Faith, Feelings, and My F-150, episode 11
The Healing Power of Forgiveness
Narrator: It was an unusually warm March morning as Alex drove to his worksite in Woodbury. The winter snow cover was melting, and patches of grass poked their way into the sunlight after weeks hidden from sight. It was a time of year every Minnesotan looks forward to. The spring thaw lifted the spirits of onsite contractors.
Alex was in a good mood, too. But it wasnât primarily because of the sight of green grass. It was because so much growth had been taking place in his life. It was now four months since Alex began listening to Laurenâs audiobook âWhat Made That Feel So Hard?â and journaling about the wounds of his past. There was something freeing about just writing down the pain he had experienced, and getting it on paper.
Over the past weeks, Alex had carefully unpacked each of his losses in prayer. He allowed himself to fully acknowledge how deeply each memory hurt. Alex reminded himself that God was present in each painful encounter. God felt all of Alex' confusion, shame, and anger. Alex realized that God's anger toward his father's abuse burned even stronger than his own. God had been there in the past to witness his pain, and was present now to bring healing and peace.
The sting of each loss gradually subsided. But the scars would always remain. They were part of who Alex is. But being a victim wasnât Alexâ only identity. Alex was also a victor, standing alongside Christ who won the victory on his behalf.
The chapter in Laurenâs audiobook that morning dealt with forgiveness. It came at just the right moment for Alex to hear it.
Lauren Wells: It is likely that being curious about your Grief Tower has led you to discover or remember people who intentionally or unintentionally hurt you. Perhaps it has made you realize that part of the reason those hard things felt so hard is because of the lack of care you received from the people who should have been nurturing you and holding you tight in your hardest moments.
A key piece of unstacking your tower is forgiving those who were directly or indirectly responsible for the blocks on there. As Lysa TerKeurst says in her book, Forgiving What You Canât Forget, âStaying here, blaming them, and forever defining your life by what they did will only increase the pain. Worse, it will keep projecting out onto others. The more our pain consumes us, the more it will control us. And sadly, itâs those who least deserve to be hurt whom our unresolved pain will hurt the most.â
Forgiveness may be something that takes time. It may be something that you mentally choose to do with your brain before your heart follows along. Healing is slow, and forgiveness is likely to be a gradual process. Allow yourself the time and space to wrestle with the concept without feeling guilt over forgiveness not coming quickly or easily.
Forgiving isnât forgetting what happened, deciding that it wasnât that bad, or making excuses for why they acted in that way. Instead, itâs âan intentional decision to let go of resentment and anger.â
That intentional decision doesnât have to feel like anything right away. It can be an entirely left-brained process until your right brain eventually catches up and decides to
believe it emotionally as well. Forgiveness also does not mean that you grant the person
physical or emotional access to your life. If they havenât shown that they are trustworthy, that access should still be limited. Access and forgiveness donât always go hand in hand.
A study on the impact of forgiveness on mental health showed clear correlation between forgiveness and measures of mental health and well-being on a clinical scale. Those who practiced intentional forgiveness experienced lower levels of depression and anxiety and higher levels of self-esteem. Remaining hostile and withholding forgiveness was linked to negative effects on cardiovascular health.
And hereâs where it gets really interesting: both the positive effects of forgiveness and the negative effects of unforgiveness are amplified when it involves forgiving yourself.
In other words, forgiving yourself for something youâve done can have powerfully positive effects on your physical and mental well-being â even more so than extending forgiveness to someone who wronged you.
Whether the unstacking process has uncovered feelings of hostility or resentment toward people who harmed you or toward yourself, carrying that forward will never lead to the healing that brings health and freedom into your life. That said, forgiveness often takes time, energy, and support. This may be an area that could benefit from professional support such as a counselor or a forgiveness support group, which provides a group setting in which a facilitator guides participants through the process of working to forgive.
Narrator: As soon as Alex heard this section, he knew he had to share it with his sister Alena. Alenaâs anger at their father ran much deeper than Alexâ. Alex was sure that her deep anger at their dad led to the end of both her marriages. And it probably led to her marrying two unhealthy men in the first place. Early on, Alena thought pretty much any man out there could give her the affection her father never did. In high school and beyond, she was quite flirtatious with any guy who would pay her attention. She became an easy mark for men who wanted pleasure without commitment.
And that led to two marriages that werenât based on genuine love. In both cases, Alena and her husbands were just looking for someone to fill up the empty voids in their hearts. And since they were all empty inside, they couldnât fill up anyone else. Both relationships ended with bickering, faultfinding, and mutual contempt.
