Forgiveness

You are here seeking my forgiveness. You are seeking something to which you are not entitled; forgiveness is something that I cannot give you. Forgiveness is something I give myself. When I forgive you, the anger, revenge, hatefulness, and other base emotional responses that've held such sway over my life recently will be released. I will free myself from these despicable bonds and seek out a path for my inner peace. No, my forgiveness is not meant for you. You say I am a person that does not forgive. You say I have never forgiven my father, or my sister, or anyone else who has ever wronged me. After much reflection, I can say that you are wrong about this. Had I not forgiven my father, my life would be consumed with the beatings, the neglect, the evil to which he exposed us. Had I not forgiven my father, I believe I would be much more like he was back then. No, I forgave him; that's why he and I have been able to maintain a relationship over the years. What my forgiveness didn't do is protect my father from the consequences of his actions. I will never trust him. I neither seek nor accept his counsel on any matter whatsoever. I have not encouraged a strong relationship between him and my core family, and have limited his access to, and his influence on, my children to the degree I could. Our values differ in significant ways, and I keep him at a distance from me and everyone most important to me. The way I view my father is a direct result of the way he treated me and the rest of his children. He cannot change his past. He cannot return and fix the damage he did in my early childhood. My forgiveness allows me to live in peace with the man, but doesn't change the way I feel about him. Already, I grow weary of the anger; weary of the hate; weary of the thoughts of revenge brought on by your betrayal. It taxes my very soul to fuel such a furnace of dark emotion on a daily basis. The base side of my nature will not prevail – it will never prevail for long; it has always been suppressed by my better nature, and it will be again. I'm well on the road to forgiveness. Little by little, I feel me returning. Though I've suffered terribly, I can look into my future and know that I will heal. I am, once again, letting go of the pain. Yes, I have forgiven, and will again. This doesn't change how I feel about you. This doesn't change the devastating damage you've done to our relationship. This doesn't change the loss of innocence, the renting of the veil through which I viewed you, the deep disappointment in seeing the depth of your selfishness, your demonstrated lack of regard for those you are commissioned to love and protect. I am not a man that assigns great meaning to words. I assign meaning to actions. By your very actions, it is clear to me that you have yet to comprehend the damage you've done to yourself, your marriage, your family, and your personal relationship with me. You ask for my forgiveness, but what you expect is my absolution. I am not Jesus. I cannot wash away your sins. I cannot carry your burden for you. As my wife, you failed. You failed completely. Your actions proved that you are a deceiver, an adulterer, a woman who values fleeting, personal indulgence over her own honor and that of her family. Once discovered, instead of seeking atonement and eradicating the thought processes and elements of your character that would cause you to behave so reprehensibly, you stubbornly clung to your failed methodologies. You further entrenched yourself in lies, strengthened the alliance with your adultery partner, focused all your energies toward avoiding the natural consequences of your sin. You somehow resolved to use the same despicable behaviors that got you into such a mess to get you out of it. In doing so, you exacerbated the damage by an order of magnitude. You ask for forgiveness, expect absolution, but should be seeking redemption. How do you atone for the betrayal you orchestrated? I don't know; it's not for me to figure out. I can tell you this, though: every day you stand idle, waiting for me to "get over it," I lose just a little more of my love for you. Every day you spend pretending that our relationship is okay is another day of me questioning why I stay with you. Every time you say the words "I love you," my stomach churns, because I'm convinced you don't know the meaning of the words. More and more frequently, I think about a life without you and have convinced myself I'll be okay – and maybe even better. How do you atone for the betrayal you orchestrated? I don't know, but you're running out of time to figure it out.

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