Forgiven?

This is, so far as I know, the last part of the book I'm going to share on here. It's one of the 11 steps to become more confident, and it's one of the hardest for me. To have real self-confidence, you have to forgive both others and yourself.

Here's why this is so important: most of the grudges we have stem from things that made us feel bad about ourselves. For example, I kissed a girl in 4th grade who swore she wouldn't tell anyone and then she immediately ran all over the playground shouting, "Johnathan kissed me!" I was humiliated and my standing in the class only went downhill from there. I held onto this for almost twenty years. I felt so embarrassed and betrayed, like no one who claimed to like me ever would but was just waiting for a chance to hurt me.

What I was doing was saying she had the power to determine my self-worth and she had found it lacking. If I had already determined my self-worth and knew it was enough, first, I wouldn't have been pressured into kissing her, but second, if I had kissed her, I'd just own up to it. I'd take the teasing and it would blow over because it wouldn't affect me. I could forgive her, too, both for lying and for trying to humiliate me.

Think of the grudges you have in your life. It could be against a romantic interest who lied to you. It could be against a boss for treating you unfairly, or against a friend for turning against you when you needed them most. It could be against someone for an insult or cruel joke at your expense. It could be against your family for not supporting you enough or paying as much attention to you as you would have liked. All of these things need to be forgiven because none of them determine your actual value. If you hold onto them, you're claiming they still have the power to lower your self-worth, that their opinion of you is more important than God's opinion of you.

Here's what I want you to do: take a notebook and just start writing the names of every last person you can remember from your entire life. If you remember a person, but don't remember the name, write down a description that you'll understand when you go through the list again. It's important to do this first because remembering everyone will help make sure your next list is complete. Then, go through the list carefully and think about every person. If you get even the slightest twinge of not liking that person, regardless of whether you remember exactly what they did to you, write their name on a separate list (I recommend a computer for this one). This is your grudge list.

For all the people on it, write down any and all offenses you can remember, anything that shapes your opinion of this person in a negative light, as openly and honestly as you can. Don't be nice and euphemistic about it; this list is for your eyes only. Say whatever is on your mind. Then write down how it made you feel, detailing exactly why it hurt you. Let out all your feelings here. And then, the final part is forgiving them.

This is tricky, I know. Some people you won't want to forgive, either because they hurt you so deeply or because there is no reason but malice behind it. Most hurts are unintentional or caused by selfishness and stupidity, but some people hurt others just to make themselves feel more powerful and these hurts are hard to forgive. Forgive anyway. And this forgiveness can't be, "Well, I have confidence now, so you don't matter. Neener, neener, neener!" You have to forgive from your heart. God loves you, so what they did doesn't affect your value, but God also loves them and wants them to have the same self-confidence He wants you to have.

This may take just a day or a week. In my case, I've been going through it off and on for months, the product of a very good memory and very low self-esteem. You'll find a couple things happen as you go through it, though. First, it gets easier the more you do it. The message will start to sink in that only God's opinion matters. Letting go of these grudges is going to feel like dropping weights from off your shoulders and you'll notice a difference in how you treat people. For some of them that made the list, you may have to reread your section for them several times for it to soak in, but when you really have forgiven them, your relationship should see improvement.

Second, you'll be able to more easily see where you've gone wrong. Many of our grudges are times we've taken offense for something that was unintentional. We assume the worst about the other person when they were simply thoughtless or they wanted to avoid hurting our feelings so they didn't tell us the truth we needed to hear. For a number of these grudges, you might need to include another section, put just above the forgiveness, on your own failures. In a few of your grudges, you might see that the fault was almost entirely yours or that there was a simple misunderstanding and nothing to forgive at all.

Being able to see your own shortcomings honestly will help you in the next, and probably most difficult part of this. Add another name to your grudge list: your own. You'll probably have more to say about this name than any of the others. I know I did (and I'm still not done yet). Of all the people on this list, though, this name is the most important to forgive. God doesn't hold your sins against you, and He doesn't want you to, either. Confess them all, every one you can think of, including why you did it and how it made you feel. Then forgive yourself, making it a point to write down how your value doesn't come from your mistakes or all the time and talent you may have wasted or all the money you've burned through. It comes from God and God alone.

Last, but not least, add one final name to the list: God. You don't need to forgive God, of course, because He's never done anything wrong to you. You do, however, need to let go of any grudge against Him. For me, I have to write down all the times it seemed He didn't come through for my family and I when I was growing up and for my long-time belief that I might as well have been made of estrogen repellant. The reason is that you can't want to draw close to someone that you have a big grudge against. Having real self-confidence requires knowing God because you are trusting in His opinion of you; you can't trust an opinion of your value from someone you don't know at all. You have to realize that all of the times you think He's failed you are really times when He was looking out for your needs over your wants, like a good father should. You have to know that He's always been there for you, guiding you to where you are now. And you have to remember that many of the bad things in your life have been because you've made choices other than Him. He never has and never will do anything that requires forgiving, but you have to let go your grudge against Him all the same if you want to know Him...and if you want to have the confidence He wants so much for you to have.