And after a while, grief turned to fury and fury to contempt.
Now, years and tons of emotional and spiritual work later, I can look back and see that long after the actual injury had receded, my bitterness continued to poison. Good grief, on paper we rebuilt, rebounded, recovered in every other way. In fact, we thrived in our next season. Ancillary relationships were either restored or appropriately culled, and there were no tangible effects left to mend.
And yet, despite the outward healing—new job, new location, new mission, new partners, new season—inwardly, I was still unraveling. I continued to have furious conversations in my head, ones I’d never actually voice. I replayed the worst parts of the story, defending and countering, supplying fresh new life to my anger for years. I reveled in every disparaging bit of gossip I heard and cast God on “my side,” allowing my role in the melee to shrink and the wrongs against me to inflate. I granted all my extra energy to maintaining the offense, and it turned me into a bitter cynic.
I specifically remember Brandon walking into the bathroom while I was staring in the mirror, perfecting my Face of Fury but Also Nonchalance because I don’t really care obviously and giving a speech to my reflection. Out loud. I was practicing my righteous confrontation and massaging my finer points, making sure my body language communicated both aggression and authority while still oozing with all nine gifts of the Spirit. I don’t care what Brandon said about this imaginary altercation (something about being an unstable mad hatter blah blah blah); I was totally winning that argument, and there was no way he could prove I wasn’t. I was in hard-core training, like a professional athlete.
Thus the eroding effect of unforgiveness.
I approach this tender topic with caution, because I know some sins against you were heinous, good reader. Some were “unforgivable” in a court of law or in the long tale of public opinion. Perhaps your abuser went unpunished, your betrayer is unrepentant. Some wounds have visceral effects financially and structurally. Certain wounds hurt feelings, some hurt bodies, some entire families. There are degrees of harm, and not all pain is equal. Our paths to health vary, but we all have this common denominator as the foundation of healing:
Forgiveness.
Oh, it is so terrible, isn’t it? Just awful. It is the one thing we don’t want to give. Maybe it helps to discuss what forgiveness is not first. Let it be said: forgiveness is not condoning evil, not forgetting, not brushing something under the carpet, not a free pass. It does not mean minimizing the injury and, consequently, your pain. It doesn’t shrink an offense down, making it smaller in memory, in impact. It doesn’t shrug off loss with a “no real harm, no real foul” response. It does not mean conceding, surrendering to a different version, or yielding your right to dignity. It never communicates that this didn’t happen, it didn’t matter, or it didn’t harm.
Furthermore, it might not mean reconciliation. Some breaches are restored and relationships mended, but some are not safe. They may never be safe. The other person may be entirely unsorry, and there is no path to harmony. Forgiving chronic abusers does not include jumping back into the fire while it is still burning; that is not grace but foolishness. Forgiveness operates in an entirely different lane than reconciliation; sometimes those roads converge and sometimes they never meet. Forgiveness is a one-man show.
One last thing: forgiveness rarely equals a one-and-done decision. Very few decide one day to forgive and never have to revisit that release. In most cases, it is a process that takes months and sometimes years of work, and just when you think you have laid an offense down, it creeps back up in memory and you have to battle it anew. Just because this work is stubborn does not mean you are failing or will never be free. Forgiveness is a long road in the same direction.
Do you ever get the impulse to hang on for dear life? Like someone should stand guard over your injury, and if no one else will, you better? Nurturing anger feels fair, a witness to injustice, like it might hold an open door for acknowledgment or forthcoming repentance or confirmation. If you forgive, where is your justice? Where is your apology? How will this ever be made right? Keeping an offender on the hook leaves room for judgment, which we want deferred for our own sins but rigorously applied to those inflicted on us.
But I’ve learned keeping someone on the hook really only keeps me on the hook. In attempting to lock up an offender, I imprison myself, captive to anger, defensiveness, and pain, replaying a story that becomes a mental loop I cannot escape from, trapping other innocent relationships and scenarios in a toxic spiral that poisons everything. I act out of woundedness instead of freedom, which makes me paranoid and suspicious, crushing everything Christlike and tender and creating a worse mess than I had in the first place. God called us to a forgiving path, not only for a mended community but also for mended human hearts.
Brennan Manning wrote, “This is the God of the gospel of grace. A God who, out of love for us, sent the only Son He ever had wrapped in our skin. He learned how to walk, stumbled and fell, cried for His milk, sweated blood in the night, was lashed with a whip and showered with spit, was fixed to a cross, and died whispering forgiveness on us all.”1 Jesus walked this sacred road first; we cannot claim His mercies without also claiming His practices. We mustn’t expect a resurrected life when we skip over the cost, the commission, the cross.
Back when I was nurturing my anger, I’d spend a good half day replaying, remembering words, conversations, correspondence. I practiced comebacks and defensive maneuvers, poking holes in the other story like a State Champion debater. I’d reread e-mails and talk through it all yet again with Brandon or whoever would listen, God bless and keep anyone near me during that season. I expended a great deal of energy, getting worked up again, re-furious, re-hurt. I mourned fresh an apology that was never coming. If I was feeling it, I worked up some tears. I tidied up the narrative a bit more, removing nuance and defining motives, leaving me cleaner and the offender dirtier than we actually were. I imagined catastrophe befalling that person, which made me profoundly happy.