Over the past year, I have committed to praying The Lord’s Prayer each morning before I read my Bible and do my usual morning prayers. I know that many who follow my blog may not share the same faith, but my faith is a major part of my identity, and in a lot of ways my faith defines me more than my heritage and cultural background. I can think of many times when my faith had to supersede any feelings connected to the history of my heritage, and one of those times is the call to forgive. Even though I have prayed the Lord’s Prayer many times, this morning was the first time the words “…and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who have trespassed against us” resonated with me so deeply.
There is no disclaimer or condition in that prayer. This one line in the Lord’s Prayer simply says that because I have been forgiven (even though I may not deserve it), I must forgive. This passage doesn’t tell me to forgive, IF people apologize or try to make things right with me. It simply reminds me that I have been forgiven without question and therefore I should have the same heart of forgiveness.
Forgiveness is hard, but it is so freeing. It’s freeing because you only have to work on your heart. You don’t have to change circumstances or try to convince people to be sorry. All you have to do is choose to forgive and love unconditionally. When The Lord’s Prayer reminds us of how God forgave us, it is to inspire us that we also have the same ability to choose to forgive those who have hurt us.
The work that I do in trying to bring racial healing must come from a place of fulfilling The Lord’s Prayer. I know reading this to some is a turn off, but I have gone through choosing forgiveness, when I was carrying hurt. The freedom I felt in letting go of the burden of unforgiveness is something so wonderful, that I cannot describe it with any other word, but FREEDOM. That person or people who hurt me, no longer control my thoughts, my feelings, or even my actions. I released the hurt. Some accused MLK of being weak, because he chose a path of nonviolence, but it takes unimaginable strength and self-control to let go of bitterness against those who are genuinely hurting you.
It is bondage to walk around replaying every racist moment in history over and over with no resolution or reconciliation. I am not advocating that we forget history or ignore racism. I believe in talking about it, facing it, but that process must lead to reconciliation and forgiveness. If not, then we are just continuing to carry the chains of our ancestors. I say reconciliation AND forgiveness, because sometimes reconciliation does not happen. I have experienced White people rejecting any form of reconciliation, happy to stay within a racist and White supremacist mentality. When that happens, I have to make a choice and I always try to choose forgiveness. It is so hard, but what other choice do I have than to just marinate in the memories of what they did to me? How does that help me?
Many who write books about the racism we have endured, leave us wanting an answer to our pain. Every book I read, I can feel the hurt resurrect as I recount with the author almost identical experiences that I have had and they have had and our ancestors have had. The answer is not making everyone feel guilty, because I have tried that too and I came away feeling empty as I watched a person feel the burden of guilt from their unconscious biases, microaggressions and memories of what their ancestors did to mine. As I watched that guilt overtake the person, there was not pleasure in it for me. There was only emptiness. Racism has not changed and I don’t think it will, but I can change. I can choose forgiveness and I can choose to seek reconciliation in the relationships that surround me. When I do that, I am given an opportunity to build relationships that can lead to understanding, empathy, and a changed heart. That ultimately should be the goal. It is the only way to end racism…through changing the hearts and minds of people and giving them a path forward to end the generational curse of racism. I can control what I feel by choosing peace and healing. When I do that, I am free. My forgiveness can also set others free. If you choose forgiveness, you will be free too.
Recently I realized that I had been carrying some hurt for many years (not racially related). I didn’t realize that I had just been carrying this and nurturing my hurt, oftentimes replaying the hurtful moments over and over in my mind, talking about them over and over with my husband and family and feeling justified in those feelings, because no one had apologized or tried to reconcile with me. For years, I was carrying these memories around with me unconsciously and I realized that sometimes the memories of my hurt or seeing or hearing something that reminded me of the hurt would bring some form of sadness and would leave me crying oftentimes. One day I had enough and sat down with myself and I guess God was there too (lol). I confessed to God that I was tired of carrying the weight of those hurtful memories. I looked at my husband and said, “It’s time to let this go. I can’t just keep carrying this until someone tries to reconcile. I can’t depend on PEOPLE to heal me! God must heal me and that healing can only come through authentic forgiveness.” This was such a humbling moment for me. Realizing that I simply had to forgive was so freeing that I cried and thanked God for the answer to my hurt. I am a pretty light-hearted person and I thought I was one who did not carry bitterness, but buried deep within my little joyful heart was a hurt that I had never let go of. I chose in that moment to forgive and to do the work on myself to walk in the freedom of forgiveness. That decision had nothing to do with those who hurt me. They did not matter. I wanted freedom, so I chose to forgive.
This does not mean I do not remember what hurt me. It does not mean that I ignore the affect that it had on me. It does not mean that I try to rewrite my history so I don’t have to deal with it. It means that even while remembering and knowing about my past hurt, I can look it in the face and still choose to love and forgive, and that part of that process involves seeing the hurt in other people. It means that as you forgive, you desire to see others heal. When it comes to racial healing, sharing about my experiences with racism is not to play the victim (which when people say that, it is so rude and sort of narcissistic to say to a person who is genuinely hurting) or to create a sense of guilt in the other person. It is not seeking some sort of satisfaction in seeing them feel burdened by being the cause of my pain. Instead, I share my story as a way to heal our relationship, to bring those blinded by false and racist narratives into the light. My path to forgiveness causes me to see that we are all hurt by racism and should stand together against IT, instead of against each other. Forgiveness is not a fantasy or creating a false narrative about the person so that I feel better about them (like being grateful for how slavery caused my people to find Jesus), but it is knowing the truth and yet choosing to forgive. When Jesus died on the cross, he looked humanity in the face and saw every single person’s hurtful ways, and still chose to love, but that love led him to ACT. That action led him to free all of us. The choice to forgive and the action of sharing the truth IN LOVE could help to heal us all. That is what I want for myself in all of my relationships, even in those times where I experience racism or remember the racism my ancestors endured. This is freedom, and maybe as I embrace the freedom of forgiveness, others will be set free too, and we can all find a path towards true healing.
Dr. Anika T. Prather 