And Then a Woman Forgives More Than I Ever Have
I’m a big advocate of forgiving as much as you can, as soon as you can.
Which doesn’t mean forgiveness comes easy for me. Or that I’m particularly good at it.
Slowly, grudgingly, as I’ve grown older, I’ve developed thicker skin. It makes the slightly-older Sarah a little stronger and less penetrable than her younger self.
But there are still days I suck at forgiveness.
What’s important to me in the hardest scenarios is that I never give up. That I keep healing, keep maturing, and keep trying again. That I keep coming back to the possibility of forgiving more where I’ve failed in the past.
I’m committed to this not only because of the wisdom of the Bible on the subject, but also because–practically speaking–there is a significant cost in not forgiving. There’s a cost to the perpetrator of my hurt, sure, but just as much…bearing grudges long term traps anger inside of me, where the only person it can hurt…is me.
That’s why I am thankful for stories like this one, from Laurie Coombs. She has stretched herself and dug deep for the kind of hard-to-understand forgiveness that ushers in freedom of spirit for both victim and perpetrator in one fell swoop.
Here’s some of her story:
“I forgive you.” I read the words again. “I forgive you.” These weren’t just lightly said words from someone I had hurt with some casual remark. These words had come from the daughter of the man I had shot and killed eleven years earlier. [Tweet that]
Suddenly, the enormity of what I had done punched me right in the gut. Tears came, guilt threatened to overwhelm me. What had I done? How could I have done it? I asked God these same questions: how, why? He had always responded the same way Laurie did, “I forgive you.” I had taken that forgiveness for granted, I mean I knew His word in 1 John 1:9 said if we confess our sins, God is faithful to forgive us, but the cost of that forgiveness began to sink in. And how did that explain Laurie forgiving me?