Humans are at once the most terrible and wonderful of creatures. I think you can see this most clearly in the context of family. Family simultaneously has the power to make and break you. If your family, in particular your parents, are terrible, it never fully seems to matter. They can beat you, molest you, verbally and emotionally rip you to shreds, neglect you. They can withhold any type of affection or compassion. They can do all these things and more, and yet, we all still seem to love them. There is something about wanting, or needing, our parents approval and acceptance, about loving them despite themselves at times. And yes, I am including the most heinous of persons, there is still something in children and in human beings period that wants to be accepted by their parents. It affects everything else.

There is a little bit of many of these things in families, hopefully not all of them of course. But there are also many beautiful things about families. Your parents hopefully also teach you values and morals, how to love, and what is right from wrong. They hopefully teach you how to stand up to people and handle conflict. It may be in their own way, and I realize still not all families have that to offer, but not all families have all the bad either. Yet it still pains me to see how we can hurt each other. There are so many scars that are created in the fight for this love. I understand more and more as I get older that there needs to be forgiveness all along the way. This doesn’t always mean trust, but it does always mean forgiveness. And potentially it means forgiving over and over and over.

I am afraid to be a parent, but I am learning not to be. I am most definetly going to make mistakes, and I am going to make some of the mistakes my parents made; but hopefully not all of them. There is room to improve in every generation and in every situation. We are all humans; terrible and wonderful. And that means that we also have to learn to forgive ourselves.

In my job I see the worst types of people. I hear horrible things. I meet people who have done terrible, heinous things. And yet. Their kids still want their approval and their love. And they are still people. I can’t say how I would react if I found out something terrible happened to my child at the hand of another because I have fortunately never been in that situation, and hopefully never will be. But I know that if I don’t forgive my parents, and my family, and these people that I meet. If I don’t teach my kids that I do therapy with how to love and forgive while still protecting themselves (in not so many words) then I know that the healing process for them is going to be a lot slower and a lot harder. It may not come at all, and then they will potentially become the abusers themselves. There is always room and need for forgiveness and protection. We will always have the need of want. Of wanting to be loved and to belong, of wanting to be protected and desired. But none of these things can ever fully be achieved without the heart of forgiveness.

Teach me how to forgive.

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