Ephesians 4: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry

Our blog today comes to us from Barbara Esselink, sharing her insights on forgiveness and the family patterns that affect our lives.

Every so often (quite often actually!), my husband will do or say something that will cause me to say “you’re brilliant!” or “that’s amazing!” And my younger son has this funny habit of then promptly asking me, “ Is that the reason you married him?” As if there was only ONE main reason I married him! My son is always on the quest to find out the most important reason for why I married my husband, even though in reality it’s a myriad number of things that add up the perfect picture of the husband for me.  One thing I reflected on recently that really struck me was a phrase I learned to say mainly because of my husband, and how that has changed my life in profound ways.  And even though it is a simple, common three word phrase that people say everyday, everywhere, all throughout history, it is always life changing.  That phrase is “I am sorry”, and even better is the response” you are forgiven,” from the person you need forgiveness from.  Without these words, we cannot understand how much God truly loves us, how much He did to take away our sins and wipe us clean, and how that shapes our relationships with other people.

One of my family members has been struggling with consequences of intergenerational trauma.  He called me recently to talk about our childhood and help him understand our family better.  My family were Chinese people who fled China when the Communists came, and then a generation later, had to flee Vietnam when the Communists came there.  It took many long years to get most of them to the United States, where they then had to start over as poor immigrants who didn’t speak the language.  It is a given that my family experienced a lot of trauma.  To make matters worse, my mother’s family has a very strong streak of hot tempered personalities, who all think they are right all the time, and speak first, think later.  Whatever their thoughts were on a matter big or small, it was shared, and if it was a hurtful opinion, too bad—- you had to deal with it.  If you were hurt by their words, it was YOUR fault for whatever it was that caused the negative opinion, not theirs; and the words “I am sorry” never crossed their lips.  Conflicts were never resolved.  Life just went on without anyone talking about what had happened.  As a consequence, most of us kids developed a thick armor, a carelessness with our words, and an inability to resolve conflict in any kind of meaningful way.   

Interestingly enough, my family was also a Christian family, and at some point, I realized what the Bible taught was vastly different from what I was experiencing.  In church, we were being taught to confess our sins, to acknowledge when we wronged other people, to ask for their forgiveness, and to forgive them when they wronged us.  We were taught to ask GOD to forgive us; that He loved us so much, He gave His one and only Son Jesus to take away all our sins, and as such, we no longer carried any guilt or shame.  To love someone meant you HAVE to acknowledge when you hurt them, and ask for forgiveness.  And your relationship cannot be made right without the other person forgiving you.  This stemms directly from our need to be right with God, and our relationships with each other should be a reflection of the perfect communion we were meant to have with God. I felt the conflict between what I saw at home and what I learned at church; how to make sense of this?

This all came to a head when I got married.  When we were first engaged, I knew I did not want the same kind of relationship that was typical in my family.  I wanted to put Jesus in the middle of our relationship, and to have harmony and compassion and kindness.  I didn’t want anger and blame to advise our conversations.  In loving someone like Jesus does, you have to love them self sacrificially.  Loving people self sacrificially means many things, but definitely acknowledging their hurt and asking for forgiveness when you cause it, whether on purpose or accidentally, is part of that. I started with saying “I’m sorry” whenever my temper blew, and it was surprisingly hard to do so.  Saying “I’m sorry” was an exercise in letting go of pride and taking up humbleness instead.  At first it was so hard to get out, like the words were stuck tight in my throat and I had to choke it out; but I found the more I said it, and the more I was forgiven, the easier it was. I was surprised to learn that being forgiven is one of the best feelings in the world.  When you know you did something wrong, and you can’t take it back, there’s this pit in your stomach that tells you you’re the worst person in the world; but then the other person forgives you and doesn’t hold it against you and loves you anyway—-what an amazing feeling! Now, after having said “I’m sorry” so many times, whenever there is conflict, I can’t sleep unless it’s made right.  I don’t feel good until I’ve had a chance to say I’m sorry, and even though I know time and time again, I will be forgiven, there’s still this moment of, will it be made right?  Will they forgive me?  Did I do something so horribly wrong they won’t forgive me, or have I done it so many times, they’ve run out of forgiveness?  But the beautiful thing is—when we love like Jesus, there is no end to forgiveness.  There is nothing and no one Jesus did not forgive; there is no sin that Jesus did not take away, and everything bad we’ve done has been totally wiped away.  We do not need to relive old sins.  When sins haunt us, we can say “You have no power over me—- Jesus has taken that away completely, and I no longer need to feel shame about that”. What a freeing sensation that is!  We can say “I am sorry” with the confidence that we will be forgiven, so we should be very free with saying those three words!

Perhaps there is someone in your life you need to forgive.  Perhaps there is someone in your life who needs to forgive you.  Perhaps you are carrying shame and guilt over a sin or hurtful thing you did to someone else, and you need to say you’re sorry, and then give that all to Jesus, so you can really FEEL forgiven.  I like to close my eyes, visualize my sin on a board, and then see God’s hand whitewashing over it— obliterating it and giving it no power over me anymore.  Who do you need to say I’m sorry to, or whose  “I’m sorry” do you need to say “I forgive you” to? What sin do you need to really truly feel forgiven and freed from?