Empowering Yourself

Forgiveness, Letting Go, Marriage, Relationships 0

Recognize that what your partner does is a problem, but it’s not the problem.  The problem is how you react to what your partner does.  If you make your partner the problem, all you can do is hope that he changes or try to get him to change.  That’s a disempowered position.  As you increase your ability to respond to the negative things your partner does, you are going to empower yourself and increase your own self-esteem.  This single concept is the driving principle behind almost all books on improving relationships.

— Ellyn Bader, PhD, and Peter T. Pearson, PhD, Tell Me No Lies, p. 141

Speaking to Others with Kindness

Compassion, Forgiveness, Love, Marriage, Relationships 0

Whenever possible, you want to speak of your lover and your relationship with kindness.  That is the overarching message of this book.  Look for any way you can be kind to the person you share your life with.  Don’t be tempted to say nasty things when your lover screws up or to put your lover down when he or she fails….  Setting boundaries and expressing ourselves is good, but talking about our relationship negatively and highlighting our lover’s failings is bad….

Remember that what comes out of your mouth says more about your character than it does about your partner’s….  We think that we are describing our lover’s weaknesses, but our words and actions are actually showing our own….

The truth is that we can choose how we talk to and about our partner.  Sadly, many people choose to discuss their lover negatively….  A lot of relationships struggle with the cost of holding a grudge and the sense of blame it causes.  Getting rid of the blame quickly and regularly is hugely important if you want your relationship to thrive and move forward.

Dr. Fred Luskin, Forgive for Love, p. 201-203

Set Yourself Free

Forgiveness, Healing, Letting Go 0

Nothing clarifies boundaries more than forgiveness.  To forgive someone means to let him off the hook, or to cancel a debt he owes you.  When you refuse to forgive someone, you still want something from that person, and even if it is revenge that you want, it keeps you tied to him forever.

— Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend, Boundaries, p. 134

Recommitting

Forgiveness, Letting Go, Love, Marriage, Relationships 0

A good relationship is worth the effort of letting go of an annoying trait in your partner and being as kind as possible to this person you are connected to.  Those two ideas are central to your marriage vows.  A marriage is a choice to recommit to your partner every day.  Every spouse, whether recovering from a brutal betrayal or simply dealing with a sloppy partner, decides every day wehter to get up and dance with that partner again.  Every marriage goes through periods when each partner is not sure about continuing it. . . .  Forgiveness is based upon a continual recommitment to your relationship.  Forgiveness comes after grieving your losses, and it allows you to move forward in your relationship with happiness and a positive attitude.  This is true whether the losses were big (your spouse is a drug addict) or little (your lazy partner never does the grocery run) or somewhere in between — as when you accept the fact that you married a slob, you have grieved the neat person you should have married, and you have recommitted to the lovable human being you chose to be with.

Recommitting is an ongoing process; you have to recommit every time your lover says the same dumb thing again and you react with your same exasperated sigh.  You have to recommit when your lover is late yet again, or leaves a cheap tip for the third time in a week.  If your partner does something annoying but ultimately insignificant, acknowledge your dismay or loss for an instant and then connect right back again.  Try saying something to help put the annoyance in perspective and get back in the game.  You could remind yourself that “she’s worth it,” or “it was no big deal.”  Most of the time you don’t even need to let your lover know he or she has done anything wrong.

— Dr. Fred Luskin, Forgive for Love, p. 199-200

Forgiveness as a Way of Life

Forgiveness 0

Forgiveness doesn’t stand alone, as a punctual act or even as an isolated practice.  That would be too passive an understanding of what forgiveness is all about.  Rather, it is embedded in a way of life that is committed to overcoming evil by doing good.

— Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge, p. 189-190

Forgiveness and Repentance

Forgiveness 1

Repentance is important, even indispensable, and it is indispensable because forgiveness is an event between people, not just an individual’s change of feelings, attitudes, or actions.  Instead of being a condition of forgiveness, however, repentance is its necessary consequence.

If they imitate the forgiving God, forgivers will keep forgiving, whether the offenders repent or not.  Forgivers’ forgiving is not conditioned by repentance.  The offenders’ being forgiven, however, is conditioned by repentance — just as being given a box of chocolate is conditioned by receiving that box of chocolate.  Without repentance, the forgivers will keep forgiving but the offenders will remain unforgiven, in that they are untouched by that forgiveness.

Why?  Because they refuse to be forgiven. . . .  Unrepentant offenders implicitly say:  It’s wrong for you to forgive me; I’ve done you no wrong.  Or more brazenly, they say:  I don’t care if you forgive or not, because I don’t care whether I’ve wronged you or not.  Mostly, however, they say:  I am too ashamed of the wrongdoing I’ve committed to repent, too afraid of the consequences that may befall me.  In all three cases, forgiveness is rejected. . . .

