Forgiveness
by Diane Bell
I came to Al-Anon filled with rage, bitterness, and resentment. Every significant person in my life had wronged me, including some perfect strangers. I wore my anger like a badge of honor and used it as my shield of protection from all other feelings that might be painful.
There was always a lot of talk about forgiveness in my meetings. One night at a meeting I finally heard what someone meant when he made the familiar statement that the only person harmed by his bitterness and resentment was himself. I saw the perpetual frown on my face and felt the cutting edge of my sarcasm. I spent over a year working on forgiving people who had hurt me. I was convinced that if only I could forgive my parents and my estranged husband, everything would be okay with me. It seemed an impossible job to accomplish. As soon as I worked through one resentment on my list, there were two new ones to replace it. I was still super defensive and quick to criticize and judge other people.
Frustrated with myself, I took a new approach. I would not worry about forgiveness any longer. I had pretty much decided that people who had done wrong didn't need my forgiveness, they needed God's forgiveness, so I'd just leave that between them and their Higher Power. In the meantime, I would work on not adding new resentments to my list. What a job! In order to do that I had to actually pay attention to what was happening right then and there. I had to be aware of my feelings, and I had to lend acceptance and understanding to my relationships with other people in my life. It was not an easy task for me, but I got better and better at it as time went by. Yet there was still some anger and bitterness within me toward my family. I hated that. I wanted to be free of the bad feelings that I had carried around for so long. The bad feelings that I had carried around. The bad feelings that I had.
The light came on. This had nothing to do with them or anything that they had done. It had everything to do with me. I am the one who kept score. I am the one who never forgot. I am the historian who recorded every hurtful deed. I am the repository who stored each dreadful deed. I am the one who persisted in holding on to the bad feelings. I am the one who orchestrated the guilt and blame cycle within me.
I reached for my ODAT (One Day at A Time in Al-Anon) and began surfing the index to find help in dealing with the horrible guilt and shame I felt. Did you know that there's only one page on forgiveness in the ODAT? April 29th. And that one page says everything I needed to hear about forgiveness. I began to pray, "Oh, God, please forgive me and help me to forgive myself for what I've done." Forgiveness came in huge waves of emotional release, replaced by the healing relief of serenity and being at peace with myself. Sometime after that, or maybe at that very moment, empathy and compassion were added to my understanding and acceptance of other people. Forgiving my parents and my ex-husband has never again been an issue for me. All that I needed was to forgive myself and God handled the rest of it.
© Diane Bell
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