Cognitively I recognize that there should be a restoration of relationship. Somehow you get past the hurt and you embrace the one who did the hurting. I can envision that part. I’ve even seen it in action as painful and broken relationships have been mended between myself and others and among my friends as well. But those times seem more like outliers in my life. There’s still the day to day little interactions that bite and sting and yet still need to be forgiven. And that seems more impossible to me, some days, than any of those larger cases of severe pain and miraculous restoration.
According to Psych Central, forgiveness “is letting go of the need for revenge and releasing negative thoughts of bitterness and resentment.” I agree with that definition. Sometimes we say that we forgive someone, but we still feel gleeful inside when we think of things going wrong for them in a way that will prove in the end that we were right. When that happens, that’s a sign that forgiveness might have been extended but it wasn’t heartfelt (and therefore is a rather iffy form of forgiveness). But I think there’s more to forgiveness than just getting rid of the negative. There’s a positive component that replaces that need for revenge and those negative thoughts with the need for relationship and hopeful, even excited thoughts of restoration.
I think there are different types of forgiveness as well. What we usually think of is a reactive forgiveness -- the hurt has been done, the forgiveness is brought to bear after the fact. There is also proactive forgiveness. This is the kind of forgiveness that’s required in those day to day relationships. It’s an overall attitude of forebearance and care for people even when they’re grumpy and dour and are needling us in all the most tender places. But what has dawned on me recently is that in the very moment when someone is annoying me or needling me or doing that thing they do that makes me feel small and unloved an unappreciated, it is right in that exact moment that my forgiveness needs to be active. And it is that in-action-forgiveness that I’ve been mulling over lately. What does that look like? And how do I do it?
This is where I can take a lesson from my dog. Laika loves me. When I wake up in the morning, pet her and let her out, she loves me. When I take her for a walk or feed her or rub her belly, she loves me. But what always amazes me about dogs is that when you accidentally step on their tail or leave them home alone for a long time or forget to feed them one day, they don’t crawl off to a corner and sulk. They don’t put tacks on your chair or poop in your shoes. No, what they do is yelp at the pain in their tail, hop up and come to you for comfort -- wagging their tail and nuzzling you. When you’ve left them at home all day and they’ve been lonely and miserable, they don’t berate you for your absence, they run up to the door, jump up and down, spin in circles and wag their tail like crazy because they love you. In other words, even when you do those little needling or hurtful day to day things to your dog, they respond with overwhelming love because they forgive you right then and there. In the very moment you have injured them, you are forgiven. They don’t treat you as your actions deserve. They treat you as if your actions had been the exact opposite of what you actually did. They seek immediate and complete restoration of the relationship. Dogs are the ultimate forgivers. So I’m trying to learn to be more like my dog. When my mom or my kids or my husband does one of those little needling or annoying or bothersome things that humans are prone to do, I’m trying to pretend in my mind that they’ve really done just the opposite. This doesn’t mean that when my kids hurt me by leaving a mess in the living room that I don’t ask them to clean it up. But attitudinally, I’m trying to still love them in that moment as if they’d already cleaned it up. ... ... ... This is hard. This is really hard.
The thing that keeps me going, that keeps me trying to think this through and act upon it is the thought that this is how I wish people would treat me. When I do something stupid or hurtful or arrogant, I don’t want people to treat me like the turd I am. I want them to embrace me and love me as the person I could be. It’s not when someone gets mad back at me that I want to change my behavior so much as when someone loves me back even when I’ve been hurtful. That’s when I am overwhelmed with the desire to shed my selfish ways and embrace relationship.
