Episode 303 - Michael and Julianne Cusick, "Unpacking Forgiveness"

Welcome to another episode of Restoring the Soul with your host, Michael John Cusick. Forgiveness is a term often uttered with ease but practiced with considerable difficulty. What does forgiveness truly entail? Does it inherently mean reconciliation or forgetting?

Joined by Julianne in the studio, they tackle heavyweight questions together. What happens when forgiveness feels incomplete? How might unresolved trauma complicate the process? And how do you navigate forgiveness in the aftermath of deep wounds and betrayal?

Julianne brings to light the intricate journey of forgiving, reminding us that it is a layered and intertwined path, often requiring us to revisit and release it repeatedly. Prepare to be moved by authentic stories, gain practical insight, and perhaps confront the unforgiveness lurking within your soul. Because here, we believe in restoration and the power that comes from an honest, in-depth conversation about the pains and possibilities of forgiving. 

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Transcript

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Hi, everybody. Welcome to restoring the soul. This is Michael John Cusick, and I'm here with Julianne Cusick in the studio. Hi, Jules. Hi, Michael. And hello, listeners. It's great to be back in the studio with you today. Today we will be talking about forgiveness, a topic that we use words about forgiveness all the time as followers of Jesus. But it's something that's not well understood. And there's a lot of myths. And today you're gonna share some of your study and experience and help clear up some of those myths. So what's the important thing for people to understand as we start out talking about the topic of forgiveness? Well, I think the first thing is that oftentimes forgiveness is misunderstood in the church. What it is, what it isn't, and really what's involved with forgiveness, and many times how long it takes to walk through and engage the process of forgiveness. So I would say forgiveness is a process. It is not a one time event. And so you talked about some of the myths or misunderstandings. What are some of the biggest misunderstandings in addition to the fact that it's just something that I can do one time and be done with it? I think sometimes forgiveness is mixed in and attached with forgetting. That phrase forgive and forget that we hear so often it's actually not a biblical phrase in scripture. We're actually called to remember, remember God's faithfulness or to remember our sins with weeping and grief and repentance. So the idea of forgiving and forgetting the other is that forgiveness equals reconciliation or restoration in a relationship. So I think that's another myth. One would be that it's a one time event, you know, that it's a mandate that we're called to forgive. So we just need to do it and get it over with and be done with it. That forgiveness means forgetting and that forgiveness also means reconciliation or restoration. Those are the. What I would call the fallacies of forgiveness. So I want to just pick up that second fallacy that you talked about, and that's the idea that forgiveness does not equal reconciliation. I've worked with countless people who, in this conversation around forgiveness have said, are you telling me that if I forgive this person, I have to be reconciled to them? Wait a minute. They were my abuser, or they harmed me in such a way they don't even see it as having caused harm, and they've not changed. Yeah. And many times in situations, there's a hurry up, a pressure to hurry up and forgive so that we can be restored or have a relationship and really, they're two totally separate things. Restoration and reconciliation has a lot to do with repentance. Does the person who wounded us in the situation, you just say the person who has sexually abused, you know, are they owning that? Are they repentant of that? Do we need that repentance to forgive? No, but do we need that to be able to restore a relationship? I would say yes. As a matter of fact, I was speaking on biblical forgiveness in another venue, and one of the things I wanted to do was run it by my episcopal priest. So he's a real word nerd. And I was asking him about forgiveness. And our entire conversation was contingent on this premise that the person who did the wounding was repentant, that they were taking ownership. And at one point, I asked, well, what if the person isn't owning that? What if the person isn't sorry, isn't repentant, isn't remorseful? And he just paused, and he was like, well, I don't think that reconciliation or restoration is possible without that. Now, can I forgive? Absolutely. Is it easier to forgive when someone is repentant? Yes, I think it is. But if someone isn't, I can still forgive. Because to forgive means to release. Right? Or to take the burden of making, you know, wanting that person to pay and releasing it to God. But I might not choose to be in relationship with them. And I think there are different levels of forgiveness based on what's happened. You know, we had a kerfuffle this week, and I was really upset at you, and I was hurt and I was angry, and there was this very old, immature, wounded part of me that surfaced that was like, I want to make him pay, you know, so I wanted to give you the silent treatment or, you know, have. Have distance. I was miserable, and. And so I got to the place where I was like, ah, I'm going to forgive him. Now. That doesn't mean we're not going to have a conversation about what happened and blah, blah, blah. Right. But not forgiving was making me miserable. I didn't like what was being activated inside of me. And so we can choose forgiveness on our own. Now, this was a very small kerfuffle in our relationship, but 30 years ago when there were lies and deception and betrayal. Oh, my goodness. That forgiveness literally took years. Yeah. And I want to ask you to talk about that. And of course, anybody familiar with this program knows that my history of sexual addiction and the betrayal to you, that that's all something that is a massive part of our story together that came from the trauma in our lives. And it's really a beautiful story and transformational story of how you came to forgive and how we're still married almost 33 years later. You talked about this yucky feeling of unforgiveness. I think it was Archbishop Desmond Tutu who described unforgiveness as, like, drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. And I remember hearing that once, and I just burst out laughing thinking, that is so true to my experience, because we can hold on to that unforgiveness because it gives a sense of power, gives us the illusion of control, and then it keeps us from having our heart open and soft. But as you talked about the difficulty forgiving, which I don't know, at some point, the number seven years out in terms of the anger that was prompted and stirred by my betrayal, that it took that long. But I'd like you to talk about your experience. And then what are some of the factors related to trauma that keep this experience that either feels like unforgiveness or makes it so that a person's heart can't actually go there? Okay. Gosh, I was, in my mind, going in a different direction about forgiveness being a process and taking time. Maybe we'll get back to that, like, the different levels of impact on us. But when you talk about trauma and forgiveness. Say that question one more time so I can get the whole thing. Yeah. Where I was going with that, it's probably the same question that it takes a long time. But I find, especially in my experience, I had an uncle who I could not and would not forgive. And it's because my body internally was so dysregulated, and I would get so tight inside every time I'd think about him. And then my mind would get anxious. I couldn't go there. It wasn't a spiritual issue of wanting to or the goodness of my heart. It was the dysregulation of my body. And