By now, Alena believed that all men everywhere were jerks. There were no good men out there. Her negative beliefs about men became a self-fulfilling prophecy. No matter who she met, she would find imperfections in every man that confirmed her cynical views of manhood.
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Every year, Alenaâs list of grievances grew larger and larger. At first, she only had her father to be mad at. Over the years, she added to his abuse the many faults of her husbands, and of the other men she had dated. In many cases, her complaints were valid. These men really had taken advantage of her. But Alena was internalizing all that anger. It made her bitter and resentful. She was chronically lonely. But that was okay with her, because she believed there was hardly anyone out there worth befriending.
Alex had learned the hard way that forgiveness is a process. He totally agreed with what Lauren said, that at first we have to choose to forgive, even if we still feel the anger and hurt. That took Alex a long time, and every now and then the anger still popped to the surface. But for the most part, he had let it go. This chapter in Laurenâs book was so helpful that Alex wanted to share it with Alena.
On his drive home that evening, Alex sang some of his favorite worship songs. Alex wasnât a particularly gifted singer. You wouldnât want him on your worship team. But he knew that God gave him exactly the voice he wanted him to have, and enjoyed listening to his worship as much as anyone elseâs.
For Alex, worship had risen to a new level over the past four months. He was singing the same songs as before, by the same artists. It was Alex who was different. He always loved God. But that love was somehow muted by all the anger he harbored toward his father. Now that his anger was dissipating, there was a new freedom in worship that Alex had never experienced before.
The next chapter in Laurenâs audiobook discussed some of the physical benefits people experience through prayer and worship. She began by discussing how people she knew described the peace that comes from knowing God.
Lauren Wells: Some of the things I have heard from those Iâve worked with are:
⢠Feeling that they are a part of a bigger, purposeful story
⢠Feeling a supernatural peace and comfort when they spend time in prayer
⢠Relying on scripture for comfort through hardship, sometimes using scripture as combating narratives
⢠Believing that thereâs a higher power who will work things out for good in the end
⢠A spiritual focus on forgiveness helps them to move past a grief block more easily
Narrator:Lauren went on to discuss how gratitude can help us in the process of overcoming anger.
Lauren Wells: The spiritual discipline of gratitude can be an important piece of unstacking and healing. Gratitude has been shown to reduce depression and even improve physical health like blood pressureâŚ
Integrating gratitude into the unstacking process can be a helpful combination for healing. When doing this, we want to notice if weâre tempted to jump to gratitude as a way to avoid processing difficult emotions and instead learn how to hold both in tandemâŚ
Gratitude shouldnât be misunderstood as being grateful that the hard thing happened. There are horrors in life that shouldnât be sugar coated. Instead, weâre recognizing that while we may wish it had never happened, we can mine out something good that came from it. What good thing would not be in your life, or what character traits would you not possess to the extent that you now do, if that hard thing hadnât happened?
Narrator: Next, Lauren shared how prayer helps build emotional health.
Lauren Wells: Research has continually shown the positive impact of prayer practices on mental health. A study done on 44 participants looked at the impact of six weekly one-hour prayer sessions on depression and anxiety. Not only did the participantsâ depression and anxiety reduce after the six weeks of prayer sessions, but a repeat evaluation one year later showed that the prayer sessions had lasting effects on their mental health.
They showed âsignificantly less depression and anxiety, more optimism, and greater levels of spiritual experience than the baseline (pre-prayer) measures.â
Whether or not prayer is correlated with improved mental health outcomes is largely impacted by our perception of God. This is one of the reasons the process of understanding what our narratives about God are and how they came to be is important. Research found that those who pray frequently to a God they âperceive as a secure attachment figure derive clear mental health benefits, while those who pray to a God who is perceived as distant or unresponsive experience elevated levels of anxiety-related symptoms.â
Prayer as a spiritual practice has the potential to lead to positive mental health outcomes, but the determining factor in this is our narratives about God....
Narrator: One of the verses Alex learned in Sunday School was Philippians 4:6-7: âDo not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.â
Alex always believed this passage. But now he was experiencing it in his life at a deeper level. As he brought his struggle with anger before God, something began to shift. He gave thanks, even when it didnât seem there was much to be thankful for. And what the verse promised came true. God's peace became a sentry, guarding his thoughts and emotions. This wasn't the shallow calm Alex had known before, but something that remained steady even when painful memories resurfaced.
He wanted others to experience that peace, too. He knew friends who carried around their weight of anger like he used to. He felt drawn to share with them what he'd discovered.
It wouldnât be long before Alex would find an open door to do just that.
