Forgiveness

Do you think any Jews ever forgave Hitler? Do you think Hitler deserved forgiveness? How can anyone forgive someone who murdered more than six million people? History is filled with deeply flawed humans, mass murderers, sadists, conquerors who pillaged and raped thousands of others.  I decided one time that if God allowed Hitler to go to heaven then I was going in the opposite direction. According to the Old Testament when there were only four people on the earth, one of them murdered another. That was a foreshadowing of what were things to come. So the world has a dark side. We’re supposed to forgive people who have damaged us deeply. That’s part of the healing process. But sometimes it seems like an impossible thing to ask.

When I was in recovery I drove four hours north of where I lived to my father’s grave. I spent several hours screaming at him and crying till I had no tears left. I dumped everything that had happened to me, as a result of his raping and beating me for five teen years, on his doorstep. I gave him no wriggle room. At the end, before I left, I told him that I would forgive him if he would help me get a movement started for others who had been sexually abused. I told him I would forgive him if he helped me get my words published in books that would help others.

When I decided to start the Lamplighter Movement the first person to contact me after seeing my website lived in International Falls, MN. She wanted to start a chapter and she wanted me to come back and do three days of speaking engagements. I went back and while I was there I asked her, “Do you know where I was born?” When she said no, I responded, “My father delivered me at home in this little town in the middle of a snowstorm.” What are the chances of a small town where I was born being the home of the first chapter of The Lamplighter Movement? There is no doubt in my mind that my father was trying to atone for what he had done. I forgave him.

Forgiving my mother was more difficult. She knew what my father was doing and failed to come to my rescue. In fact, she blamed me and frequently goaded my father into beating me with his large leather belt as punishment for what he was doing. But I forgave her. As my daughter once said, “Why should I let her live rent free in my head?”

The man who sexually abused my two older daughters, the man wearing a ski mask who raped my youngest daughter at gunpoint and my third husband, one of the most cruel and sadistic humans I have ever known, one who subjected me to horrors that I can hardly believe I lived through — these are more difficult to forgive. How can I forgive three men who did unbelievable horrors to those I love and to me? I have pondered on this; I have prayed on this; I have agonized over this.

Webster says forgive means to give up resentment of or claim to requital for, to cease to feel resentment. One can only do what one can only do. I know that keeping negative energy inside of me is damaging to my health. Destructive emotion is one of the primary causes of disease. In two of the cases they had suffered child abuse; the part of me that is emotive feels sad about that. But I also know that I suffered child abuse and never abused anyone else. So they are not excused. For my own sake I am able to distance myself from those three men. I am able to be objective as if I am looking at diseased specimens in a petri dish. I can remove the human from all three and see them only as bodies, ones I want nothing to do with. And so I am able to give up resentment. I lock those men in my mind in a room with no keys, one with no windows and no doors so that effectively they cease to exist. That is how I was able to arrive at my version of forgiveness.  I have let resentment go and that is a good thing; it is the only thing I can do.

Many of those who have been sexually abused as a child have the same problem they must face. How to forgive the unforgiveable? Since I started the Lamplighter Movement I have heard from literally hundreds of people who have stories to tell, some much worse than I went through. My heart aches for them. I know they too struggle with the question. Can I forgive my perpetrator? If nothing else, you can do it for your sake, not for theirs. Humans are flawed, some so deeply flawed that it is a permanent path they are on and in their wake they leave so many that have been perpetrated. But we must keep our eye on the sun. Think of the journey towards wellness you are taking. Think of the wonderful world out there that can be yours for the asking if only you too can find a way to forgive. Robert Louis Stevenson once wrote: The world is so full of a number of things; I’m sure we should all be happy as kings. When I was in recovery I repeated that sentence a thousand times, always telling myself that one day that would be me. Today it is.

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