With each progressive forgiveness step, the responsibility and subsequent action increases and this step is the hardest of all – forgetting. This step is forgiveness’s forgetting. I don’t know about you but this is something I find extremely difficult to accomplish. I have a very long memory.
Yet, I’d like to think there is a partial caveat in this – we need to forget the feelings. To forget what happened may be beyond us but we can move beyond how we felt…. if we choose. Whether our reactive emotion was humiliation, anger, or any other similar one – we need to move beyond what happened. Granted there is the scripture about not casting our pearls before swine, but we are not to see the offending party in that light.
Their action may have been purposeful or retaliatory or impulse but we have the responsibility to ‘give them another chance’. Admittedly our trust level has plummeted but we still need to give them the opportunity of ‘redemption’. Why? Because that’s what we need as well. And scripture is very clear that we won’t be forgiven if we don’t forgive.
We do have an example of what we are to do. According to scripture, we are to forgive 70 times 7. We see that God removes our sin, “…as far as the east is from the west…” and casts it into the sea of forgetfulness. We need to do that as well. If God CHOOSES to forget then we have to choose to forget. And we really can do this.
Forgiveness’ forgetting is extremely freeing. We lose all that baggage that goes with our hurt feelings. At some point, if you choose this step, you will find that you’ve become stronger because of the experience. Easy? Hardly. Worth the time? Absolutely.
