Forgive & Forget: Into the Depths of the Sea

I was studying the worship lesson for Sunday regarding how we can imitate God in being forgiving towards others, and while instantly this has made me feel a thousand percent better, I still have a lot of thoughts – I mean, c’mon, I am Erin after all 😊 

First off, I appreciated the following points:

We can’t control what others do to us, only our reaction to it.

I love to explain it this way, “you can only control what’s behind the tip of your nose.”  And when someone does literally anything, it’s never about us until we react, but more specifically how we react.

The article brought out how getting hurt by someone, especially someone close to us can bring emotional pain that feels like being stabbed.  However, trying to suppress or ignore those feelings would be like then leaving that knife in the wound, expecting it to heal.  I’m going to get nerdy for a second: our bodies are amazing, God designed them so well humans will never be able to fully replicate them because they cannot even get down to the core of a cell to figure it out and scientists have ironically called it the “God Particle.” Thinking about that and how our bodies were created to regenerate, process, heal, etc., when you have a foreign object in it, the skin tries extremely hard to grow over it. It wants to absorb that thing and adopt it as part of its own; however, what usually ends up happening is a keloid develops – this is where the skin grows over, but then it gets hard because it’s demanding more collagen to promote healing; instead creating a rubber-like scar over the object or wound.  I had this happen when I got my nose pierced, which was fine because I’m not a nose piercing kind of gal, my grandma said it would be “cute” if she was younger and had the freedom to do it, so I thought hey I should do it for her. It was cute for the first couple of months although a pain to wash my face…

I digress… So, you got emotionally stabbed and now you want to ignore it. OK. Keloids are generally harmless, until one day they’re not. Your body figures out again that it’s not meant to be there and tries to reject it only to figure out there’s nowhere for it to go. That would not feel great in the slightest. Something trapped in your body that’s being forced out without a path or plan to go… surgery would be your only option unless you become septic (geez, still being a nerd, sorry everyone!), which can and will kill you.

Do you get my point though? If you avoid it, it will eventually try to push its way out of you until you either choose to confront it, which means A) You confront the person who hurt you and resolve it B) You get help (therapist, confidant, whoever) to accept the situation as it is, forgive them without telling them and heal or C) You continue trying to avoid it forever until it consumes you and kills you.

It’s ultimately your choice, which leads to….

Getting angry is a reaction, staying angry is a choice.

As they say, “Say it louder for the people in the back!” I’m not going to name names, but I feel like there are certain people in my life that just love to stay angry. I’m not sure why, because they know they shouldn’t, so maybe me thinking this through; do people stay angry because they feel a sense of entitlement to the situation? “They did it to me, so I have the right to be angry.” And yeah, there are so many situations, conversations and the like that happen you can’t just blanket statement this, but honestly. And let’s please get another phrase other than, “it’s like drinking poison expecting the other person to die.” Haha that would just make me more angry to hear if I was in the moment, kind of like when my mother would tell me to immediately start praying and I’d be like how can I pray when I’m SO angry? I need to calm down. She would tell me, “Well God already knows you’re angry, so just tell him and get it out.” Imagine if we all learned how to not just harness, but truly process our emotions and couple that with good communication (I won’t strive for perfection here, we’re all human), and told the PERSON how we felt? Then, taking a page out of the 1st psychologist’s (who was a jerk, but he was still honest so maybe I’m a jerk too and I was just competing with my ego haha) book I’ve ever seen who suggested, “Be more assertive. Tell people how you feel, WHEN you feel it.” He didn’t say, hold on to it for a couple of days and then decide no, WHEN you feel it – immediately. Granted, this can be super scary because as I said, a lot of us don’t have good communication skills along with never having been taught much less allowed to process any emotions since childhood… oof, brace yourselves. I know when I’m truly angry, some people have told me it’s “scary.” It generally takes a lot for me to reach my limits because the person I am with the brain I was given, loves to see all the angles of things. Honestly, I hate being angry. I think deep down it’s like how did we (or I) get this far that I’m feeling this way? I’m always looking for a resolution when something happens, but let’s go even further: When I’m at “blows” with someone else, I look to alleviate it as quickly as possible because I know 1.) It will grow bigger and worse if we let it fester 2.) We are probably equally at fault, especially if the argument continues and 3.) I hate seeing people hurting, like HATE IT. I want to fix it, get rid of it, take it off them onto me and throw it into the sea forever! So, if I have the power to do that, why not make that choice? Yeah, all well and good to say, but then comes the barrier of the other person – do they choose for that to happen? That’s where I have gotten into trouble. When I feel powerless like that, I get sad until I get angry (again) and then I can finally get over it – it meaning I’ve tried my best and I need to let them do them. But that’s where my heart must catch up to find acceptance. I’ve done so much better in this, and it happens a lot quicker than it used to. Accepting that it’s you, not me haha, I’m kidding (sort of). But back to the scary part, I guess that was all part of it. People don’t expect me to get mad because I’ve been told that I’m intimidating due to my seemingly calm, quieter and usually more positive demeanor.  But also, one person told me, “If you can’t figure something out and you’re angry, how am I supposed to help you? We all come to you, Erin. And when you’re angry, you know exactly how to shoot hearts.” I thought I was the “Larsonist” not an assassin, maybe I’m a jack of all trades…  But hey, Erin guess what - they are right though. If I'm getting frustrated and angry, most likely the answer lies within myself, and with that, I need to seek clarity. In my defense, whenever I seek clarity in things, sometimes I just need to hear myself talk, getting it out of my head, is the method I need to process that time. But being self-aware and in their defense of the heart statement, I know I get super "raw" in my thoughts which can come out unfiltered, becoming too much for most people to handle. Then I become the hurter vs the hurtee - in my own language. There I go showing my work again, I'm sure you think I'm crazy by now.

