Child Abuse and the Grace of Forgiveness

by Irma
(Michoacan, Mexico)

I'm amazed by the work done in this page by such a wonderful woman. I cannot imagine the amounts of people that have been helped by all it has provided. Therefore, I would like to share something:

Forgiveness is an act of grace, it actually emerges from grace. Grace is a gift that is not deserved, that you did not win, that you weren't pursuing. It was just given to you, as a gift, that you weren't suppose to get, and could never be reached by anything in the world you could do. And also, I think forgiveness does not say "You no longer have power over me". In my point of view, that still has roots of bitterness, and the root of bitterness actually is non forgiveness; once a girl that lives a forgiving lifestyle wrote that forgiveness sets a prisoner free: You, the one who forgives.

What I think forgiveness says is: "You did owe me something, you had a debt with me, but now I and only I cancel that debt, SO YOU DO NOT OWE ME ANYTHING ANYMORE, so the wounds that were left in me, and the pain they caused, are not longer having power over me."

I truly believe that mercy has a lot to do with forgiveness too, and do you know what mercy is? Grace: as I said before, is receiving what you do not deserve, but Mercy is not receiving what you deserve. By that I am not saying that when a victim forgives, an abuser goes straight to his/her arms and now they are best friends. Of course not, that is not what I'm talking about. My point is only about forgiveness. Maybe the victim will never see the abuser again in his/her life, maybe he/she will, but that's not the point of my comment. The application of my comment only takes place in the act of forgiving.

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