I Need to Forgive Everyone.
It’s interesting to me to post a blog and receive responses. It reminds me that I need a great deal of practice before I am competent enough to convey an actual message to my audience.
On Friday, I wrote about feeling bad. I wanted to talk about what happened to me that night. My self-esteem was at an all-time low and I knew that I needed to make a change. Friday’s blog was supposed to be a build-up to explain my Prayer of Despair.
The Prayer of Despair, I’ve found, is the most powerful prayer in existence. When I reach a point that I am so downtrodden and filled with angst that I have to pray about it, I have also reached a point of desperation. The desperation is what causes me to actually listen for an answer.
“Hearing” that one word inside my head was a meaningful, profound experience for me. It’s something I will never forget.
Everyone, it said. I need to forgive everyone.
My blog was meant to convey the fact that I – personally and alone – need to forgive. But most people responded to my pain. It turns out that a whole lot of people feel the same way I often do.
I got several responses that said one thing clearly: I understand. That is why I continue to write my blog. There are people who understand.
Then there are people who want to change my pain. They say, quite literally, that I shouldn’t feel how I am feeling. They give me advice on how to stop feeling pain. It’s such a natural thing, to want to relieve someone else’s pain. We all do our best to “help.”
But that night, at 2:30 a.m., I got out my decades-old Choosing to Forgive Workbook. I’d never been previously willing to read it and do the work.
Now I am.
Chapter 1 – surprisingly enough – is telling me that it’s okay to be angry. I have a right to be hurt. People get hurt. Chapter 2 – which I’ve just started – is explaining why those hurt feelings might continue to resurface, even if I forgive those who betrayed me.
So I’ve made a list of everyone who – from infancy till now – angered me to the point of deep resentment. And I’m finding that every single one of them betrayed me in some way.
Even my middle school bully, who did horrible things to me for years, angered me most the day she quietly asked to borrow 15 cents from me. I gave her a dime and a nickel, and she bought some ice cream.
She never paid it back. She said she would pay it back. I trusted her.
I trusted everyone. Sadly, this trend continued well into my adulthood. In my search for acceptance, I trusted a whole lot of people who weren’t able to treat me with kindness or respect.
In looking back, I shouldn’t have trusted many of the people I adored. And I should have trusted some of the people I barely knew.
I have spent many years working on myself, trying to make myself into a better person. I’ve got a lot of work yet to do. But if I don’t learn to forgive, I will never be able to trust anyone.
And my inability to trust is what, ultimately, makes me feel so lonely.
So I’m on a mission. A little bit at a time, I am going to learn how to forgive. Maybe it will do nothing to take away my pain.
But already, at least, I realize that I have a right to feel it.