then one morning at 03: 9:04

00 a.m. Driving to the airport, I started to weep in my car, and I was like, I forgive him. And it just happened spontaneously? Yeah. Yeah. So I think. I think I get what you're getting at, and I think we're talking about, like, two sides of the same coin. So I will talk from my experience, when the impact, like your betrayal and that broken trust, that was a really big incident. We call it a traumatic incident. So with traumatic events like that, it's going to take longer for healing. And when we're looking at something that maybe has gone on in a person's life for 20 or 30 years, and their partner doesn't know about it. And it could be gambling, right? It could be secret, you know, spending of money, you know, it doesn't have to be a sexual betrayal. There's so many things that can be traumatic when there's been a secret for that long. A hidden. A hidden life, right? And when we put, like, a hurry up and forgive timeframe on that, it doesn't balance out 20 years and a couple of months, you know, it's like, there's no context, right. To forgive that quickly, because I have to process that 20 years. The other thing that happens, and I think this is what you're asking, is if I have unresolved trauma in my life, the impact of the present day trauma can reactivate my past trauma. And so in our situation 30 years ago, literally coming up this year, 30 years ago, not only did I have real time betrayal by you lying to me, deceiving me, and some of the choices and behaviors that you engaged in, which were devastating to me, in addition to that, I also had unresolved trauma, which made my forgiveness process messier, longer, and more entangled. So it got really hard to pull apart what was being reactivated in me from an old wound and the very real present trauma that literally destroyed trust in our relationship. And that trust had to be rebuilt. And forgiveness was a process. And I think, you know, with the background of trauma, yes, it's more complicated, but when we're dealing with a violation in an intimate partner relationship, and again, this doesn't have to be sexual. It can be financial, business decisions, investments moving forward in something that the other partner doesn't know about or agree to. I think of gambling, right? Thousands and thousands of dollars lost, and the partner finds out, oh, my gosh, you spent this much money, and you've hidden it. So there's two assaults that it's happened, but the second layer is the hiddenness. It's been a secret for whatever amount of time it takes. The person who is having to rewrite this history now of 510, 1520 years, it takes them time to take account for and process what that loss is. So if I rush in and say, oh, you've spent 20 years squandering money on X, Y, or Z, and I didn't know about that, and now I'm supposed to forgive you in two weeks of counseling or two months of counseling? Wait a minute. I still can't get my head around this. I'm still rewriting 20 years of anniversaries and Christmases and times you said that you loved me, or times that we didn't have money for this or this, or this that we really needed. And now I know why we didn't have the money like this. I have to count the cost, if you will. I have to identify the wounds and the losses. And as I do that, then I can forgive as I go through identifying what those wounds and losses are. So I can't forgive if I don't know what I'm forgiving. I use the example. Sometimes. If I go home tonight, I go out into the parking lot, we're in our separate cars together, I back up, I bump into your car, I get out, I look at the damage. There's just a little dime sized bump that doesn't mean anything. And you say, oh, I forgive you. And I say, oh, thank you so much. But then tomorrow you get whiplash, and you spend the next six months going to physical therapy and neurologist. Because of the way that I backed up, hit your car, there was only a little dime size impact on the bumper. But the way that you twisted your head at that moment caused this pain and this suffering and this fallout. So that initial I forgive you really doesn't apply because you don't even yet know the full extent of what needs to be forgiven. Yes, the full extent of the damage or the full extent of the impact. So another situation where it plays out that it's, you know, forgiveness is ongoing. And I think when I hear Jesus say in the New Testament, you know, forgive your brother seven times 70, to me, that's ongoing. Not