Forgiveness

This is easily the hardest topic for me to talk about. This also makes it the easiest because it is so necessary. 

What exactly is forgiveness? Is it simply saying “I forgive you” after someone says “sorry” and moving on? Is it making the mental decision to drop something that is negatively effecting you? Is it deciding that holding a grudge isn’t worth jeopardizing a relationship? There are so many different kinds of forgiveness. You can forgive someone else but how can you truly forgive if you can’t forgive yourself? 

Growing up I would always turn toward my faith and the Act of Confession. God is and has been the ultimate figure regarding forgiveness to me. But how do you forgive someone that crippled you and hurt you beyond belief? A quote comes to mind and it isn’t always the easiest option... “Let Go, Let God”.

Growing up I remember my back turned to my twin brother in separate time-out chairs in daycare, refusing to forgive him for not sharing a toy. I remember getting in fist fights with Zach (my twin) in middle school because he wouldn’t get off the computer when his hour was up so I would unplug it from the wall. Same thing with the X-Box in high school. We would always play the game of who could be more stubborn and refuse saying sorry the longest. Eventually, we would get bored of holding a grudge and all would go back to normal. Often times it was just understood that we forgave each other and moved on. That wasn’t exactly the case this time...

I lay paralyzed in bed, my life changed dramatically and I am supposed to forgive the guy that shot me? The guy that caused me to live my life in a wheelchair? The guy that traumatized my family and my girlfriend and so many others because of his second of pure ignorance? I don’t think so. I wanted him to rot in prison for condemning me to my new life as a cripple. I wanted to cause him unbelievable pain. I was rash and I was angry. As I went through my stages of grief, I realized that I was taking on my own role as judge, jury and executioner and that role wasn’t mine for the taking. Harboring this amount of hate was racking my brain and I needed that bad boy focusing on recovery. I had to move him and every rash, angry thought out of my mind for the time being. But the seed had been planted and every time I had a setback my rage flowed right back to him. I would lay there unable to move and imagine the bullet going an inch to the right and simply grazing my neck. I would also imagine me beating him to a pulp after that. Then, I had my powerful wake-up call. 

I had begun getting into my wheelchair and I would sit there in my hospital room in front of the mirror and I would cry. I was watching my body change and I had no control over it. My muscles were atrophying daily and I was so sick that I lost 60 lbs in a few, draggingly slow months. I was angry and filled with hate. I loathed the guy who shot and I absolutely hated myself. I felt so low that instead of turning to my faith, I began to blame God. I had started to hate God. This was my wake-up call.

How could I possibly feel this way? I knew that I needed this to stop or else I would never recover. I began working things out with the hospital behavioral health therapist which was one of the best decisions that I could have made. I can’t stress enough the power of venting. If you struggle with any mental health issues, please accept help. I would also have almost nightly chats with my mom and dad about God’s plan and that is when it clicked for me. 

There are countless “what-if” scenarios but what helped me was thinking that me getting shot prevented the bullet from going through the wall and hitting a baby. Or hitting my brother or his wife. I knew then that it was my responsibility to take my lumps and fight this. 

I began to think about the guy that shot me. Sure, his mistake altered mine and so many other’s lives. He was a good friend of mine and he crippled me with a flicker of his finger. Does that change him being my friend? I began thinking about his prison sentence. What was fair? 20 years? 10 years? If you had asked me at my worst I would have pushed for the death penalty. But that time had passed. We settled for 3 years and I didn’t put up much of fight. Was that forgiveness? Had I moved on?

I began thinking of how this situation was affecting him. He had shot a friend and watched him die on the floor. He had to hear about my struggle to survive from a jail cell. He has to live with the fact that he altered so many lives dramatically and in the process, had lost all of his closest friends. He is alone in prison with nothing but time to dwell on his mistakes. So what is fair? 

If I can think about things from his point of view and feel bad then why couldn’t I forgive him? Part of me thought that he should be in jail until I can walk again. That changed as I began to really live my life again. I had finally realized that dwelling on the bad things was holding me back from accepting my situation and continuing my life. I needed to move on.

I started by making my peace with God. I pray nightly that He helps me to find my purpose behind all of this and that I can live my life in His image. Next was to forgive myself. I needed to stop hating my body image and accept that my life, although changed dramatically, is still great. My final step is to forgive the man that hurt me so deeply.

Tom, if you are reading this, then I need you to understand my pain and apprehension to forgive. I am okay if we never see one another or talk again but I need you to know that I forgive you. You need to live your life just like I need to live mine. I hope that you find peace and that WE continue to make strides. Good luck...

Thank you everyone,

God Bless.