What your relationship needs is the healing power of forgiveness

Have you ever asked yourself why there are so many angry people these days?

What happened to the power of love and forgiveness in relationships? The goal of relationships was meant to be encouragement, offering one another support, helping each other discover one’s potential among other positive things.

The way people relate and handle issues is key to achieving these goals. However, times have changed and most relationships no longer serve the intended purpose, thanks to unforgiving partners. As a result, many are left hurting and feeling disappointed because of unfulfilled expectations and unresolved issues.

With time, because of the mounting unresolved issues and unfulfilled expectations, it becomes challenging for many to think about forgiving people who have hurt them.

Most times, we don’t want to let go of the painful memories of a wrong, abuse, broken promises and harsh words directed at us. The question lingers: Why is it easy to become abusive to others instead of being willing to pay the price of reconciliation? 

Living in a selfish world

This world is full of hurting and wounded people - some who live in our homes. Somehow, the world we live in and relationships have a way of leaving us bitter about people or life. We are impacted differently by today’s pressures of life. Sadly, most people have lost self-control and instead developed a short fuse that easily breaks at the most minor provocation.

When we are quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger, our fuse has the capacity to handle pressure. Self-control requires us to manage our anger, pain and disappointment arising from the issues we face in life. However, an eruption of uncontrolled negative emotions like anger may result in one hurting themselves or those they love. Negative emotions will always look for a place to exit the system. Sadly, it is those we love that are normally on the receiving end.

It is important to note how the world around us deals with anxiety. Fights, revenge attacks and withdrawal are but a few of the ways the people around us handle their differences.

Tolerance and self-control are not virtues that many aspire to have. Such people often resort to “a tooth for a tooth” principle. So in the end, violence begets violence, which leaves many wounded and disoriented. 

The way we process mounting pressures

Why would a father or a mother turn against their son/daughter and hurt them? Why would a man or a woman turn around and seek to destroy each other and the future they vowed to protect in marriage? What happened to the beauty of open and honest dialogue in relationships?

The power of relationships is in the price we are willing to pay to maintain peace in spite of differing opinions. The danger is not in the fact that we are different, the challenge is in how we accept such differences and learn to process what emerges as dissimilarity in our points of view.

It is naive to think that we live in a perfect world and that everyone we meet will always go out of their way to think the way we do or treat us right. In this world, hardship and pain is at times unavoidable. It is how we prepare ourselves to handle this that becomes key to our survival and growth.

Knowing that we will face difficulties and disappointments, Phillip Yancey, an US author, writes: “Forgiveness is another way of admitting, ‘I am human, I make mistakes, I want to be granted that privilege so that I can grant you the same privilege”.

Dealing with the need to forgive, Chuck Colson, an Evangelical Christian leader, told a story about a Mrs Washington, who during a graduation ceremony for inmates completing a Prison fellowship programme, wrapped her arms around a graduating inmate, declaring: “You are my adopted son.” This must have appeared strange at first to those gathered for the event, until they came to learn that this young man was behind bars for the murder of Mrs Washington’s daughter.

Knowing that forgiveness is not cheap, Mahatma Gandhi had this to say: “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”

We have to realise that forgiveness is a choice to not take revenge but give the offender what they do not deserve.

However, every action has a consequence. Trust will never be at the level it was before. They have to earn that trust through positive engagements in the future. On the other hand, dealing with the scar becomes a reminder of the offence. Your choice to live in freedom lies in how you process the offence and decide to deal with it. You forgive, you become free!

Always remember there are no guarantees in life. We live and move by faith that says: “I will do all I can to love others and live in freedom today as though it were my last day.” “We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive,” says Martin Luther King Jr. He adds that he who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies. How sobering! 

People are not what they seem

It is important to know that what we discover about people may change with time as we get to know more about them. Normally, disclosure is gradual and based on how a couple has cultivated the environment where their interaction takes place. People who find the environment threatening tend to allow minimal disclosure that hampers this ability to trust the other person.

Trust is very essential in a relationship, it’s one of the core ingredients that keeps a relationship ‘fueled’. If there is dishonesty, a couple can engage in blind trust. We tend to trust someone based on what we know about them. Sadly, what we know can be false, particularly where one partner decides to lie.

A couple sets their relationship for trouble when they make a choice to trust one another while in reality, one of them chooses to not “keep it real.”