Who isn't.

Moving on…

I never realized how self-aware I’ve been until the last couple of years when my coach really started pointed it out and taught me how to really identify and use that quality. It makes me think back to a day when one of my employees was talking to me where I gave my point of view, and he suddenly said “crap, the way you shifted into your own self-awareness so quick is scary!”  But then he also admitted that it was cool that I didn’t just immediately victimize myself either; however, I had to tell him with self-awareness I must take a step back and remind myself that I’m not a doormat either. It’s OK for me to feel emotions, get upset/angry sometimes and have limits. Not only OK, but it’s also fair. The point though with all that self-awareness that most people don’t want to take is, it is a hefty responsibility because that means you have to set your ego aside a lot and think about the other person – how you affect the world around you. What kind of ripples do you create from the ways you act.  And I’m not saying that you can’t live your life for yourself, you absolutely can and should, I’m just saying there are points that as we grow up, become discerning, critically thinking adults we know that essentially saying “screw you, world!” is just stupid. Make sure to replace “world” with family, friends, spouse…whoever you’re mad at today. It’s not JUST about you, but when you react, you can flip it quickly to be in such a negative, horrible way.

It is always YOUR choice.

Forgiveness helps us not only emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually

I'm not going to go down this one in-depth today. The rest of this post should cover it :)

My own headlining thoughts

I didn’t get all the way through the article, but I think it’s said enough for me to ramble on this topic, and if you’ve read to this point – thank you, appreciate it.

One thing I noticed as I studied about resentment, was really honing in on the fact that all of this really doesn’t have to be about us. Doing my “Erin thing” and seeing the angles (showing my work as Coach says), when we act out in a specific way, isn’t there usually a reason behind it. Like, if we can pause for just one minute and think about why someone acted the way they did towards us, can you find the root? And when you do, how do you feel about that if you were going through it or if you felt something like that? Would you be able to put your ego aside and scoff at the thought like they are just being silly and need to “suck it up” and move on? That mentality is a huge reason why many people have a resentment issue and if you think like that, I’d be scared to wonder how many people you’ve mad angry to this point… #notsorry #isaidit

From that point, can you try, just try to find some empathy in the understanding and let it go? THEY are suffering, that doesn’t mean you have to too. Yes, be the bigger person and YES it does get exhausting at times, trust me – I can complain all the time if I wanted about this. But I don’t because living my life as best as I can the way I do (not perfect by any means, still working on a lot of things), is so much better than worrying about who’s mad at me, who’s doing what, negativity – negativity – negativity. Isn’t the day filled with enough that’s out of control and draining, why create or bring upon yourself more when you can try to let it go, try to forgive others who probably have it worse than you do? As I say, I ain’t in the sport of “Who’s got it worse?” I don’t want to be miserable and suffering. I want to be encouraging, loving, and helping. But not only that, I want to let go of things that aren’t even about ME to begin with. I don’t want to continue carrying resentment, sadness, heartache of someone else just because they upset me.  Like I previously said, I always want to help them get through it, but again, that’s their choice and if they keep holding on – let them be dragged, I don’t need to be dragged to.

So, what can I do then? Just be there. Support them even if it’s just a hug, smile or tell them you’ll pray for them if you feel that’s encouraging enough. You absolutely should be praying for them, but I’m saying actually tell them you do.

You may be wondering how I came around to all of this in my own life. Transparency time, kids! This is terrifying to share by the way haha, but I’m going to do it. I need to.

For sake of my time today, I’m going to give you a list and hopefully elaborate on these later:

• Struggles of my own existence from the beginning.

• Confusion and frustration toward a man who was supposed to be my father.

• The thoughts and opinions of people:

• In my own family.

• (kids) my own age.

• In a work environment.

• In a religious environment.  

• The racism I faced as a kid, and even some of it now.

• Unfavorable relationships.

.

.

.

• Myself.

 This. This is THE biggest lesson in forgiveness is: Learning your own part in all of this and starting there.

Forgive yourself.

If you are a person of faith, do this through the eyes of God because He wanted you, created you, and loves you more than anyone human. And for that, he wants you happy, so do it.

If you do, the rest might be a little scary, but so much easier.

Trust me.