Or… How Shall We Then Forgive? Part 3

I’ve been reflecting more on my last post: the slow pace of relaxing my death grip on unforgiveness. If some of you want to tap out and learn about forgiveness from someone a little more skilled, you will not offend me in the slightest.

Corrie Ten Boom recounts the time she was speaking, and afterwards was approached by a former Nazi prison guard from the camp where she and her sister had been horribly abused and her sister eventually died. Her process was a lot faster than mine. Probably Corrie Ten Boom made it into the gifted track, while I placed in Forgiveness for Remedial Learners. Not that it’s a competition.

The factors that influence the varied lengths of our forgiveness journeys are a bit of a mystery. We all learn at different speeds. Add to that the complexities of each unique situation: the degree of injury that was sustained, the level of intimacy in the relationship that was violated, and the relative honesty and remorse (or lack thereof) in the offender. And then of course we have to reckon with the fact that the Holy Spirit is a free agent who works in different ways at different times.

All that to say, it became important to me to acknowledge that there is a variety. Everyone’s path of forgiveness will look a little different, I think. And that’s OK. Really. I’m OK with the fact that it took me a while to get the hang of it.

A teacher once told me that often the best teachers are those who struggled with the subject as a student. So I’m going to keep on writing about forgiveness, even though (and maybe especially because) it is a skill which came with a lot of difficulty for me. If you are finding forgiveness difficult, I hope that puts a little air under your wings.