Practicing Forgiveness to Mend Relationships

Shortly after Halloween, I found myself doing something that many parents have done, eating my daughter’s candy. My rationale was solid, she had more than she could possibly eat on her own. I was doing my part by scarfing down a few Reese's and Snickers. The only hole in my sugar tooth plan was the promise I made to my daughter a few days earlier--I promised that I would not eat any of her candy. Did I make that promise knowing it would be difficult to keep? Yes. Did that make my promise any less important to keep? No.

The day after my candy heist, I was caught red-handed. My daughter and I were hanging out in the kitchen when she opened the trash only to find it riddled with wrappers. She looked at me in shock. She yelled, “But you promised!!” I had no defense. I knew I shouldn’t have stolen the candy in the first place, but I had done it anyway. The only way forward was to confess, apologize, and hope my daughter would forgive me.

Lead by example

It starts with you: learning to forgive and be forgiven needs to be modeled. I am teaching the power of forgiveness by modeling it for my kids. I would not have expected my daughter to forgive me unless her mother and I had spent years exemplifying this kind of loving behavior in front of her. She has been a witness when I’ve said a terse word to my wife or my wife has offended me. If that’s all she saw, then she might feel like our home isn’t a good place, but along with those tense moments, she’s seen countless moments when I’ve let go of my stubbornness and apologized, seeking forgiveness, or when my wife has chosen to forgive me for not keeping my mouth shut when I should have. Yet, as Christ has forgiven us (Eph. 4:32), we know that in any relationship, we can expect there will be plenty of apologies and forgiveness to go around. Therefore, as my daughter came to terms with my broken promise, she extended a loving word of forgiveness to me too.

Begin with repentance

Teaching forgiveness to our children requires beginning with, “I’m sorry.” Learning to apologize and forgive begins at an early age. As my wife and I have modeled apologies to our three-year-old son, we’ve focused on teaching him to say, “Sorry.” Whenever he throws a toy across the room, hits his sister, or takes a toy out of another child’s hands, we encourage him to stop what he’s doing and say, “Sorry.” When he first learned the word “Sorry” he was quick to repeat it after us, but as he has learned what “Sorry” means, he has become more resistant to saying it. Although it can now take more time, I can tell that even as a toddler, he is learning what it means to make amends through apologizing.

Making amends

The next step in forgiving is asking, “How can I make it up to you?” With our eight-year-old, we’ve moved beyond a short “Sorry” to more complete amends. We’ve even gone a step further than apologizing and asking for forgiveness. Now, she is at the age, when after seeking forgiveness, she can ask, “How can I make it up to you?” This kind of apology contains a level of sincerity that can only be displayed through action. By asking, “How can I make it up to you,” the perpetrator is giving the power back to the victim and doing the necessary work to show they are willing to do whatever it takes to reconcile. She learned the vocabulary when she was young, but now she gets to practice the actions the vocabulary demands of her.

Forgiving like Jesus

Jesus embodied what forgiveness looks like. Practicing the habit of confession, apologizing, and forgiveness is a work of humility. Pride prohibits people from acknowledging they hurt another person, addressing the fact the relationship is fractured as a result of the hurt, and waiting for the hurt person to respond in forgiveness. Yet, Jesus has already paved the way by humility and repenting on behalf of the world through his life, death, resurrection, and ascension. As he came to this world, he made it abundantly clear that God welcomes sinners and forgives freely through the blood of Christ. So, we can go into each day assured that, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).