A Mature Forgiveness Allows that Sometimes, Other People Won't Forgive

 

If we are the one being refused forgiveness, and find ourselves on the receiving end of someone’s hardened heart, we forgive that too, remembering the instances before our own maturity in which we, too, found it emotionally impossible to discern anything but how we were offended. 

In the grace that acknowledges “I’ve been there,” we accept another person’s unforgiving stance with patience, void of derision. 

But we do move on from it in the spirit that says, 

“When and if they are ready, they can indicate a move towards reconciliation. And I will respond in kind.” 

“In kind” means we, too, in our newfound and hard-won attitude of forgiveness, indicate a move towards reconciliation as well. 

This does not, however, obligate us to—or even recommend—a “return to the way things were,” or to become a doormat. The healthy boundaries we’ve learned to establish must remain in order to prevent a repeat of the conflict or the “same-old same-old” way of interacting.  

Authentic reconciliation assumes and attains a positively reciprocal transformed state of persons and relationships in order to prevent a lapse back into discord or pulling away.

And when we have sent our indications of apology and forgiveness, we wait. 

We give the other person the time and space to figure all of this out the same way we had to, holding no expectations for them one way or the other. 

We give them the grace to continue to nurse their wounds in ongoing un-forgiveness, or to work out their interpersonal discomfort or trust issues. 

But we do move on. 

As the Apostle Paul recommends, we run now with endurance the race set before us, untangled—finally—from a past that is forgiven and thus put to bed, never to be revisited again, and also from ongoing un-forgiveness maintained by certain of our fellow humans. 

We run in joy and peace. Not to escape, but in having at last escaped. 

We run. And we don’t look back. 

Copyright Barb Harwood