Forgiveness for Everyone: A Path to Letting Go and Moving Forward

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to a brand-new life, seriously! For the last forty years of my life, Monday through Friday, I have been helping individuals and couples work through some of the toughest issues souls can endure. These souls and hearts have been abused, neglected, or abandoned by their parents. They have been sexually abused or raped. The one they married who promised before their families to forsake all others and to love, honor, and cherish them cheated on them, spent decades soaking in pornography, or haven’t had a physical relationship with them for years or even decades.

These hearts and souls came in Monday to do a five-day intensive counseling, and by Friday, they were able to process the traumas and forgive or be given the tools to forgive. I have countless faces in my mind as I write this seeing them living the Forgiveness for Everyone lifestyle.

I have lived in Colorado Springs for over two decades, and I have found that life is like so many of the trails I have hiked. You have to work to get there, but the views are spectacular. However, you can slip into a ditch and have one of your feet stuck in between a rock and you can’t move. You have to find a way out to continue the hike. You can see the peak, but now you feel trapped and unable to reach it.

Forgiveness for Everyone allows you to lift that rock, be no longer trapped, and live the freest life you could ever imagine. Welcome to the adventure!

CHAPTER ONE

The Journey to Peace and Freedom

We are about to embark on one of the most powerfully freeing journeys of your life. Are you ready? Hold on. You are going to feel things you may have never felt before and realize a strength you never knew you had. It’s a strength that rises up from inside you, empowering you to do things you previously thought impossible.

It sounds like watching a Hollywood blockbuster. You’re sitting on the edge of your seat in the theatre, seeing cinematic characters develop into heroes as the story unfolds. In the beginning of the story, the hero is weak, lost, and uninformed in their great powers. Then, a crisis hits seemingly bigger than they can handle, and they flee to meet some well-informed person and learn about their genealogy or special gift. After going through some highly secret training, Voilà! they become heroes saving lives, the world, and maybe even the universe. This is called a hero epic and is by far the favorite of moviegoers worldwide.

Our journey, however, is not about a character created out of some writer’s imagination in a world that doesn’t actually exist. It’s a real journey taken by real humans and is one of the most significant journeys that each of us must take, whether we wish to or not. I’m not talking about everyone else either. I am talking about you. In this journey we are about to take, you will go face-to-face with your own past and what has specifically happened to you, affecting your heart, your soul, and possibly even your body. You will face the memories of real people in your life who have caused you real pain. But make no mistake about it; you are the hero who is going to climb mountains and travel the valleys or deserts to arrive at the place every soul desires deeply, that place called Peace and Freedom that comes from forgiveness.

This is a lasting peace, not the kind you get from experiencing one of the wonders of the world, sitting by a tranquil lake, strolling a beach at sunset and feeling the ocean’s warm breeze, or taking in the fresh fragrance of the forest after a rain. I’m talking about a peace you will be able to have every step of your life, knowing you are free. I mean, really free from past hurts or things that have happened to you. At the end of this journey, you will have faced your story; forgiven those in your story, as well as forgiven yourself; and emerged possessing the peace of a clear conscience before God and men. You’re not only experiencing peace; you are at peace. There is a place called Peace and Freedom, but it takes a journey to get there.

A passage in Psalms best describes this journey as God’s children. Blessed are those whose strength is in you, whose hearts are set on pilgrimage [journey]. As they pass through the Valley of Baka [valley of weeping], they make it a place of springs; the autumn rains also cover it with pools. They go from strength to strength… (Psalms 84:5–7, emphasis added). When our hearts are set on pilgrimage, when we go through the Valley of Baca, those places of woundedness, God promises to turn them into areas of springs and refreshment, of peace and freedom. The key to walking this passage out in real life is the word set. The traveler’s heart is set, or fixed, on taking the pilgrimage/journey until the end.

This is the journey every soul will be challenged to take. I have counseled many who have gone all the way through to their journey’s end. Some souls, however, fear the journey so much that they cower in the shadows of who they really could become. Some get sidetracked by judgment, bitterness, or the pure distractions of this life, pulling them away from the journey within. After counseling thousands of souls, I’ve come to solidly believe in our indestructibility as we take this journey. You may feel frail, fragile, or even doubtful, yet by utilizing the tools in the following pages, you can not only confidently arrive at that place of peace and freedom, but you might also receive the calling to help others along this journey of forgiveness that is for everyone.

For a couple of decades, I’ve been blessed to live in Colorado Springs. What I’ve discovered over the years is the people who live here are some of the most adventurous, outdoor-loving people in the country. They climb mountains for entertainment on the weekends, often scaling thousands of feet before breakfast. They go whitewater rafting in frigid water, camp out in the snow, and rappel off the sides of rocky cliffs. You get it. Here is my point: Usually, on these types of adventures, you are introduced to a particular person before you start. The group gathers around this person called your guide.

