Al-Anon books are really great, especially for those who have an alcoholic in their lives.
Today- from Courage to Change- it started off with this paragraph:
I grew up with guilt and blame, admist harsh criticism and constant fear. Even now, after years of Al-Anon recovery, when past mistakes come to mind I tend to react with guilt, exaggerating the significance of my errors and thinking very badly of myself.
And then I wonder why I have a hard time forgiving.
And then I get to the book, One Day at a Time in Al-Anon. First line:
A little medication on the word forgive can throw some rather surprising light on our understanding of the word.
I bet that is God today :) Only He could have orchestrated time enough to read the Al-Anon books along with my Forgive and Forget book tonight.
The Chapter called: We Hate.
He speaks about passive and aggressive hate. Passive hates is secretly not feeling bad if 'ill-will' were to happen or to feel 'dead' to that person. Aggressive hate is wishing 'ill-will' to happen to that person.
Hate is like cancer. Yep. "...it (hate) surely hurts the hater more than it hurts the hated. It is hate and not anger that needs healing. Anger is a sign that we are alive and well. Hate is a sign that we are sick and need to be healed."
He goes on to say that Hate is hard to cure for several reasons:
1) It is people, not merely evil, that we hate
"None of us want to admit we hate people." "We do not dare to risk admitting the hate we feel because we do not dare to risk forgiving the person we hate." "When we only hate the wrongness of a thing, our hate dies when the wrong we hate is righted. But when we hate people who do us wrong, our hate stays alive long after the wrong they did is dead and gone..."
2) We most often aim our hatred at people who live within the circle of our committed love
3) We hate people we blame:
"When we hate a person who deserves our hate we feel very righteous in our hating. "
If I were to bring this around in a circle with the title. Not only do I inflate my own mistakes and wrong doings, but I can do the same of others. I have gotten better about each of these, becoming more rational about both of these, and I also have been more able to mature both sides.
In our hate, we think we are 'giving what they deserve', but in all reality we are only harming ourselves. The hate will eat us up, start infiltrating other areas of our lives, and cause a huge death by the end.
Going back to admitting we don't hate. SO TRUE IN THE MIDWEST! If you admit you hate, you are evil. You get the "How dare you!" look along with the subtle phrases of how you should feel like a horrible person for admitting the hate you feel and think.
So, let's be done shaming.
I bet if people could admit a little more freely that hate exists inside of them, then healing would come much faster. Shaming is never useful. In fact, it is detrimental to any progress that could be made.
So, can you make a commitment to allowing people to be vulnerable about where they are at? Encourage them to see how they want their life to unfold? To give individuals time to process through things?
Don't get me wrong- there are going to be those that are stubborn and will not allow healing to come. They find identity in their hate. It becomes so part of them, that separating those things is really left to God and a counselor to sort through. However, if a person is able to admit things early on, chances are s/he will be able to get to healing much faster.
Will you be the navigator of pain or freedom?
Next chapter: Healing.
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