Forgiving and Forgetting

I would like some input on this bit of reflection in which I’ve been engaging recently.

To me, the idea of “forgiving and forgetting” can be challenging when the entity or individual that keeps offending you does so over and over and over again. You can forgive, meaning, you no longer hold angst toward the situation, but there are times that you simply cannot forget. Reasons include awareness that the situation can damage your personal safety, your emotional health, or even, your general happiness.

For example, after someone behaves a certain way over and over again, making similar mistakes or offenses that hurt you, I believe there may come a point when you decide “I will minimize my interactions with this person or their situations — not because I hate them, but for my own personal happiness and well-being. Willingly placing myself into the situation that requires forgiving the same offences over and over again requires too much personal energy and investment that detracts from my productivity.”

I would rather forgive a reasonable number of times, and then alter my behavior so that I am not constantly exposing myself to the situation over and over again – where possible.

I am referring to arms length relationships here — not family.

Naturally, this scenario of repeated offenses has happened in the church a number of times. Once when I was barely a new member. I was deeply hurt and disilliusioned for a while, overcame, restored my happiness and then moved forward with great productivity, overcoming some significant obstacles. A few years later, a similar event happened again, although worse, leading to the same cycle of deep unhappiness. I eventually overcame, and then went on to be highly productive in the church. A few years later, a similar experience occurred. That time, plunging me into what a doctor told me was clinical depression — the first time in my life. I overcame this and continued white knuckling my way to significant church productivity without withdrawing, which I achieved. And then a year later, a similar incident occurred, plunging me into another brief period of depression, protracted frustration for several months until the issue was finally resolved.

And then I came to StayLDS.

When I describe the cumulative effect of these frustrations, TBM’s say things like “it was a long time ago”. “Don’t let other people interfere with your service”. The underlying assumption is that you should keep exposing yourself to the situations that lead to the angst, the emotional unheaval, and the loss of productivity in spite of the fact that history has shown you it will likely happen again.

Particularly when the church is involved.

I tentatively disagree. I believe that when situations have shown repeated potential to damage your health or emotional well-being, you should definitely forgive — this will allow you remove the angst you feel when you reflect on the negative experience.

But in the case of repeated offences you should learn from the experience, and then stop placing yourself in a position where you have to confront the offensive behavior over and over again. Continue interacting with people or the situations as you must, but take care that the interactions will not be so intense they provide further opportunities for the offensive behavior and all its consequences to occur again. This can mean lessening involvement below a certain threshold, At least this way, you can stay.

Thoughts?