Forgiveness is not something that is easy. Forgiveness takes a lot of charity. You often feel that the offender needs to apologize in order to forgive them. But in the times that forgiveness is the most necessary, that apology will never come. There is this misconception that forgiveness benefits the other person, when I guarantee you, it will benefit yourself far, far more.
Over the course of my recovery, I have had hundreds (literally) of people who have wronged me, betrayed me, abandoned me, retaliated against me for no fault of Shannon's own. Yes, the TBI has likely hurt them, but that's the nature of a traumatic brain injury, unfortunately. What makes things even worse, they were told that my personality would change post-accident if they knew me before, I cautioned them about some of the struggles of living with a TBI if they didn't, etc. But each and every time, people walk out of my life with not so much as a goodbye. If it was only a few people, it might not be as bad, right? But when it has been a consistent pattern for over a decade, it is traumatizing and causes PTSD, or PTRD. Of course, you'd say, what's the common denominator? Me, of course. But, is it really? Or is it the TBI, something that I have no control over at times....
So, over the years I have had to develop a standard towards forgiveness. In the first couple of years, it was extremely difficult because I still believed that if you forgave someone, that it meant that the way that they hurt you would become negligible to the Lord. And especially if these teenagers didn't know how badly they had hurt me, then who would? How would they ever find out? I need some sort of restitution from them. It doesn't have to be anything big, just acknowledgement, and "let's be friends again," would be enough. But if they seriously don't think they did anything wrong, and I let it go, how are they ever going to do that? And trust me, as many times as I've had to forgive the same person over and over, there are days unbeknownst to me that they pop up in my head and it hurts all over again. After months of struggling with this, about 8 years ago, I finally came to the realization that forgiveness is NOT condoning their behavior. Forgiveness has nothing to do with them. Forgiveness is simply giving all of the pain that you've been holding on to with all your might away. You are giving it to the Lord so that He can, in His perfect wisdom - and perfect understanding of YOU - offer perfect justice. It was never our place to judge. He only wants us to be happy, and we cannot do that while holding on to pain that someone else has caused us.
Like I have mentioned numerous times, this grieving process happens to me on a very regular basis. In one of my recent posts I also mentioned that the "What a Great Change" post (I didn't link it here because I'm sick of how many reads it has) has turned into a devastating loss and full of much turmoil. This loss was worse than most others, but I was ready to get rid of it. So, I collected everything I had of his, wrote down why it was significant and why it had hurt me for far too long, and my family started a fire. Then we ceremoniously burned it all. I have been nervous about sharing it publicly because he called the cops on me for something I didn't do a week or so prior to the burning event. However, with respect to this post, I hope I can. Burn, Cody, Burn!
One of my favorite parts that is not caught on camera, (along with the shirt of his I burned and stuff) is that my sister, Tonya and my niece, Gabi ran inside and wrote down some names of people that they needed to forgive. Both of these sweet girls function at about 7 years old (Tonya has disabilities and Gabi is 7). They wrote down names of people who were mean to them. They came back outside and said something along the lines of "I hate you xxx! Goodbye!" And we had a small but wonderful discussion about how we can just let go of people who have hurt us. Heavenly Father can deal with that. 😀 It was so sweet. Then we had a major dance party with all sorts of songs starting of course with, Picture to Burn by Taylor Swift.