That it is difficult to repent genuinely will not come as a surprise to those who have pondered the gravity and power of human sin.  One of sin’s most notable features is that it unfailingly refuses to acknowledge itself as sin.  We usually not only refuse to admit the wrongdoing and to accept guilt, but seem neither to detest the sin committed nor feel very sorry about it.  Instead, we hide our sin behind multiple walls of denial, cover-up, mitigating explanations, and claims to comparative innocence.

The accusations of others reinforce our propensity to hide sin.  We usually do all we can to justify ourselves, and that reaction is understandable.  We fear the consequences of sin.  We may lose a good reputation or be punished.  We cannot bear to face ourselves as wrongdoers.  We fear that the integrity of our very selves might crumble under the weight of our offense.  That’s why we are often able to repent only when we are assured that our guilt will be lifted and charges will not be pressed against us.  In other words, we are able to genuinely repent only when forgiveness has first been extended to us. . . .

Forgiveness does not cause repentance, but it does help make repentance possible.

— Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge, p. 183-186

Positive Intention

Compassion, Core Value, Forgiveness, Healing, Joy, Love, Relationships 0

The good news is that as we connect to our positive intention, we begin to find forgiveness.  Forgiveness is the compassion we experience as we remind ourselves that by driving a car — having a relationship — we run the risk of a breakdown.  Forgiveness is the power we get as we assert that we have a deep well of resilience to draw upon.  Forgiveness is the grace that helps us remember to look around while we’re on the side of the road and appreciate our beautiful surroundings and the people we love.  To help forgiveness emerge, we can learn to see ourselves from the point of view of our positive intention, not primarily as a wounded or rejected lover.

— Dr. Fred Luskin, Forgive for Love, p. 190

Returning Home

Forgiveness, God, Healing, Love 0

Although claiming my true identity as a child of God, I still live as though the God to whom I am returning demands an explanation.  I still think about his love as conditional and about home as a place I am not yet fully sure of.  While walking home, I keep entertaining doubts about whether I will be truly welcome when I get there.  As I look at my spiritual journey, my long and fatiguing trip home, I see how full it is of guilt about the past and worries about the future.  I realize my failures and know that I have lost the dignity of my sonship, but I am not yet able to fully believe that where my failings are great, “grace is always greater.”  Still clinging to my sense of worthlessness, I project for myself a place far below that which belongs to the son.  Belief in total, absolute forgiveness does not come readily. . . .

One of the greatest challenges of the spiritual life is to receive God’s forgiveness.  There is something in us humans that keeps us clinging to our sins and prevents us from letting God erase our past and offer us a completely new beginning.  Sometimes it even seems as though I want to prove to God that my darkness is too great to overcome.  While God wants to restore me to the full dignity of sonship, I keep insisting that I will settle for being a hired servant.  But do I truly want to be restored to the full responsibility of the son?  Do I truly want to be so totally forgiven that a completely new way of living becomes possible?  Do I trust myself and such a radical reclamation?  Do I want to break away from my deep-rooted rebellion against God and surrender myself so absolutely to God’s love that a new person can emerge?  Receiving forgiveness requires a total willingness to let God be God and do all the healing, restoring, and renewing.  As long as I want to do even part of that myself, I end up with partial solutions, such as becoming a hired servant.  As a hired servant, I can still keep my distance, still revolt, reject, strike, run away, or complain about my pay.  As the beloved son, I have to claim my full dignity and begin preparing myself to become the father.

— Henri J. M. Nowen, The Return of the Prodigal Son:  A Story of Homecoming, p. 52-53

The Forgiving Father

Forgiveness, God 0

We are so familiar with the Parable of the Prodigal Son that we forget part of the message, and that is the response of the elder brother.  As I read and reread Scripture it seems evident that God is far more loving than we are, and for more forgiving.  We do not want God to forgive our enemies, but Scripture teaches us that all God wants is for us to repent, to say, “I’m sorry, Father.  Forgive me,” as the Prodigal Son does when he comes to himself and recognizes the extent of his folly and wrongdoing.  And the father rejoices in his return.

Then there’s the elder brother.  We don’t like to recognize ourselves in the elder brother who goes off and sulks because the father, so delighted at the return of the younger brother, prepares a great feast.  Punishment?  A party!  Because the younger brother has learned the lesson he has, in a sense, already punished himself.  But, like the elder brother, we’re apt to think the father much too lenient.

— Madeleine L’Engle, And It Was Good, quoted by Carole F. Chase in Glimpses of Grace, p. 144-145