The Anatomy of a Hurt

(An analysis of forgiveness)

I was coaching a softball team composed of junior and senior high school girls. We were playing another team that was supposed to be all girls, but not having enough girls, they used some boys of the same age group. The other team was at bat and we were out powered because of the boys on their team. It was becoming a long inning for my girls on the field and it seemed that we would never get them out.

After a long while, a dear friend, the father of one of the girls on my losing team, left the sidelines where he had been cheering and encouraging his daughter's team and came over to me. He started talking about putting some boys on our team. I replied that the girls really wanted to play, to get some experience, and that losing was not that important to them. After he saw that I was not going to change the players, he turned to me in anger and said, "This is absolutely the dumbest thing you have ever done."

His anger took me by surprise. I stood there stunned that I had been addressed in such a manner by a dear friend. If winning was the only thing, then I did a poor job of coaching, but playing is also important regardless of whether one wins or loses. I was not only shocked by his anger, it touched my heart and crushed my spirit.

This is a rather common little episode that most people in life experience at one time  or another. I reacted like many people do, and as I observed my own reactions, I was forced to re-examine the application of my faith and my growth as a Christian.

My first response was to internalize the hurt. Some people explode with anger in their own defense, I do not. I did begin to think about the situation, defensively. I rationalized about who is coach, me or him, and we can’t have everybody coaching. It would like have too many cooks in the kitchen. If he doesn't want his daughter to lose, put her on a different team. Very quickly my rationalization began to work overtime.
I stood there with hurt at his anger, anger from a dear friend. In the course of the next couple of hours I thought of all the good deeds I had done for him and the injustice of his anger. I remembered all the compliments I had given his work, which were well justified, but now I would offer no more compliments. I had often shared the latest jokes I had heard, inquired about his family, his mother suffering from Alzheimer's disease, his children and his wife. Now I felt compelled to withdraw from such past memories. He could do his work and I would do mine. Our paths would touch as little as possible. My conversation with him would be no more than in passing, and I would not venture any concern for what went on in his life.

All of this did not take much smartz, and it came very quickly as I built up my defense and ego. But now, there came a further torment to my heart. I claim to be a Christian, and from Sunday to Sunday we say the Lord's Prayer in Church. There is a phrase that makes all the miserable activity above rather undesirable and unnecessary. That phrase says, "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors." This began to force its way into my mind sharply and without an easy solution for me.

 I began to think that one cannot forgive somebody if they had not asked for forgiveness. I felt that if he would only ask forgiveness, I would be happy to forgive and restore my former attitude toward him. But as I contemplated this it became an impossible alternative. The only way I could move in thisdirection is to confront him with the issue of what he had done. As I pondered this, I could imagine his reaction to my telling him how he had wounded me. It did not make the same impression on him as it did on me. He could very well say: "I have never seen anyone make such a big mountain out of so small an anthill."
He would be right. I would appear more ridiculous than if I did nothing. But I could not continue to do "nothing." (If the reader is inclined to agree with how I "blew" this out of proportion in my mind, let each one recall similar experiences for themselves.)

That evening, I began to talk about this with my wife. Merely talking about it, and analyzing what I was doing helped greatly. But it was still my problem. At this point the discussion turned to the nature of forgiveness, and we immediately picked up on some ideas we had heard from Dr. Lewis Smedes.  Dr. Smedes has written an excellent book on  forgiveness, but our conversation centered on a video tape a friend loaned us when Dr. Smedes appeared on a TV station in Chicago. Some of the ideas began to apply to what I was going through.

First, if we don't forgive, we are allowing someone to control our lives, our emotions, our thinking, and decisions. Was I going to allow this person to affect my attitude? Obviously, I could not do that. Forgiveness is important for there are many people who have offended us who are now dead and reconciliation with them is impossible. If we don't forgive, without their apology, we allow someone who is forever dead to us in this world to control our emotions, our thinking, and actions. I would never want this to be the situation. So, it became obvious, given all the details I have described above, that it was necessary for me to forgive without requiring an apology. If I did not do this, it would be obvious that I was not a very mature person, and moreover, that I was a very picky person. In addition, the depth of my Christian commitments were at issue. So, I reached the conclusion that I would forgive and I did forgive without saying a word to him about my hurt.

Smedes makes an important point in his discussion of forgiveness. It is God's way of healing the human heart. There is no other way. The profound benefit of forgiveness is for the offended, not the offender. We must forgive for our own healing. To gain revenge in any form only diminishes the human heart. We have that statement of the poet that to err is human, but to forgive is divine. That is only half the story. We humans must forgive because there is the model of divine forgiveness. If we are not willing to forgive, then I suspect that we stand without forgiveness because we live such ungrateful lives that are not linked to any understanding of forgiveness.

Of course, there are multitudes of people who confront situations like this everyday. Many of them have  much more serious problems. Many of us go to sleep with these issues and they become deeply imbedded in our hearts, and the longer we go the more difficult it is to forgive. Many times I have heard many people say that they no longer go to their church because somebody hurt their feelings and I have been tempted to say that there is not an ounce of forgiveness in them. They will go on being hurt until they die. Families are split because there is no forgiveness, marriages are split because the hurt is built up and forgiveness never is allowed to bind the hearts together again.

Forgiveness means that only God and myself are in real control of my life, my feelings, my thoughts, and my relationships to other people. To allow someone else, by means of hurt feelings, to control our lives is probably one of the more subtle forms of idolatry that we face.