As much as relationships have never been perfect, we still need to do a better job at relating to avoid a dysfunctional relationship.

We are all imperfect people seeking a perfect relationship with one another. So, if each one of us made a choice to walk towards being perfect, then we would do a lot to perfect the relationship. The stumbling block is selfishishness - me wants it all for myself, so I find it not a problem to lie or believe a lie  to get what I want.

The words of former US President J.F Kennedy helps us bring the point home: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

We all have a duty to contribute our part to make the relationship what it was meant to be, otherwise, we open a door for fights and expression of negative emotions in the relationship.

We must start a relationship with an open mind and a desire to learn who your partner really is. Maturity must be seen in our willingness to handle disappointment when it shows up. Each spouse must desire to do what they can to make their space a better place to relate. Most people seem perfect when dating, beyond reproach, but watch out because perfect people do not exist.

Although true love always protects, trusts, hopes, and perseveres, we have to commit to speaking the truth in love. God never called us to give ‘blind love.’ When we make a choice to love, we are also willing to face the consequences of that kind of loving - because we love someone does not mean that they don’t owe us a life of honesty. When we are hurt, forgiveness helps to cancel the error and restore the relationship. This is the only solution to a world ridden with hurt resulting from deceit and selfishness.

Mother Theresa reminds us: “People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create it anyway. The good you do today, will often be forgotten. Do good anyway. In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.”

Like Mother Theresa, we were created to leave behind our own legacy. A legacy of loving and serving others and particularly those who don’t deserve it or are different from us. 

Dealing with baggage clears the path ahead

When we are offended or disappointed in a relationship and allow the hurt to germinate in our heart, bitterness and resentment will take root, leading to lack of trust. Great relationships are made of individuals who make a choice to be real with each other.

A relationship where one or both spouses live in their past success or failures is likely to hinder the creation of a platform for trying new things. In life, we have to let go of the past to welcome the new. This may involve a need to forgive oneself or others of past pain and disappointment. When this is done, it opens a door for acceptance.

Every individual has a background that may have been characterised by certain values, habits, practices, needs and longings which may be very different from those of their partner. A spouse’ needs cannot be ignored or swept under the carpet if the relationship is to grow. In relationships, we do not marry someone without values, ideas or dreams.

In fact, it may be their perspective on certain issues about life that drew us to them. Pain that has not been dealt with well has a way of killing a couple’s desired future.

Marriage must be a place of harnessing talent and discovering the potential that each partner has. A spouse who looks out for the untapped potential in their partner with the aim of spurring them to faith and good work is most likely to have a fulfilled relationship. Being critical only kills the good.

Without doubt, forgiveness helps us embrace love instead of just crying over our past faults. When we don’t stop living in the past, we will be quick to point at the weaknesses and faults of others than we are able to acknowledge their strengths.

Where one gets to know the past of their partner through disclosure of any kind, we should never be tempted to use their unfortunate past or failure against them. Marriage was never meant to be a competition, a place of comparison on who does things better, rather, a place of partnership and complementing one another. This helps marriage provide an environment of safety, thus healing. 

All of us are work in progress

The basic principle for life is to learn to do for others what you would wish they did for you.

That means we love the way we want to be loved, care for them the way we would like others to care for us, and treat them in the same way we desire to be treated. We must keep in mind that we reap what we sow.

When we learn to accommodate the fact that all of us are work in progress, we will give each other the space to learn, make mistakes and grow. Today’s mistakes that we make may be the opportunity for our future successes. We all have faults and have a checkered past we wish was buried, never to be exhumed by anyone.

One thing can make the connection between our past and present, our fears and anxieties to our acceptance, and our mistakes to a faith that tomorrow will be better. Love. This is why love covers a multitude of sins while pride leads to a fall. Pride prods us to focus on the weaknesses, faults, shortcomings and failures of the other person, thereby killing common vision and mission.

When we love and truly empathise with our partner, we make it easier for the bond of intimacy to grow.

We must learn that holding one another in high esteem and treating each other better than ourselves is the backbone of true companionship.

Such companionship makes partners in a relationship to feel safe and supported.

We should learn to accommodate our partners’ feelings, fears, strengths and their differing opinions.

 ___________ 

Want a happy relationship?

•  Practice tolerance and self-control

•  Be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger

•  Engage in open and honest dialogue

•  Commit to speaking the truth

•  Let go of the past to usher in the new. This may involve a need to forgive yourself or others who have wronged you