Aging with Forgiveness

“Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

Whenever we look back on our lives, and forward to how we’d like them to grow, we are likely to realize we need to forgive in order to continue to age gracefully. Maybe we need to let go of a past hurt. Maybe we need to forgive ourselves… or maybe God. No one who is holding a grudge or heavy guilt will age with grace.

First, we will look at forgiving others, then below consider how to forgive ourselves.

In the book, Everyone Needs to Forgive Somebody, Allen Hunt offers suggestions to help us discover whom we need to forgive and seven steps to assist in our journey of forgiveness.

1. Remember your own need for forgiveness.
2. Pick one thing you know you ought to forgive.
3. Ask God to saturate you with his grace to help you forgive.
4. If possible, engage the offender in direct, open, honest communication. Don’t accuse, focus on how you feel. Say, “I forgive you.” (Do this in your imagination if the person isn’t available.)
5. Follow your words with some act of reconciliation—perhaps a hug, handshake, or meal together.
6. To prevent the same hurts from occurring again, keep your lines of communication open, with clear, healthy boundaries and guidelines for your relationship.
7. Learn to forgive the small things—with friends, family, or coworkers. Be a person of grace. Don’t dwell on the hurts. Recognize you are still prone to mistakes as you become the-best-version-of-yourself, just as others are.

Forgiving others is a process, not usually a one-time decision. We will possibly fail, but then can try again. Here are a few practices that help me personally:

• Acknowledge to yourself the anger and hurt you feel. If possible, voice it calmly right away to the person who hurt you.
• Don’t continue to “lick the wound.” Dogs make their sores larger by doing this, and so do we when we dwell or obsess on them. Practice “thought stopping” when you find yourself doing this and instead—
• Pray for the person who hurt you. Place them in God’s care. Remind yourself you want to be a forgiver.

Letting Go of Guilt – Forgiving Ourselves

Fr. Peter Siamoo, a priest from Tanzania who studied and worked here in Portland, wrote a book called Restore Your Inner Peace: Personal Healing from Within. In Fr. Peter’s work as a counselor in hospitals and prisons, he found the inability to forgive oneself to be both prevalent and destructive. Perhaps we too have trouble letting go of our mistakes, weaknesses, and past sinfulness. Don’t we, in this study of Aging with Grace, also need to forgive ourselves?

He recommends steps:

1. Acknowledge what you’ve done.
2. Talk about it with a safe person, possibly a good friend, minister, or therapist.
3. Learn from it in order to grow and not repeat the mistake.
4. Make peace with it, not to justify the mistake but to become a wounded healer.
5. Ask for and accept forgiveness from God, who is loving and who readily forgives our transgressions when we sincerely ask for it.
6. Forgive yourself, remembering to love your neighbor as (well as) yourself.

Forgiving ourselves after a mistake is:

• An act of appreciation for God’s love and forgiveness.
• Self-love that restores our inner freedom and peace.
• A choice we make to acknowledge and accept God’s mercy and choose to treat ourselves better than what we think we deserve.
• Worth doing because we deserve a better life than carrying guilt around.
• A way of imitating God who has forgiven us, and
• Important to our being happy.
• Make amends to repair the damage and restore the relationship.

From this week on, let’s love ourselves enough to forgive ourselves… and others!

Blessings on your Lent! We’ve passed halfway!