Forgiveness
One of my closest friends is a young woman who is a survivor of incest. From a young age she was abused by both her father and her brother. For years she drank to numb the feelings of anger and worthlessness she felt as a result of the abuse she had survived. She had long since accepted as fact that she would never be in a happy relationship, never own a home, never have a child and never find joy or peace. She remained enmeshed herself in relationships that validated those feelings. She hid her alcoholism from her friends and family and engaged in sexual relationships with people who didn’t or couldn’t love her.
About five years ago, at the suggestion of her therapist, she began to attend AA meetings. With the support of new friendships she made there she began the arduous task of doing step work. Like so many people she made it to her 4th step and began to stagnate. The work there was simply too overwhelming, brought up too many painful memories that she hadn’t and couldn’t fully resolve alone. Thankfully she didn’t stop showing up and though she slacked on her step work she has remained sober during that time and has maintained a relationship with a sponsor who is understanding of the special burden that my friend’s history creates. “It was apparent was that this world and its people were often quite wrong.” ” If we were to live, we had to be free of anger.” “We realized that the people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick.”
Fortunately for my friend being around people who are working hard at the steps outlined in the program motivated her to begin anew working on those things which had been troubling her most, her familial relationships, her feelings of worthlessness, the anger and hurt she has carried for so many years. Over the last several days she also had a series of dreams that seemed to indicate to her that she was in fact making progress in that area. In her dreams she was able to view her brother with compassion and be caring to her father.
I was with my friend last night at an AA meeting. As the meeting was about to start she received a phone call from her grandfather. Her father had died.
Because of doing the work, of utilizing the simple tools that 12 step programs give us, she has no fear of going to the funeral. She is able to be present for her grandparents who have lost their son. She is able to be present for and compassionate to her brother who has lost his father. She is able to recognize her own loss, not just the death of her father, but of the childhood he deprived her of, and to forgive him. She had actually been able to forgive him before he died. Nothing but a complete rearrangement of her mind could have accomplished that. I believe that nothing but a relationship with her Creator could have accomplished that.
Getting sober, to me, is not about seeking forgiveness from the people I have harmed. I have to forgive the people who have harmed me. I cannot commence to do that until I have become humble enough to be willing to do what is necessary to right the wrongs that I have done to others, not because I seek their forgiveness, but because without humbling myself in that way I am allowing something to stand in the way of my relationship with my creator. I’m saying that my pride is more important than my God.
There are those in this world who have done me great harm. But through my friends example I can see that my ability to forgive them will only come from gaining humility by clearing away those things I have created that stand in the way of my relationship with my Creator. I believe that my Creator forgives me no matter what. But by repairing the harm I have done to others I can forgive myself. It is not others forgiveness that I’m seeking after all. It is my own forgiveness I seek, and the ability to forgive others.