Forgiveness is a door...

As ever I move in circles in my faith and healing...I sometimes think that this is a good thing - at least I am not staying still...but more and more God seems to have been saying that circles are no good either - at the end of the day they achieve the same as staying still, but expend much more energy. And I am getting tired.

When I am feeling lost and want to reconnect with God I listen to 'The Shack' on audiobook in the car, to and from work. Now I am aware that not all Christians have embraced this book and that there may be argument for it being simply a novel, but for me it is the way that I can see God's heart for me. It tells the story of a broken individual that spends a weekend with the Holy Trinity - it is ultimately the story of forgiveness...of himself and the people who have caused him so much pain.

It is the forgiveness that has always attracted me to the book (I have read/listened to it about 8 times). I see in it, my salvation - the way that I will, hopefully, be able to forgive those people that I still have hatred for, and myself.

One thing that has always perturbed me about forgiveness is how does it work? I don't mean the grace, mercy forgiveness thing - I mean on a practical level...how does my forgiveness help the person that I am forgiving? I wake up every day and start it with a sentence of forgiveness...I do this because that is all I can do. I realised that my hate was doing me more harm than it was them and thought that I had to make a cognitive decision to forgive in the hope that I will one day feel the forgiveness. But how does this make ANY difference? Is it a waste of energy?

This daily forgiveness is all well and good, and to a certain extent - is more than I felt capable of in the past, but now the problem is that I am getting frustrated that I am not yet feeling the forgiveness. This leads to me feeling negative about the whole process, 'what is the point of forgiving them? It isn't helping me and even if I do succeed - what will it actually achieve?' I find myself lacking the comfort that I got from the hatred and now fighting an internal fight about whether I should be putting in the effort (and it is a real effort EVERYDAY) to forgive in the first place.

All of this has been whirling around in my head of late and so whilst I was listening to the book today I allowed my mind to wonder and found that I had a picture in my mind. It was a door, one of the heavy oak doors from yesteryear that has big iron hinges and bolts on it. I was looking at it from a side view and could clearly see myself on one side, facing the door and the forgivee (as it were) with their back to the door on the other side. I had a key in my hand and put it into the lock on my side and turned it. I heard the definite 'clunk' of the lock moving but the door wouldn't open...this annoyed me. I then felt God giving me an explanation (*) that said something along the lines of 'Your job is to forgive and unlock the door from your side, that is all you can do. Forgiveness cannot be granted until the forgivee accepts it. You have no say in this, that is MY job...and your forgiveness will heal you now and wait until the other is ready for it. You are unlocking their door, but only they can open it.'

This poses several questions and ideas to me - which I will no doubt muse upon for a few days yet...but here are my initial thoughts:
1) The overwhelming feeling I got from this realisation is one of lightness from my percieved responsibility. It seems that I have been feeling more and more that the salvation of this person is somehow dependant upon ME!! Not only is this very egotistical and shameful, it is also very stressful...I was essentially feeling that if I didn't forgive them and actually MEAN it (which I don't always...yet) then that would reflect badly upon their salvation and on mine...that only I could save them and ultimately myself.
This is clearly a pile of poo - only God can save and He does so because He loves me, it is by His grace that I am saved, not by my action. Sounds silly but I am very glad to have been reminded of this!

2) My salvation is dependant upon my forgiveness. (This is not a direct contradiction to the above point I promise). By this I mean that I should spend time travelling down the road of forgiveness (even if it is painful and unknown - two of my least favourite things) because if I do not and presume to judge the other person and stay unforgiving, it is the same as saying that I do not need God, when I know that I do. I don't want to be the judge anymore, I want to give it over to God so that He can be. I can only truly do that by unlocking my side of the door.
My problem comes with how to do that and where to begin.

3) I have no choice but to forgive...I know this but I find it hard to accept...WHY??!! THIS IS SO FRUSTRATING!!!

4) The lack of control on the matter - that this person will not recieve my forgiveness until they are ready to repent, also annoys me and the reason makes me sound pathetic...it bothers me that it is THEIR choice whether to accept it or not. That they can choose to rebuff my advance to forgiveness when a part of me thinks they should be grateful for it...again this presumes that I am still not able to fully understand forgiveness and grace on an emovtive level. (Even I can see that this point is vulgar and focussed on me and not God.)

5) The flip side of this is that somewhere there is a door that has me on both sides. I am yet to forgive myself for many things and whereas I feel like I can probably unlock the forgiver side, I am not sure that I can unlock the forgivee side. Forgiving someone else flumoxes me - forgiving myself AND accepting it smacks of some weird sci-fi procedure.

So there it is, forgiveness is a door...now I have to find the key that unlocks it.

(*) I am still really uncertain about the God is talking to me thing...that is, I know it to be true, yet I can't describe why and the cynical part of me always thinks that I am making it up...but it is much more than a feeling - it is an understanding, a knowledge, a connection.