“ I announced to God and the world that I forgave everybody for everything— including God and myself.”
ego convinces us that we’ re never to blame, or even partially to blame, for hardly anything that goes awry in our lives. It would rather we point the finger at anyone but ourselves. And yet Jesus tells us,“ First get rid of the log in your own eye; then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend’ s eye”( Matthew 7:5 NLT). That’ s solid advice. We become far more likely to forgive those who hurt us and let their offenses go when we accept that we played a role in what went wrong in our relationship.
“ I announced to God and the world that I forgave everybody for everything— including God and myself.”
The only way I know how to let go of resentments is to see my offender and myself through God-given new eyes.
While I was writing my book The Fix, my ninety-five-year-old mother died peacefully in her sleep. My mom was a force of nature. She was the kind of person who could smoke in a hospital and no one would stop her. She was loud and hilariously entertaining at parties, but nurturing children wasn’ t her strong suit. As one of my siblings once said,“ We had Lucille Bluth from Arrested Development for a mother.” Fans of Arrested Development will know that the mother, Lucille Bluth, is wildly funny, but a little acerbic. That was my mom. For years, I held a lot of resentment toward my mother. It wasn’ t until I completed my Fourth and Fifth Steps and began practicing spiritual disciplines designed to help foster forgiveness( more on this practice soon) that God gave me empathy, compassion, and love for the mother I had, and peace about the mother I didn’ t have. Prior to working the Fourth Step, I tried every remedy to help myself move on from my“ mom issues,” and many of them were useful. But it was working the Twelve Steps that helped me finally get the ball over the goal line.
But forgiving my mother and father while working the Fourth Step was only the beginning. Not long ago I was sharing an old resentment with my friend Patrick, a fellow recovering alcoholic, and he said something that nearly knocked me over:“ What if you just forgave everyone?” he said casually, as if it was the most obvious and natural thing in the world to do.
“ Everyone?” I asked, incredulously.
“ Why not?” Patrick said, shrugging.“ Issue a pardon and let’ em all out of jail!”
The idea that I had the power and freedom to forgive everybody who had ever hurt me in this life in one fell swoop blew my mind. I’ m a priest, a therapist, and a spiritual director. Why the heck had I never thought of that before? And so later that day, I went to a secluded spot in my favorite park in Nashville, and peering out over the gentle rolling hills surrounding the city, I announced to God and the world that I forgave everybody for everything, including God and myself. Immediately I felt a great release. For me, this was one of the
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