that the behavior that the person continues in, like, if you keep dinging my car every day over and over and over again, like, we're going to have a problem, right? So we really can't forgive a behavior that is continuing to happen because we're continuing to get injured by it. But that one event could have longer term repercussions. So, an example, friend of mine, betrayal in the marriage ended. The husband was non repentant at the time, ended in divorce five years later. And this woman had forgiven this man. She was a beautiful example of going through this divorce, letting go of this man and recognizing what was his. But her mom got ill, and she said to me, I have to forgive him all over again, because he promised for years, me and my mother, that we wouldn't be alone, that he would be with her and he would be with me. And she said, Julianne, now mom's dying and he's not here. And I have to forgive him all over again because of his choices, which resulted in the divorce. Here I am five years later, and there's another wound, there's another loss, right. There's another whiplash or dent in the car that's causing this grief, which is an invitation then to continue to forgive, to release, and to let go. Julianne, I hear frequently, as you're talking, there's so many questions that are stirring up. But one of the things I hear the most frequently is in couples counseling, one person saying, they told me that they forgave me, but I sure don't feel forgiven. And so what happens when someone has prayed and said, God, I forgive them, or they speak out loud to the individual, I have forgiven you. But then they're continuing to act as if they haven't. What might be happening in that instance? Well, my first thought is that maybe it hasn't been a. Their wounds haven't thoroughly been addressed by the other individual. So, like, the offending party maybe has not taken responsibility and accountability and has not been remorseful or repentant. And so this person, this christian person, is left trying to do the right thing of forgiving, but they're getting hung up because they really haven't felt that their wounds have been addressed or that that person is really sorrowful or repentant. The next thought that comes to mind is maybe they have forgiven to a certain extent, but there's more that they need to forgive in the sense of counting the cost or itemizing the losses, kind of doing an inventory, assessing the damage, because it sounds like if I'm not feeling released and this other person really is remorseful and repentant, then maybe there's more to it that has wounded me and I can't heal what I don't feel. So I have to look at what is the cost of what's happened to me. How has it really impacted me and hurt me? And then the third would be some unresolved trauma, which I, you know, happened to me. It made that forgiveness process longer and more difficult. And so if someone feels stuck in their forgiveness, I think looking at those three areas would be, you know, places to start. So in the instance of trauma, again, that the present offense or wound or sin is kind of piggybacking on something that's older, that's there. And therefore, when the forgiveness is offered, it still is kind of woven into the system, the pain, and therefore they're reacting to it. Yeah. And this happens many times at an unconscious level, like, certainly for me, you know, and for the clients that I work with, friends that I have. Right. We don't set out to go, you know, I'm going to intentionally wound somebody or I'm going to intentionally not forgive them. When somebody gets really rigid and feels like whatever this other person has done is unforgivable, it may be unforgivable. It may also be, again, the other person is not taking ownership and accountability. It could be attached to a deeper wound that hasn't been addressed. I remember Cs Lewis said, I forget which of his books it was, that forgiveness sounds like a lovely idea until we have something that we really need to forgive in someone else. