I had an interesting exchange with a priest in confession today. Now, normally, I don't share the details of what I'm confessing with anyone, as that is exclusively between God, the priest and me, but today, the priest said something that made me pause and think.
Now, I will admit, that over the years, I have had trouble with forgiveness. Forgiveness is hard
and today as I was preparing for confession, it occurred to me how God forgives us for everything, doesn't hold a grudge or hang onto that anger. So if God can forgive me over and over, why do I have such difficulty with this? This doesn't meant that I haven't tried. I try to resolve my feelings about the situation and I try to get past it, as really, in the end, forgiveness is more for me than for the other person. In the situation of which I'm thinking, a relative posted my personal family information online in a public place for all to see - I'm sure you're thinking what is the big deal? The big deal was that this person listed all of my father's previous relationships online, and to top it off listed these women as my father's wives, when in fact they were girlfriends. This was not only incredibly hurtful to me and my mother [who was the only wife], but it also opened up the door for unknown relatives to crawl out of the woodwork. I do know that I have an older step-brother, but we've never met, I don't know his name and I have no interest in establishing a familial bond with this person. With the advancement of the internet, this relative almost put a target on me in case this long lost relative was looking for me. I was and am still upset, as I feel strongly that this is my private information and that this person, relative or not, violated privacy laws. I've expressed my anger to this individual and we no longer speak. So I'm certain that this relative doesn't care if I forgive or not... but I do.
So while confessing, I explained that I try to forgive and move past it, but each time I see this person, it all comes back and I don't feel like I've moved on. The priest, quietly and wisely pointed out to me, that perhaps this is the memory of that situation and the associated anger which surfaces, and not necessarily the lack of forgiveness. That really made me pause and think - perhaps I have forgiven, but I just can't seem to forget?? Perhaps he is correct, that it is the memory of that betrayal which reappears. I do admit that the anger is still there when I think about it. So perhaps I need to work on filing that memory away and keeping it tucked out of sight.
I've forgiven, but I clearly haven't forgotten as I feel like I can't trust this person with any of my information or any news pertaining to my immediate family. I've made the conscious decision to not associate with them any further and have not invited them to my home or family festivities if they are at our house. We do, however, still see each other at major Holidays and general family functions. We are cordial, but nothing more. I just want to get to the point where I can be cordial and mean it, without fuming inside. How do you forget? How do you compartmentalize your feelings and be a mature adult about these things? How do you become the 'bigger' person and rise above it?
