Lesson 1-23 "Forgiveness"

Some lessons I walk in feeling like I could teach a graduate seminar on the topic. It's a lesson I've thoroughly learned, experimented on, put into practice in my life. And then there are lessons like this one that just seem so humbling to even think about teaching another person. This is one where I'm going to have to reason out with my students and learn together because mastering forgiveness is a lifelong process for all of us.

This lesson has a lot of good stuff in it, starting with the smaller acts of betrayal that teenagers deal with daily, and ending with forgiving the greatest evil man has ever seen. I think it's a nice structure to illustrate that the principle is the same, no matter the scale.

I also love how it stresses that forgiveness is an action. In our world of gang rivals and family feuds, it's often thought that forgiveness is the recourse left for people too weak to enact revenge. But how can anyone read Corrie Ten Boom's words and think she was weak? Forgiveness is one of Christ's central messages, and Jesus is not a wimp.

The supplementary materials include President Faust's talk where he recounted the response of an Amish community after a man went on a killing spree in their schoolhouse. It's incredibly touching, but two things stood out to me in this reading:
An Amish man went to the killer's father, wrapped him up in a hug and told him, "We will forgive you." I found that response not only deeply moving, but also so wonderfully illustrative of what forgiveness can look like in a willing heart. We *will* forgive you. It acknowledges that forgiveness takes time and effort. That an act, especially one as monumentally devastating as this one, cannot be overcome instantly, but offers the comfort that eventual forgiveness is attainable.

Later in his talk President Faust quotes advice given from a bishop to a woman going through a divorce. “Keep a place in your heart for forgiveness, and when it comes, welcome it in.” Again, that counsel just seemed so productive to me. Work towards forgiveness, don't refuse it, but don't expect it to happen overnight, either.

I'm in the process of coming to forgiveness with someone close to me, so I think that's why these statements touched me so much. I think that for most of my life I thought of it as a personal failing if I couldn't extend complete and instantaneous forgiveness no matter the wrong. I somehow believed that if I believed in the Atonement, then my responsibility was to forgive immediately. But of course that's not true. Even Christ himself doesn't always forgive immediately, and by forcing myself to do so my forgiveness usually became glib and shallow while I held on to resentments in my heart. Profound, sincere forgiveness is the greatest gift we can give to each other, but it does not come easily or without work.

I love how the lesson also points out that an essential part of true forgiveness is to mention it no more. Boy, is that an important lesson for teenage girls. I try to tell my girls that gossip doesn't have to be a lie to still be gossip, and I have seen countless lives changed forever because of what was said about them. In quite a few cases I've seen girls who were functionally not allowed to repent, despite their work with the bishop, because the stories swirling around them were so pervasive that their peers just kept shoving them back into their old choices. I wish those girls had been brave and strong enough to just leave, or go a year without friends so they could commit to what was right, but they weren't, so they went with the stoners and sleazy boyfriends who accepted them.

The one topic I think I'll add to the lesson is a discussion of forgiving ourselves after we've repented. This has always been a massive hurdle for me. As a young teenager I did a little shoplifting to fit in with a bad crowd, and I believed for years that since I couldn't make full restitution to the stores (since I didn't exactly keep receipts) then I could never be forgiven. It's kind of adorable to me now that my overly earnest 14 year old self was so heartbroken over stealing a few pairs of earrings that I truly thought heaven was closed to me, but my anguish was sincere. One night I was saying my prayers and pouring my heart out in deep grief about what I'd done, when the Spirit whispered to me, "Look up!" Being the earnest and overly emotional sort that I was, I thought for sure that there was going to be an angel sitting on the foot of my bed, but it was just my plain old empty bedroom. But there were New Era posters and pictures of the temple on my walls, my scriptures were open laying in front of me, and the Spirit whispered to me that I was forgiven because I had chosen to leave my sins behind and embrace the good. It took a heavenly hit over the head before I finally realized I had to just forgive myself already and move on.