Forgiveness
As I entered my second week at Alpha (more on that later, lovely people!), we were discussing the importance of forgiveness. My group expressed a variety of perpetrators in which they’d find it challenging to hold in anything but scorn, let alone forgive. Then the life-affirming question arrived at me, and I was encouraged (not forced!) to speak.
Admittedly I had my small audience on my side straight away. This person had made my (already traumatic) younger years difficult. Nowhere appeared safe, and at a time when technical advancements weren’t so prolific as they are now (not virtual bullying, I’m old to say!!) they still found a way to make my family and I’s lives troublesome.
The victimisation (because that’s how it felt) didn’t stop at early childhood, the world can be a small place at times, and again I would find them clinging on me. I wasn’t the only one to receive ill-treatment from this person, there were many victims. But this person was protected by the fact that things were ‘difficult at home’, like that excused such violent behaviour.
I went on to detail the things they had done to me. To my family. To my friends. Constructing little empathy for this wrongdoer. Angrily somebody cried out, “you’ve got to name them!”. But I couldn’t. Not to protect. Not to support. Not to empathise with their actions. I couldn’t give the name, because, well… this person was me. I was the person that I couldn’t find it in my heart to forgive.
Thankfully, though, I have a God that does forgive.