3 Step Process to Forgiveness (Part 1)
By Keith Cook
Are you struggling with forgiveness? Has someone wronged you and your hatred, distrust, shame, and guilt built a wall around your heart? Do you find it challenging to have meaningful and lasting relationships because of events that trigger anger, rage, hostility, pinned up and conflicting emotions from your past? Are you ever going to feel at peace inside?
Tyler Perry was named the 2nd highest paid man in Hollywood. Even though he endured sever physical, mental, and sexual abuse as a child, he survived the unthinkable and never told a soul. He has become a house hold name and known world wide for his plays and movies.
Having endured constant violent beatings at the hands of his father, being molested by a man of the church, a male nurse, and his best friend’s mother, Tyler was fortunate to re-member himself and share his gift with the world.
Like many Afro American males today, he was troubled by a sordid past. But has transformed that painful aftermath into his saving grace and allowed it to touch the hearts and minds of millions of people.
His story of molestation, physical, and mental abuse, shares a familiar tone similar to mine. My first sexual experience happened at the age of 4 or 5. My grandmother was a foster parent and until a few years ago, I was unaware that all of the foster children were mentally, physically or sexually abused.
A very traumatic occurrence happened when one of the foster boys molested me. He performed anal and oral sex on me and had me do the same to him. The first person I told about this event was my 7th grade football coach. I was 13 and my coach soon became a father figure, mentor and guiding light for me.
I held on to all those negative feelings, thinking that my pain would somehow, be my molesters’ pain. Little did I know, at the time, holding on to all that hurt was like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. Holding on to hatred was like holding a hot coal and expecting the other person to get burned. I had to let go on those feelings that were not serving me to allow feeling up love, increase, gratitude, and abundance into my life, into my heart.
The guy that molested me was a teenager. So, it’s a good chance he was molested too. Due to all the suffering it caused in my life, I could only imagine the pain and suffering it caused in his life. So I forgave him. Forgiveness was for me, not for him. I had to let go of the pain. Just because I forgave him, doesn’t mean I wanted to interact with him or what he did was OK. It simply meant I did not want that event to control my emotions and feelings any longer. I was ready to allow my heart to emotional heal and share that with others.
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30 Minute “Exploration” Session.
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