Ex-Church of Christ Support Board

17yearsfree wrote:Thanks all for the responses. And thank you for the words of encouragement ButNowISee. After I initially posted I read another newcomer's thread and, realizing how positive theirs was in comparison to mine, felt a little ridiculous about my bitterness and anger. I realize that by hanging onto the anger, it just gives them the win and I shouldn't let them have any of my energy like that. Trying to focus on the positive can be difficult. But that's why we are here right? To help lift each other up and share.

Precisely - by hanging onto the coc experience, you are giving permission to that experience to make you 'feel bad' NOW. Leaving physically is just the FIRST step.

The forgiveness part isn't necessary. I will never forgive them for the things they did, and what's more, I don't have to.

I do strongly believe in letting go, though.

Welcome.

'Letting go' is part of forgiving YOURSELF for being there in the first place. Until you can forgive yourself (for being young, for being foolish, for being deceived, for being human), you can't let go and go forward.

'Forgiving' isn't only for the OTHER people.

Forgiveness is a complex issue. It isn't just a one and done type of thing.
I'd have to say it's akin to a discipline.

For you to realize you need to get up and move on you have to have a certain level of personal growth and knowledge yourself. Don't beat yourself up too hard.

hope you're doing alright now ...
I've learned forgiveness is personally a way for me to say wow that sucked ok don't let it happen again [fool me once, fool me twice, fool me a 3rd time] but I can relate - I had a upbringing in a cofc - they struggled to get one elder as none of the "qualified" men wanted to do the job; they had a youth group that fragmented into various groups, the saved, the unsaved, the freaks/goths/waivers/whatever, the never can do wrong crowd...now that I look back I see they were just like any other family - good ones, bad ones, etc. and I learned that to let go you have to just to have peace of mind...just like forgiveness means *you* forgive someone else for something against you...

Forgiveness doesn't mean the hurt and memories go away, but it does create the ability to move forward. It also tends to reduce any remaining anger to a manageable level.

Each person has to find their own way to forgive. For me, it was sitting by myself in the back row of the empty cavernous auditorium of the cOc I grew up in and having a talk with God that included forgiving them for what they had done to me. It was more than 15 years after I had left and should have been done at least twelve years sooner.