How to Forgive Someone

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Hi, I’m Deidre. Every week, I write or podcast about theology, poetry, or the re-enchantment of life. I believe that life is more wondrous than we realize and that heaven is far closer than we imagine. If that’s your jam, I hope you’ll subscribe.

Our pastor recently led our congregation through a simple prayer to help us forgive the people in our lives who have harmed us, who’ve let us down, who’ve responded with cruelty when we’ve needed love.

And on the way home, as the kids bickered in the back seat and Ethan asked, “What did you think of that service today?” I lowered my eyes and admitted that I couldn’t do it.

“I tried,” I said. “I really wanted to. I tried to go along with the steps, to say the words. But I just—I don’t think I actually forgave them. It still feels all tight here when I try to say their names.” I put my hand on my chest.

Do you know how heavy it feels to carry around all the people who’ve ever hurt you? They take up a lot of space: They clog up your arteries, they quarrel around in your ribcage, and their arms and legs are all knotted up with your insides; there isn’t room for them and yet they stay anyway. Your body isn’t just your own—you end up lugging around the same people you’d like to never see again.

And they’re always with you, contaminating the waters of your life.

In the morning, they hiss. In the afternoon, they sneer. And in the evening, they roar.

But boy, does it feel hard to let them go—as if breathing them out and wishing them well lets them get away with what they’ve done. We fear that if we don’t hold onto them, we’ll discredit our own suffering and injustice. But I tell you: the greatest injustice is to allow our beautiful, abundant lives to be mitigated by talking ghosts. It is a tragedy to cling to death when we were made for life.

I am not here to offer you a “just let it go” kind of pep talk, because I know there’s no “just” about it.

Instead, I’m going to invite you into a visualization practice that I stumbled upon while asking God to help me forgive those people I couldn’t seem to exhale.

If you happened to read How to Hear From God in March, you might think of this as a bit of a sequel, because you’ll see how God can speak through visual images to shift our perspective and heal us in places that words can’t reach. With that in mind, I’ll do my best to use these two-dimensional words to describe experiences with God in the fourth-dimension, knowing they’ll never fully contain him; the best thing I can do is urge you to taste and see for yourself.

Alright: here’s how the experience went.

I kissed the kids, called the dog, and said I needed to go out for a little walk. I have found walking to be an excellent time to talk with God and work out pressing issues.

When we came to the end of the driveway and turned onto the open road, I exhaled, and in my mind I said to God, “I want to forgive these people, but I can’t seem to. I think I need your help.”

He didn’t say anything, but I am beginning to learn that he will speak when (and how) he wants to and that it’s not my job to summons him, so the dog and I simply walked along, inhaling the wild roses and stopping periodically for pee breaks (him, not me).

A note on hearing from God: Dear friends, I want to relieve you of the burden of trying to conjure God. As I noted earlier this week:

“I’m reveling in this slow and delicious realization that we do not need to conjure God up.

He is here. He is “I AM.”

What would it feel like to do the breast stroke in the sure, deep waters of God—to let him hold us, rather than tiring ourselves with trying to control how he shows up?

I cannot tell you how restful this idea feels.”

Our job is simply to ask God to show up, and then watch out for him, knowing that he will show up—but in his own way, and in his own time. What a relief.

As we went along, the air felt just right. You know those moments when everything feels so agreeable—the temperature, the breeze, the birdsong, the aroma? I thought to myself, “If this is what earth can feel like, I can’t even imagine how heaven will feel,” and that’s when I saw an image of myself in my mind’s eye, walking through a green field that was awash in sunlight and flowers. And yet it wasn’t me as I am today, but as a child, and as I looked at her I knew she was the purest essence of me.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

I shook my head, thinking, “To be one of God’s children, walking through the wildflowers of his kingdom? What privilege, just to be counted among his children.” As I looked upon myself walking through this open field, I had the sense that this child—though neither famous, nor rich, nor influential—was prosperous and known, and utterly free.

God had begun to show up already—can you see it? My thoughts, which are usually consumed by unanswered emails, upcoming appointments, and whether I’ve remembered to take the meat out of the freezer, had turned to heaven. This is the work of the Spirit: he takes our chin and tilts it up, saying, “Look a little higher, child.”