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And this, there's a phrase called cheap grace and I think we can use it. The phrase cheap forgiveness, I forgive you. I mean, if there's really not an offense, we might be able to do that. But if there really is an offense and we're just saying I forgive you with our words because it's the right thing to do or the christian thing to do, but it's stuck in our hearts, then, yeah, we are going to feel it. And maybe other relationships around us are going to feel it. But I really want to put some emphasis and be careful not to put pressure on anyone out there who's struggling to forgive, because forgiveness is hard. It's a process. It's a journey. It's multifaceted. It doesn't mean restoration of a relationship. It doesn't mean not having healthy boundaries. It doesn't mean letting yourself continue to be hurt and wounded over and over and over again by ongoing behavior. And so it's really hard to talk about forgiveness. I think of women who have been or men who have been in a cycle of domestic abuse or domestic violence. And part of why these relationships stay together is there is this sweet kind of honeymoon phase afterwards of I'm so sorry and I forgive you. And you don't know him or her. They're not always this way. They can be really kind and loving, but we get sucked into this pattern in this cycle, and it starts to erode this sense of ourselves that this is not okay. It's not okay for me to be physically hurt like this. It's not okay for me to continually be emotionally hurt by this perpetual behavior. And so it really can't emphasize enough how forgiveness is a process. And it takes time. And when it's done well, when it's done over time, when it's done with wisdom and it's done with grace, and it's done with honesty and accountability on the other person's part, and I don't mean, like, you know, holding them hostage, but a person really being one of the gifts that you gave me, I will say, Michael, is that you were genuinely repentant. You had godly sorrow that led to repentance. You were remorseful, and that paved the way for that forgiveness to come. And when we're dealing with offenders, any kind of offender or abuser that doesn't have that stance, or they continue in the behavior, they keep backing into the car over and over and over again. It really makes it hard for the person to forgive. Or if there's a demand that you have to forgive on a certain timetable. Oh, you know, it's been two months, or it's been a year, or it's been two years. And this is where, again, forgiveness is a process, because in one of our other podcasts, when we were talking about trauma, we were talking about triggering events and people getting activated in their nervous system. Well, those things are going to happen after I've been wounded. Right? And so I think that's what happened this week when I was like, oh, I'm, you know, I'm hurt, I'm angry. I want to make you pay, you know, really ugly side, but a very real honest side. I mean, we're human. These things happen. Being able to forgive and to release doesn't mean to pretend it didn't happen, doesn't mean to erase the impact of it, doesn't mean minimizing it. We don't gloss over. It means being able to say, I'm going to release this person from me. Being, you know, angry, hurt, so that we can then have this conversation and make some agreements and resolve this and say the appropriate, I'm sorry. To be able to move forward when we're walking through big injuries. We get reactivated when something else happens. And that's happened in our journey, right, 33 or 30 years later. No, you haven't acted out sexually. Thank God for that. But have there been other things or you going out of town or x, y or z? I can't think of something right now. But something would pop up, right. And I would get activated, and everything that we had been through, you know, years prior the betrayal, would get reactivated in me. And so sometimes that means, Michael, I need to talk with you about this. This is what's happening in me and what you did 510, 1520 years ago, it's. I'm all activated about it again, this situation happening in the present is reminding me of what's happened in the past. And I need to talk about it, and I need to do some repair with it. And if you say to me, oh, you haven't forgiven me yet, you should have forgiven me a long time ago. No, no, no. We totally miss. You miss me, and you miss an opportunity to, for a deeper healing in our relationship, to be able to hear me and in humility, be like, I'm sorry that what I did so long ago, that this is coming up. I can see how that would happen. That makes sense. You know, there's this validation. There's this connection, and then what could be a barrier to our connection actually becomes a bridge to our connection. And so that's what I mean by it's a process, and it's ongoing, and how we respond to that when it comes up is so, so important.