That Complex Business of Forgiveness

I consider myself to be a pretty empathetic person, but forgiveness can throw me for a loop.

I don’t know if you’ve been following the case of the minister’s wife in Tennessee who shot her husband, but basically she testified that he was abusing her and ended up being convicted of manslaughter. She got out yesterday after serving a mere 67 days in a mental health facility. You can read more about it here. What’s crazy about this to me is how incredibly forgiving the system has been to a woman who admitted that she shot her husband. I absolutely believe that he abused her, and I find no excuse for that, but I really can’t believe that killing a man is only worth two and a half months in a mental health facility.
What's the Cost of Forgiveness: cuz I only have five bucks, and I'm not giving it all to you
Yesterday I wrote about how it’s Elul now, we’re gearing up for Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur, and we need to shape up our interpersonal relationships. Unfortunately, part of preparing for the high holidays is asking for forgiveness from people you’ve wronged, and forgiving the people who ask you. I say unfortunately because this is not an easy or fun task. I can’t think of anything I dread more than the September phone calls to family members or current friends with whom I’ve had a falling out. I ask for forgiveness, and genuinely want to be forgiven, but I have a really hard time forgiving things that happen to me. I am pretty much the queen of holding grudges. And I guess that explains why I can’t believe the minister’s wife is out on probation—it seems crazy to me that the system wouldn’t have much of a grudge to hold against someone who admits to murder.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that I think grudges can be useful. Sometimes staying annoyed at people who have annoyed or hurt you in the past makes sense. It’s a defense mechanism, a way of protecting yourself from getting hurt again. And it seems that grudges hold a pretty central spot in Jewish texts, even. When we’re taught to remember that evil that Amalek did to us and to destroy every bit of them, when we’re taught to constantly tell the story of our slavery in Egypt, we’re being asked to hold grudges that are thousands of years old. And we hold those grudges for important reasons—safety and sense of identity.

The thing about forgiveness, though, is that it comes both ways. On those times when I seriously fuck something up, and then I step up and apologize to the person I’ve wronged, I can’t imagine how frustrated, sad and angry it would make me if someone told me they couldn’t or wouldn’t forgive me. When you muster up the courage to make yourself vulnerable to a friend, being stomped on is extra-painful.

These days I’m really good at apologizing and asking to be forgiven, and it has turned me into more of a forgiver than I ever was before. I still hold grudges and sometimes fake forgive people, but I’ve found that the more you choke out an apology and hope for the best, the more likely you’ll be able to give up the grudge against your great aunt Ida. And when you can’t let the grudge go, you can acknowledge it without letting it run your life. I learned a lot about this from a great article by a great blogger over at the Yoga Journal (I know, I’m so crunchy).

Forgiving is supposed to be easy, and it’s not. But I like my system of embracing my grudge just before I kick its ass to the curb. Anyone else have some tips on how to “let go and let God”?