When you’ve asked God to show up and are still waiting for him to appear, take notice when your thoughts shift like this. Do not shrug them off—lean in, and anticipate his coming.

As I looked upon this delightful version of myself, I heard a question in my spirit: Don’t you want this for everybody?

It was God, of course, and he was ready to speak.

I began to say yes, because I knew that was the right answer, but he stopped me mid-lie when he asked, “Oh? And what about [insert name of person I couldn’t forgive]?”

I felt that old tightening in my chest. My ghosts started to scream and kick. “No,” I conceded after a moment. “Not them. Not yet.”

And, because I could barely choke out the words, I whispered, “I want to, though. Help.”

And there, in my mind, I saw the first person I needed to forgive. They looked as I know them now, as an adult. I tried to go through the steps our pastor had taught us:

1. Say, “[Insert name], I forgive you for ___________.”

2. Say, “I release you.”

3. Say, “I bless you.”

But I could hardly say their name, and I certainly couldn’t say with any level of honesty that I forgave them. All I could do was feel them wreaking their havoc on my insides. I shook their image out of my mind. “God, I need help,” I said again, more urgently this time.

And now, I saw their face again, but they weren’t an adult anymore—they were a child. And as I looked into their eyes, I thought of myself as a child too, filled with hopes and uncertainties and dreams and questions, just doing the best I could as I went along and learned to be human.

God asked, “What about them now? Can you want goodness for this person?”

I began to cry, because yes—I did. I couldn’t look into the face of this child and want harm. I realized that the same adult who hurt me was once this child, once this vulnerable-hopeful-uncertain human who was still learning, just as I am, how to exist in this world. I thought of that child-like version of myself I’d seen walking through the sun-drenched field, feeling welcomed and free despite my own many failures, and the verse that says, “Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you,”¹ made sudden sense to me.

I nodded my head. “Okay,” I thought. “I’m ready this time.”

Seeing this person as a child made all the difference for me. It’s easy to resent an adult, thinking they should know better and they should behave better. But I once read that, emotionally-speaking, many of us are stuck at the age we were when we first experienced a trauma. And if that’s true, there are a lot of four-year-olds walking around this earth in adult bodies. Looking at it that way helps make it easier to respond with compassion, rather than hate and blame.

If you’re ready to walk through this forgiveness process too, it may help to picture the person you want to forgive as a child, as well.

I took a deep breath, then said aloud, “[So and so], I forgive you.” I held the picture of their young face in my mind, checked my gut to make sure it was true before continuing. I felt a sense of steadiness, so I went on:

“I forgive you for ______.” Again, I stopped. Was it true? Could I? Did I? Yes.

And then I said, “I release you.” I physically exhaled, pictured them coming out of me and going back into their proper place—their own lives, here in the real world. I imagined myself cutting the invisible string that had kept us tethered together, and already I could breathe better.

Finally—and this was the hardest part—I said, “I bless you. I want blessings for you.” I pictured them in that same glorious field I’d seen myself walking through, and I nodded my head. Yes. I wanted this for them too.

The moment I sent them off, I felt a sense of lightness in my chest, my brain, my soul, my toes; in fact, I felt like my toes could almost leave the ground. And yet there were still ghosts weighing me down; the process wasn’t through.

So I repeated it again, and then again, naming each of the people I’d been housing from resentment. There are more, God said.

Tell me who, I responded. I won’t stop until we’re through.

And out of the ether rose a list of names and offenses I thought I’d long forgotten, but there they were, little gut punches I’d harbored for years. “I forgive you, I release you, I bless you,” I said over and over and over.

By the time we got home from our walk, the dog was panting, but I was all but levitating. I had no idea how much offense I'd stored up in my soul, and only now that it was gone did I realize how much it had been burdening me.

Later that night, when the ghosts usually come knocking, I scanned the atmosphere for taunts—but there was only peace.

A final note on this: Over the next week, I found that my body and mind were continually returning to these evacuated ghosts, having grown so accustomed to hearing from them. Yours might, too. When this happens, gently remind yourself, “I released them. I blessed them.” Then smile, and remember your freedom.

I’m a seminary student pursuing my Master of Divinity. Posts like these are fueled by the incredible learning happening there. If you’d like to help support this learning, you could toss a dollar or two into my Seminary Tip Jar, which goes toward my tuition each semester. Thank you!

1. Colossians 3:13