I struggled with the forgiveness issue almost from the beginning of my separation from my ex-wife in 1988. Holding on to my resentments gave me a feeling of power and control, but it was just an illusion. It did not take me long to realize that these feelings were consuming nearly ALL of my mental activity to the point that I was even dreaming about it. A trusted friend (RE accountability) asked me if I enjoyed spending so much time thinking about someone who had caused me so much pain and who wanted nothing to do with me. That was the wake-up call. I did NOT want to be so consumed with my ex-wife. I wanted to be consumed with the Lord, who was the only one who I could still rely on.
But the resentments kept coming back - anniversaries of our marriage, our separation, other painful dates, and anything dealing with our children. When I went through divorce recovery classes, the group leader suggested a way to physically rid my self of the resentments. I wrote each and every resentment, “I resent you because you did…,” down on a piece of paper in a letter format. I took the UNMAILED letter and burned in my fireplace. As the flames consumed the paper, I prayed that God would consume my resentments.
This worked for quite a while, but maybe my heart was not in it, because a few years later a situation came up that brought many of these resentments back to the surface.
I decided to do an integrity check on myself to confirm that my motives were pure - I wanted peace and time with my children and that was all. So I wrote my ex-wife a letter of several pages detailing every action she had made since our separation that I resented. But this time, after each sentence, “I resent you for what you did,” I also wrote, “I forgive you for …” I placed the letter in a envelope, sealed it, addressed to her (did NOT mail it), and went for a drive.
My wife and I drove for 2-3 hours down the Texas coast until we reached the mouth of a river. We had stopped several times before, but each place we stopped just didn’t seem right. When we arrived at this beach side where the river flowed into the gulf, I knew this was the right place.
We walked along the edge of the river and stopped along the bank. I dug a deep hole in the sand and buried this letter. We prayed over this “grave” and asked God to take away these resentments, just as the gulf takes away the waters of the river. We prayed that these resentments would be swept away into the gulf of God’s forgiveness. AND THIS IS IMPORTANT: I prayed that God would forgive my ex-wife of all that I forgave her for.
I wept with my wife as I have seldom wept. But it was tears of relief. To this day I do not remember what was in that letter. God had taken them away.
And I discovered a key benefit: I cannot stay angry with someone that I have forgiven and that I have asked God to forgive, even though they have never asked or indicated an interest in asking for forgiveness.
This is symbolized by a recent event. My daughter just married last month, and my ex-wife was part of the celebration. We got along well, especially my wife and ex-wife (the two mothers-of-the bride). Later the same month, we were driving through my ex-wife’s home town and we stopped to drop off some pictures from the wedding, and she gave us some old baby clothes that had belonged to our daughter. We treated her to lunch, and she even hugged us both as we left. When we told our daughter about this, she was pleasantly surprised, and very grateful.
The events that contributed to a peaceful reunion at my daughter’s wedding and afterwards could not have happened had I not forgiven my ex-wife years ago.
For more on forgiveness, see the blog by Dr. John Mark Hicks at http://johnmarkhicks.wordpress.com/2008/11/11/forgiveness-participating-in-the-divine-life/
