Forgiveness is a verb

Forgiveness is hard work. I don't think many people dispute that. But one of the things I find particularly hard about it is the way you find yourself having 'lost' the forgiveness, which you struggled so hard to construct in the first place.

You make a decision, after much agony, prayer, frustration and so forth to forgive someone. You make this decision with a clear mind: you know that the way they have sinned against you is going to have an ongoing impact on your life. There are ways in which you will not function as you should because of the way they have treated you. There are things you will never do because of this person's actions. There are going to be painful results from this sin against you for the rest of your life.

If you are Christian, then you know how much your life is embedded in forgiveness - how much it relies on forgiveness. Forgiveness is precious to you. Because Jesus died for you, you are forgiven and the rotten things you've done aren't counted against you. And Jesus tells us to love with his kind of love, which among other things forgives. So, you decide to forgive this person. And then, if you are like me, it takes ages to work out what that is. You paraphrase it so it makes sense to you - you think 'I will absorb the evil' and work out how to do that in concrete terms. You try for reconciliation if that is possible, and if not, you try and work out the best alternative, and start to weed out the desire for and dreams of vengeance, which might be lurking about.

And you forgive.

And then, a few years later, you find yourself wanting to go a few rounds with this person and really take them down. They haven't changed. You didn't expect them to. They haven't any intention of changing or taking responsibility, or anything at all which might make this easier. You had a fairly good idea that might be the case way back when you made the decision.

And here you are wanting blood! You are right back where you started. All this 'forgiving' hasn't worked and has just been a waste of time and energy.

But I don't think that is exactly the case. Once you make the decision, it sets up a category in your head. This bubbling anger which is emerging is picked up by an internal alarm, which only exists because you did make the initial decision. And I think it is easier to go over old ground rather than hoe it from scratch. You can rearrange your thinking again because you've done it before and know the shape of it now.

Forgiveness is hard for so many reasons. Not least because things like this sneak up and jump on your back when you thought you had it all sorted. Forgiveness isn't something you can just do once, it's something you keep on deciding to do and working out how to do as each day dawns.