Everything Forgiveness Is Not
As I watched the final court proceedings and sentencing hearing related to the execution of Botham Jean by Amber Guyer, I was deeply saddened on levels too extensive to write in such a brief article. I later learned that the way I felt was not necessarily because of the the conclusion of the case nor the limited legal sentencing Amber received, but rather the world’s response to the actions of Brandt Jean, the 18 year old brother of Botham Jean, who very painfully expresses, what we called forgiving Amber Guyger.
So I did what most people do. I scrolled the comments, searched the media and listened to radio and talk shows only to hear opposing opinions, primarily divided by either race, culture or religious beliefs. And I must be honest, I understood all perspectives. So I went back and watched Brandt’s expressions again and here is what I found:
Everything Brandt Jean does in that brief interaction is –Everything Forgiveness Is Not. His expressions actually teach us more about “Grief” than “Forgiveness,” and most of society didn’t even know the difference, including the church. If you muted the audio and watched Brandt’s affect, you would see anger, resentment, confusion, pain and so many other emotions that are reflective of the tragic loss he suffered.You can actually watch him “push down” (suppress) his emotions to get his words out. Sometimes the words would not come. He had to grab his shirt collar, clear his voice or look down and away from her. The truth is that he was feeling something much different than the words he used to express how he felt and that’s what was so painful to watch.
In the field of “Forgiveness Work” we know that sometimes we use words that are just the opposite of what we actually feel. We struggle with intensified feelings of anger and rage that conflicts with our psychological constructs of Love. As a matter of fact, both emotions (anger & love) are born from the same place. They are driven by the same passion. They produce the same physiological evidence for their presence. They are both emotions of passion, just of different sides of the same coin. That’s what makes authentic forgiveness so difficult and complicated for us to do and understand. That’s what often unconsciously motivates us to say we “Forgave” when we really only “Suppressed”. Then there’s the old adage – “When I think about them or see them I no longer feel angry” as though that means you’ve forgiven, when in fact, it doesn’t because sometimes you can’t know how you feel, especially when you’ve forced your body to do something that it wasn’t ready to do. Forgiveness is a process that takes some time to complete, if it is to be done the right way. Even when you consider God’s act of forgiveness towards humanity – it took a while – to get from Adam and Eve in the garden to Jesus at the Cross. My point is simply that it is most important to understand the importance of authentic forgiveness and the process for which it can is successfully done so that we do not re-traumatize people by teaching and implying that it’s just “saying and acting.”
Forgiveness is the complete resolution of anger, not the suppression of it. It is the restoration of hope, not the creation of it. That’s why the bible says, “It pleased God to sacrifice His Son.” God’s pleasure in the sacrifice is said to be the resolution of His wrath towards humanity and we find that resolution of anger and the restoration of the original hope consolidated in Jesus’s sacrifice for us. In my book on forgiveness, I write about the powerful element of love as the only surgical tool appropriate for the work of forgiveness to be completed. I also address the stages of grief, encapsulated grief and their impact on the forgiveness process. Grief complicates forgiveness and anger is the culprit. Restructuring anger’s position as a secondary emotion and identifying the primary emotion associated with the trauma helps people work towards authentic forgiveness.
So what was Brandt doing – that we called forgiveness? He was simply suppressing his emotions, primarily anger, as he struggled with cognitive constructs about forgiveness that he had been taught. Constructs that challenged his reality – He felt compelled to “let it go” and to “leave it alone” so he “Pushed It Down” and wanted Amber to be his friend (which validates how conflicting his emotional, psychological and spiritual realities were). Then he did the most unusual, he asked to hug the perpetrator – he actually begged to do so, as though he needed for himself more than she did. The judge – consented. And he walked up to Amber, while she desperately wept and he hugged her. Actually he held her – for a while; and he did it over and over again. You see sometimes when we grieve and suppress emotions, our actions resemble just the opposite of what we really feel. In this case, the opposite of hugging would be hurting – He chose to hug. The guilt she must have felt must have been just as painful as the pain she would have felt if he chose not to hug, but to hurt her. Those opposing actions instigated the same emotional response, just as both anger and love are born from the same place.
I think Brandt is a hero! Not because he forgave Amber, because I don’t think he did. I do think he wants to and I feel he’s learning how to. I think he’s a hero for another reason. He champions the struggle of grief before a national audience and exemplifies our natural tendency to suppress our feelings for the sake of an ideology, which is what happened to the 68 year-old Christian woman who came to see me after her husband of 48 years had died. After just 2 weeks in therapy, she began feeling excessive anger and rage towards a person that had raped her some 49 years ago. Her statement still resonates so deeply with me, “I thought I had forgiven him,” she said weeping. She was in therapy for grief, but having to deal with with forgiveness first because when you don’t do the work necessary for forgiveness, you suppress emotions that tend to drive your actions and thoughts often at a very subconscious level. You see, someone told her she had to forgive her perpetrator 49 years ago, so she said it and she acted it out, but she never worked through it – so she never really forgave him. She had done so many things to get through it, but she never worked through it. Ultimately, she had done “Everything Forgiveness IS NOT” and was realizing it 49 years later.