Virginia H. Pearce - Extending Forgiveness

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

(CIP data on file)

ISBN 978-1-60907-714-3

Printed in the United States of America

R. R. Donnelley, Crawfordsville, IN

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Extending Forgiveness

The Lord has endless ways of teaching us what He wants us to know. Not infrequently in my personal scripture study a theme will float to the top. I find myself noticing all sorts of passages on the same subject. And then I start hearing talks about that very subject everywhere I go, or I notice articles on it in the Ensign, or I hearing people discussing the topic. Does the Lord sometimes teach you that way too?

Several months ago, I was with a friend, telling her about a particular topic that seemed to be on my mind for no apparent reason. She said to me, Well, maybe its what the Lord wants you to speak about at Time Out for Women this year.

I said: Well, maybe it is. Its an odd thing, but I am just fascinated by this, and everywhere I go, I seem to be hearing stories that have to do with this principle.

The conversation went on, drifting to one thing and another as we spent the evening together. Somewhere along the way she mentioned a mutual friend, telling me how hurt this friend had been by another friends behavior. I found myself talking about how hurt I had been by this same woman, ya-da, ya-da.... As I drove home that night, I started to feel really bad about what Id said. I immediately called my friend and said, I am so sorry I said that.

She said, And, Virginia, you were wondering why the Lord wanted you to learn about forgiveness? Perhaps He is trying to teach you something...

She was right. I have heard a million talks about the fact that we should forgive. Ive heard all kinds of messages about how important it is to forgive others, and that we should just do it. My challenge, as I began to go through the scriptures and search my heartand particularly as I went off on my own quest for forgiveness, the one the Lord wanted me to takewas that I didnt know very many hows. I wanted to forgive but I didnt know what to do.

I am not going to give you a tidy list of what to do first, second, or third. What I am going to do is share with you a few of the scores of stories I have been collecting about forgiveness. I hope theyll give us some clues that will be helpful to youas they were helpful to meabout how to go about extending forgiveness.

The first story is about a woman who found herself sitting in the reception room of a lawyers office several years ago. She was consumed with hate. Shed been wronged by a man, and she was here to make him pay. She wanted to do to him what he had done to her. She wanted to take from him his money, his energy, his time, and, most of all, his faade. She wanted him to suffer as he had made her suffer. And she knew, as she was sitting there, that the law was on her side.

She later reported that as she was waiting in the lawyers office, she was preparing a Church assignment. She had a lesson to give the following Sunday, and she was reading from the New Testament, making notes and outlining her thoughts, when she came upon this passage from Ephesians: And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christs sake hath forgiven you (Ephesians 4:32).

She later described her reaction to the words: I can never verbalize the spiritual power of that message to my heart. It was as if all the teachings of the gospel came together into one great whole, and in that instant I could see through a glass clearly rather than through a glass, darkly (1 Corinthians 13:12). She continued to report: My feelings for this man did not change. What he had done to me did not change, but I changed. In that moment of instant awareness, I felt for the first time in my life that the Savior could save me.

The story didnt end there, however. Things continued to get worse. The man in question became intent on making her life as miserable as possible. It got to the point where even her health was practically ruined. She had pneumonia, she couldnt function, and it seemed like everything was failing.

One day, in the course of a conversation, her mother said, We will forgive him. It was another reminder of a truth that would become more than just a statement. It would be a long journey, but my friend kept forgiveness as the goal. It was in her prayers as well as her scripture reading. She looked up every scripture in the Topical Guide under the heading of Forgiveness. She read them each many, many times until they slowly began to make sense in her world, helping her to know what her responsibility was and what the Saviors responsibility is. She enlisted the support of her amazing parents, who would listen to her for hours on end and always help her focus on her goal to forgive.

One day, three years later, she was walking down the street when suddenly a feeling of lightness came over her. And the words that came to her mind were the words that she had wanted to say for three years but hadnt been able to. At that moment, she said them out loud. She said, I forgive him. Remember, it took three years for her to get to that point, but at last she was able to say, I forgive him.

Whats more, that feeling has lasted. It has been many years, but she reports, Even now, sometimes when I go to the temple, I put his name on the prayer roll, asking the Lord to bless him that good things will happen in his life.

Thats forgiveness, isnt it? Thats the kind of forgiveness we all want to have the strength and the insight to be able to extend.

Lets just look at that story for a minute and identify some of the things it teaches us about the process of forgiveness. I believe one thing we learn is that sometimes forgiveness is instant, but sometimes it takes time. However long it may take, though, having the desire to forgive, making forgiveness our goal, is our burden. This is how we exercise our agency in the whole process: we keep forgiveness as the goal, even if we cant forgive right away.