onto that anger because it wasn't making me a better mother. I no longer had the energy to deal with the anger towards that coward of a man. To me, being a mother was more than avoiding those tough decisions, because lets face it, forgiving is not easy at all.  

In order for one to forgive another for the hurt and pain that person caused, you have to first forgive yourself. In the words of Lewis B. Smedes:

"To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you"