Confronting Darkness: The Power of Forgiveness and Amends

In my early 20s when I was graduated from college and then thinking about going to grad school where I met you, John, I lived with this guy who was, um, you know, kind of willing to confront me about things and out of kind of the blue and out of these conversations I feel like I saw the darkness in myself and the sin in me in a way that I've never seen it before. I think I've always kind of compensated for things with drive and ambition and competition and that sort of thing. [00:01:37]

I was just hit so hard with the mix in my motivations and how I would, um, you know, put on a front to look more together and more successful than I really was and I had such a crisis I literally called like it feels like everybody I knew to apologize for the ways that I had been, uh, and the ways that I, like, basically postured myself as being more together than I really was. [00:02:09]

I think of it now as my second conversion, you know, where I really saw the mix in me of good and bad and the sin. I guess it was really, I don't like, you just quipped, I don't think I was able to confront my sin very deeply at 7 years old, but when I was, I was probably 23 years old. [00:03:12]

Jesus talked about it and saw it. James 5:16: confess your sins one to another and be healed. Did somebody tell you that you need to go to other people and make amends? You weren't doing the 12 Steps then. You weren't. I didn't even know about the 12 steps. I hadn't. I had a degree in Psychology but I didn't know that much about therapy and psychology at that point. [00:03:54]

I think the thing that reminded me the most of this was Scrooge, you know, at the very end of the Christmas carol he just tries to go make amends and be sorry for how he'd been in almost every relationship of his life and I had my little mini version of that as well and I think that's how the me, you know, just dealing with my own pain like you would say about yourself and so many people now that I've gotten to work with. [00:04:39]

When you think about what blocks us from God, from life, from growth, um, what's the relationship between the wrongs that others have done to me and how much, what kind of damage does that do as opposed to the wrongs that I have done to others and what kind of damage does that do? [00:05:36]

I think they both are two sides of a similar coin, you know, when I think of forgiveness I think it's, I probably would say equally important to think about asking others for forgiveness for the things that I've done and I also think extending forgiveness for the resentments and the bitterness that I have developed towards those that have injured me. [00:06:13]

You use the acronym CRAFT. Yeah, where the, if you want to repair relationship C is to calm yourself and C is to calm yourself and that's really important. If you're still flooded and agitated you're not going to have a very good repair experience. R is to recall what happened in an event that caused Rift in a relationship. A is for apology. [00:07:10]

You helped me to see, John, the difference between an oops apology, you called it, which is really I'm sorry you felt hurt by something that I did, but I don't really think I did anything wrong. And that's not insignificant. I think that's a valid form of apology, but you contrasted it with a heartfelt, genuine more of an I sinned against you. [00:07:34]

The F stands for forgive, both giving forgiveness, um, extending it as well as asking for forgiveness and then T, just to finish the acronym of CRAFT, was to try doing things a different way. Okay, now that we've done some repair work, um, how can we move forward in our relationship? [00:08:29]

When I think of that step eight and nine, I've been thinking all along with your steps book and these steps, um, uh, devotions that you've been doing is it's a little different than what I probably call the therapeutic culture which is generally about how people have hurt me or wounded me and this is a little harder hitting. [00:08:53]

The couples that are good at this and it's not just couples, it can be a parent and a child or siblings or that sort of thing, even in my office, the people who are good at it are very, very good at saying I'm sorry. You want to know how many times I've heard somebody say about a relationship they never say I'm sorry. [00:11:52]