I forgive it all as it comes back to me

Oh hey friends.

My family and I are in the middle of packing up to go on a 16 hour road trip to Georgia to celebrate my nana’s 90th birthday. Yes, it’s crazy. Yes, we will probably have some regrets. But right now, the energy is high and we’re excited!

But before I get into a car with five kids and overstimulate myself into a vegetative state, I wanted to share some thoughts with you.

I think I’ve told you before that during my PTSD recovery from the girls’ birth and NICU stay, some unexpected childhood wounds came to the surface. When I would remember, my body would enter this agitated state and the only emotion that I could name was anger. A memory would come, I would feel it, think about it, and “let it go.” Except, I didn’t really.

Every good therapist will tell you that anger is a secondary emotion. What I was really feeling was betrayal, disappointment, sadness, grief, loss. Over time, those memories that resurfaced formed a new lens for my life. The rediscovery of my childhood led to some good things - like getting diagnosed with ADHD (inattentive type) - but it also led to a reframing of my life that wasn’t always helpful. I went through some hurtful personal things last year. The pain and rejection I felt from those experiences made me feel like I was crumbling from the inside out.

Like old plaster cracking, peeling, falling apart.

All those wounds left untreated festered into anger and hardened over so many good things in my life. All it took was a push and I began to see my whole life and my whole identity as existing in that old, crumbly, unstable plaster. My anger was ready. It just needed one more reason.

I tried to understand. I tried to find the pattern. I tried not to be hurt. I’ve had a lot of pain in my life, but this was personal, layered, and complicated. It was eating me from the inside out and then right back in. The anger was justified, but it was killing me.

Anger left unchecked will devastate your life. It’s an involuntary response, but (like every emotion) anger is an energy that you release into the world and into your immediate atmosphere. It’s what we mean when we say, “her anger was palpable.” It means we can feel it, even if we can’t see it or hear it.

I don’t want to carry that energy, that presence of anger, with me into my parenting or my marriage or my friendship or my work. I don’t want it in my house! I want my life to be a place of peace and that doesn’t come easily because the cure for anger is forgiveness.

:: and I kind of hate forgiving ::

But forgiveness isn’t my gift to give to someone else, it’s a gift I give to myself. It’s a gift that’s been given to me a hundred thousand times.

Forgiveness isn’t saying, “what you did was ok.”
It’s saying, “You don’t owe me anything anymore.”

For those of us who walk with Christ, forgiveness is nothing more than passing someone else’s debt to you onto Jesus. It’s not your responsibility anymore. It’s not your debt to claim. When we forgive, we’re no longer tied to the people who harmed us. They’re free to live with what they did and you’re free to not worry about them paying for what they did.

It’s hard. But it’s so liberating.

When I remember painful moments, I don’t ruminate on them. I let them go. I forgive it all as it comes back to me, as my favorite Ethel Cain song says.

I feel the sting of a painful moment, I take a breath, and as I let it go, I forgive. That moment is free to exist in my past without my anger and without my need for someone else to make it right. I don’t need it to be made right to be free.

I’m just free.