Now, a guide is a unique kind of person. He or she loves what they do so much, they do it thousands of times and help thousands of people go from point A to point B. The really good guides have a knack for getting you excited as you climb, camp, or raft. They paint the adventure so beautifully, telling the glories of the journey about to be taken to those they are leading, that even a sane person would want to take the journey. Their joy for their particular expedition is so contagious, you almost want to give up your responsible life and go be a guide for a few years. Then, of course, they warn you of the possibly dangerous aspects that you could face, like injuries or death, and how to best prevent these from happening to you. Finally, there is the last part of the guide’s discussion, which is critical to the entire experience. The guide will tell you a little bit about their own story, which makes them flawed, lovable, courageous, and slightly more trustworthy as they are transparent and vulnerable with themselves and with you.

On this journey you are taking through these pages, I will be your guide. My prayer is that I will be a good one. As your guide, it’s my responsibility to share my own story to reassure you that I have traveled the road of forgiveness for decades. Also, I have helped countless people travel the various terrains of forgiveness and am more than qualified to take you through your own journey of Forgiveness for Everyone.

My Story

My story starts before I was born. My mother had an affair during her first marriage, and I was conceived as a result of that adultery. This led to her first divorce, while being pregnant. Being a single mother back in the early 1960s with only an eighth-grade education and virtually no job skills meant living in poverty. She met a man in a bar, and he married her, pregnant and all. His last name was Weiss. They stayed married for a handful of years and had three more daughters before his alcoholism killed that marriage. Being single with three other children, she couldn’t provide. Destitute and without support from her own family, she put us four children in foster homes. I remember going to several of these homes as a little guy. Eventually, my mother was able to convince the social worker she and her new live-in boyfriend could provide for us. Together, they got each of us out of our separate foster care homes.

We had no books in our house during my junior high years. My mother, however, somehow purchased a human sexuality college textbook and gave it to me to read. I don’t remember reading much, but the pictures started what would become a sexual addiction for years. Around that same time, I was walking across town one early evening, and a man offered me a ride, gave me alcohol, got me very drunk, and sexually abused me. This led to much promiscuity with women for years. The alcohol and drugs were becoming a habit to cover the neglect in the home, the sexual abuse, and the lack of any spiritual life.

At nineteen, I realized my life was going nowhere, and I knew if I kept going the way I was, I would only leave a trail of self-destruction and suffering for those around me. Years prior, at twelve, I’d been sent off to a Salvation Army camp, where I’d gone down the aisle to accept Christ as my Savior. After that the Holy Spirit never let me go, and at nineteen, I still knew Jesus was God. Late one night at another church campground with nobody else around, I knelt down and said, Jesus, I know you are God. I will give you my life 100 percent and do whatever you say for thirty days, and if my life is not improved by then, I will kill myself. I was just being raw and real with God. He heard my prayer, and shortly thereafter, I enrolled in Bible school.

At Bible school, the pastor of a large church attempted to sexually abuse me. He was later found guilty of sexually abusing several young men and destroyed the church I had grown to love. After seminary and starting my career, a deacon of my church got me involved in a Ponzi scheme, and I lost all of my savings. He served years in jail for all the people he swindled.

Professionally, I have had several professional counselors from well-known ministries attack me and my work. People have viciously lied about me. I have gone through several betrayals of people I loved, trained, and economically blessed significantly. They were all professing Christians. Half of my pastors over the years have fallen to sexual sin. There are other stories of people with whom I have had to make the journey of forgiving so I could be at peace and free from their sin in my life.

The trail God has led me on has resulted in a number of insights that have helped me and many of my clients as well. The tools that I will share with you in the following chapters are tried and true. I personally and professionally know they will work when actually applied to your own journey as you go through these pages with me as your guide.

CHAPTER TWO

Solving the Riddle

Let’s start our journey together with a little riddle. Ready? Here goes:

What is present on any journey of a thousand miles, yet is also present just going to the store, church, or gym? You come across it frequently and have to go through it to arrive at your destination.

Do you know the answer? Here are some hints.

It’s shaped like an octagon.

It has to be obeyed.

It is red.

It says STOP on it.

You got it: a stop sign! Okay, I know that was a no-brainer, way too easy. I did it because, on this journey, we have to start with the stop signs. But why there? That seems like an odd place to begin a journey of forgiveness. I mean, to get to our destination, we need green lights, not stop signs. Why not start with some big theological point about forgiveness and how we must do it, or something like it? We’ll certainly get to some of those things later, but for now, as a psychologist, if I can help you acknowledge a few of the stop signs in your life, you might be able to arrive at your destination much quicker, safer, and without a collision somewhere on your journey early on. Stop signs are meant for you to stop, look both ways, and keep on driving to get wherever you are going. Some people, though, after they hit one of these stop signs on the road to forgiveness, instead of driving through, stay stopped because they give in to denial, anger, judgment, depression, pessimism, bitterness, and the fear of trusting others again. Instead of living life to the fullest, they hide