Forgiveness Is Love In Action

I’m grateful for burning my favorite candle while working – it gave me such a subliminal boost throughout the workday. I’m grateful for my comfortable sneakers that protect my joints during my daily run. I’m grateful one of the first house plants we got when we came to Denver has now found a new home. I’m grateful for time naturally functioning as a powerful healing tool. I’m grateful that when I’m called out for letting a defect get out of hand I more readily accept my part rather than deflect, deny, or lash out in other destructive ways. I’m grateful for deeply caring about how my home today is kept in clean, comfy order as it contributes to my internal serenity. I’m grateful for the joy Harper brings to people with his overly affectionate demeanor. I’m grateful for walking through the sea of fallen fragrant pink and white petals on the sidewalks of our neighborhood – I guess this is Spring’s version of Fall. I’m grateful for being able to regularly look at the mountains as they provide me immediate visual evidence on how much bigger the world is compared to me, thus putting my thoughts into perspective, even if it’s only for a few seconds. I’m grateful for Lady Gaga’s Coachella set from this past weekend continuing to bring a jolt of positive energy into my spirit.

I heard a memorable phrase early on in my sobriety, “Forgiveness is Love in Action“, but I didn’t quite clock what it meant for a long while. However it kept being repeated at various meetings so I logged the words in my memory bank as something to dig into as my sobriety matured.

Perhaps a year or so back is when I think it actually clicked for me. I was casually reading some old notes from my Step 4 work, specifically seeing the list of people in my past for whom I had resentments, and that phrase randomly popped back into my head: “Forgiveness is Love in Action“.

I kept repeating it in order to connect the words with the Step 4 people listed before me. People with whom so much dramatic stuff had happened due to my alcoholism. People who had treated me poorly, who I had treated poorly, just a whole lot of tragic messiness written out in glorious detail from which I was attempting to decipher some meaning.

“Forgiveness” hit me real hard at that moment, and equating it with “love” gave me a warm jolt of relief. Looking at my name on that piece of paper sent a little tingle down my spine. If I could find the willingness, the grace, to forgive myself for what transpired during my drinking then I could acknowledge I was an incredibly sick person who suffered from a disease of the mind and desperately needed help. In coming to terms with that fact, I could figure out ways to love and care for myself again. Yet I had to relinquish the all-consuming self-hatred, self-pity, and irredeemable shame in order to see that there is hope for self-love, which was to be found by walking a recovery path as laid out by the Steps.

Digging further, I could possibly explore extending forgiveness to my parents. By letting go of childhood resentments, I could open myself up to realizing that maybe they truly did the best they could with what they had, with what they knew to be right. In acknowledging their limitations, their humanity, I was able to find space in my heart to love them a little more again. Honestly recognizing what was right and wrong on both our parts and learning to focus on the good moving forward permitted me to find an affection for them that had evaded me for years.

Thinking about my first ex with whom I shared some truly tumultuous times during my 20s, I could also show love by embracing forgiveness. It’s not the same as love for myself or my parents since I’ll likely never see him again, but a slightly different kind of love born from the acceptance that we were very young and immature when trying to navigate life’s complexities without the appropriate tools. Just as I saw the humanity in my parents, I could do the same for my ex, thereby allowing myself to let go of the irrevocable baggage from our past and genuinely wish for his peace and contentment.

I can certainly continue going down the long list of folks in my past where demonstrating forgiveness has set me free to express love in its varied forms. Today I am incredibly thankful for regularly revisiting an idea, which initially had been slightly confounding, and appreciating how it continues to be a game-changer for my sobriety. I am deeply indebted to time’s passage and sustained exposure to AA for eventually revealing to me the wisdom in this simple, but beautiful concept.

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