Steps…

Acknowledgment

Acceptance

Forgiveness

Purpose

When you watch kids play t-ball the first thing you’ll notice is that they don’t fall the steps. Once they hit the ball, the order of the bases doesn’t matter. The bases don’t have numbers on them so it’s hard to tell which one comes first, second, etc.

But if you run to first, third and then home…it doesn’t count.

I once hot wired a car. I skipped steps. No key, no seat belt, no foot on the brake…it started because I created a shortcut. Which means it wouldn’t last.

The above 4 words are steps. Steps to healing a wound. A childhood wound.

Today I realized something. Step 3 is harder than I ever imagined. Forgiveness. I have read stories of victims forgiving their abusers. I have read stories of parents of the kids of school shootings forgiving the shooter.

I am still in “acceptance”…learning how to live with the pain, to make peace with it. But when I approach the subject of forgiveness I literally don’t know how to do that. How could I forgive someone who hurt someone in my family. How could I forgive what happened when I was 12. So hard.

I found something harder.

I feel pretty dang confident that I could protect whomever I wanted to right now. I am really good at it. Not normal the way I look at it. Too intense.

So…

When I approached the subject of forgiving people that have hurt me today with my counselor, my counselor asked a simple question. “I think you’re high centered on a concept that I’m not sure you want to hear.” What? I said. “How do you think you can forgive others if you haven’t forgiven yourself?”

That made me angry…and then…sad. It’s true. Why didn’t I protect myself?

I know…sounds silly to say it. What sounds normal is to say “I was 12, I didn’t have the tools to protect myself. I was abused by someone much bigger and much older. I was a victim.”

I can “say” it too. And I would say it to someone else who experienced what I did and I would mean it.

Yet…forgiving myself…I’m high centered. But I can’t skip that step.