Forgiveness

'Forgiveness' is a topic that I have long struggled with: How to forgive my son's father for the acts he has committed against me, forgiving my long-absent father for his own faults, and forgiving my step-father who sexually molested me from the ages of 15 to 17, and forgiving each and every person who, when confronted with the ugly situation, took the route of blaming me for what he had done.

In April my family got together to celebrate our mother's birthday. Typically our family does not gather en mass for an extended period of time because after the initial "Oh, hello again! I haven't seen you in ages!" wears off the ugly shared truths of our lives, particularly the past, are all that is left to talk about. It is instinct to avoid these topics, and if they cannot be avoided they are at least made a joke of. It is not uncommon for our family to rehash the times when our step-father literally chained the cabinets and refridgerator shut because we, as growing children, ate 'too much'. Or the time he discovered someone had been snitching peanut butter bears out of his 'special cabinet' and decided to play detective and tried to fingerprint us all using scotch tape and a mirror. (I now readily admit I was the culprit. Having long fingers and narrow hands let me weasel into locked cabinets easily). Admittedly in hind-sight some of his antics are laughable but only insomuch as the laughter actually disguises the abject grief we have all spent years learning how to swallow, ignore, misplace and misuse.

I laughed along with my family up until the laughter could no longer hide the pain, and it was in April that I was confronted with the idea of potentially forgiving those whom have 'trespassed' against me. My younger brother began the conversation, citing the need to accept forgiveness from our Lord, God in order to facilitate forgiveness here on the material plane. From deep within the depths of my grief and anger for what that man did to me during my formative years came the resounding sob of "I don't need God's forgiveness. I haven't done anything wrong. And I will never forgive that man for what he did." and, par for the course, we mutually decided to abandon that conversation because I just could not hear it. My brother's words, which were the Truth, were received by my Ego and raged against until I was forced to admit that the raging did nothing to ease the pain. Rather, it intensified it. I felt as though I could not find an outlet big enough, strong enough, furious enough to exemplify the fury and rage that had taken up seemingly permanent residence in my heart.

I went to my therapist, seeking corporeal assistance in negating the pain. While my therapist did take an appropriate approach and addressed the 'error' of my thinking, which was to address the niggling, whispering voice that seemed to weave its way through every single situation in life that I dealt with that repeated back what I had been told by so many people: that I was wrong and would always be wrong no matter which path I took in life. She helped me establish that all-important 'safe place' for those fragmented ego-states and how to determine what voice is the Adult-Andi and the Child-Andi. I began to see the Truth - that I had been a child forced into an adult situation without any of the real adult benefits, and that the fragmentation was my brain's way of triaging and essentially saving me from complete madness. I learned, through perception-correction, that my step-father was simply a small man who felt even smaller within the world of his numerous insecurities. His heavy, illogical ruling hand was a result of his need to make himself feel bigger at the expense of those around him. My step-father quickly shrank, in my mind, from the monstrous imaginings of a boogey-man who would terrorize me my entire life to the size of a peanut, easily crushed underfoot if I so chose.

And here lies the crux. Now I must choose, if I wish to heal fully and take the necessary steps back to God's Atonement and rejoin the Sonship, whether or not to forgive this man or to crush him in my mind's eye and never look back.

I am still conflicted. I want to move on but am having difficulties passing along the Forgiveness of my Maker. However, I have been reading 'A Course in Miracles' as well as the Christian Science text 'Science and Health with Keys to the Scripture' by Mary Baker Eddy and it has fundamentally changed my perceptions of the world and everything/one in it. As I understand the texts, God wants us to See our fellow man as He created us - as Perfect - and to Love them as we Love Him. Negativity arises when we have expectations. Expecations arise from Ego, which is not God but a mind-made construct, which cannot accept perfection in ourselves let alone from everyone else because it cannot comprehend the utter Peace and Love that is God. So when someone else does not meet our expecations our Ego lashes out and we want to hurt the other person as much as our Ego has been wounded. But Peace and Love does not come from any of it. It comes from 'turning the other cheek' and seeing them as a child of God whom has not yet awakened to God's Will within them. This is Forgiveness. Jesus, when he was crucified, cried "Forgive them Lord, for they know not what they do!" and up until just recently (literally within the last few weeks) I never truly understood what that meant. We are ALL children of God, capable of everything God is capable of BECAUSE He made us in His image, even those who deliver slight and insult.

And Jesus was able to ask this of God because he saw his fellow man as God wanted him to See them. He knew, without a shadow of doubt, that life is not in the things we can see and touch and experience here in the corporeal world. Life is in the Mind, and the body is simply a material vessel given to the Mind in order to facilitate Christ-learning - how to achieve the same mindset and atonement we had in the garden of Eden. That is to be full of divine Love, to know only the Peace of God's Will as our own, and to accept the REAL, not the "WHAT COULD BE". It is through embracing the WHAT IS that we begin to heal and perform miracles for ourselves and others, and in healing we begin to merge our Will with God's and good things manifest for us.

This new knowledge of the Truth goes quite a long way toward breaking down the wall I have between the Forgiveness I have been granted and passing it along to someone who hurt me to the core. But what is that pain, truly? Does that stem from the aforementioned expectations that a man married to my mother ought to treat her children as his own - to feed and care for them, to love them as he loves himself as one of God's children? That he should not raise his fist in anger, or manipulate the children in his care into believing his actions are their fault, or their mother's fault for not meeting his 'natural needs'?

If I were to strip away everything that is inherent in the terminology of 'step-father' what is left but another of God's children? Tears come into my eyes as I type this, and that niggling voice in my head wants to rear her ugly head and scream "so it IS my fault! I KNEW IT!" yet even as a child we are taught certain expectations - how could I not expect the goodness of a father figure, or at least the hope of one? The thought leads to contemplation: my religious/spiritual upbringing was absent at best, negligent at worst. I knew my mother owned a Bible, and that at one point we had been Jehovah's Witnesses but beyond that I was left to question the existence of God entirely. Perhaps if I had been taught that there is only ONE father-figure and He is not on this plane I might not have had such high expectations for the male figure I did have.

However, I forgive my past and what I was not taught, for I am gaining the knowledge now, when I need it most. And I am so infinitely grateful that God has been there the entire time just waiting for me to See Him and return to His fold.