After sixteen years of severe verbal and physical abuse in my marriage, I had finally gotten the courage to pack a few things and flee from home. I went to live with my aunt about 100 miles away and a few months later my husband filed for divorce saying that it was just “good business” to be the one that filed. He begged me to return and said if I didn’t come home, he would destroy me. He spent many years trying to do just that. If it hadn’t been for the sheltering of my aunt, I probably would have returned, believing that everything, again, was my fault.

My past seemed to taint everything. I realized that I was always on the defensive, carrying a huge chip on my shoulder. I also realized that in order to break through the fear and defensiveness to spiritual understanding, I had to forgive my ex-husband. But how? This task seemed impossible. But I knew that in order to progress in my own spiritual journey and to break through to higher demonstrations of Christian Science healing, I must find a way to forgive him.

In the years that followed, many fears began to surface, such as a deep fear of all men. I couldn’t be in a car or in my home or alone with anyone except my immediate family. Many other fears that I hadn’t realized began to surface also. One by one they were overcome through the study of Christian Science and the prayers of a devoted Christian Science practitioner who stayed with my case for many years of healing and discovering what, to me, had always been my pure spiritual status as the perfect daughter of God.

For about five years, I was in a state of shock and the rebirth seemed to be slow. I started drinking to sedate my fears, believing that it gave me courage and clarity, but alcohol only made everything worse. I later realized that I had become an alcoholic. Through the constant support of my Christian Science practitioner, I eventually had a complete healing of alcoholism. This healing came when I finally could accept that alcoholism had never touched my spiritual selfhood as God’s child. When I began to grasp this truth, I saw that I had always been free. I have not had any desire to drink since that day 19 years ago.

The one continuing challenge that kept haunting me was the on-going, deep-seeded fear of my ex-husband. I moved to another state thinking that I was free because he didn’t know how to find me, but one day, about six years after the divorce, a letter arrived from him and I became so overwhelmed with fear that I began to shake. I was again tossed into the extreme feeling that the nightmare was beginning again. I believed then that I was cursed with this horrible situation and that it would be with me forever.

I mentally saw a huge boulder in my pathway that was blocking my progress and I couldn’t go around it, under it, or over it until I completely forgave my ex-husband. The boulder represented anger, hate, resentment, fear, self-pity, and self-justification.

While walking down my hallway one day, I silently asked my heavenly Father a question: “Father, what is forgiveness?”

Immediately, I heard this answer, “Give up for the reality. Forgive—give up for the reality.” I saw that every time I thought of my ex-husband, instead of imagining evil chasing me, I was to give up that picture for the reality of what “man” is in his true nature as God’s spiritual reflection. In the textbook of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy asks, “What is man?” And she answers, in part, “Man is spiritual and perfect; and because he is spiritual and perfect, he must be so understood in Christian Science” (Science and Health, p. 475).

I saw this new idea of forgiveness as my assignment from God. From that moment on, each time I thought of my ex- husband in a negative way, I would obediently toss out that mental picture and affirm that man is spiritual and perfect and my ex-husband is that man, in Science. This process continued daily for over a year. Up until this point, I would shut out kind thoughts about him for fear it would only make me vulnerable to getting hurt by him again, but now I knew I had to trust God with the outcome of my new prayer; to stand with God because I knew He was in control. I began to allow myself to have soft feelings for my ex-husband. I soon began to enjoy my new understanding of him. I was actually cherishing his spiritual qualities and I lost all fear of him. I started to feel a sense of softness and happiness in this new way of relating to him. The Bible promise, “Behold, I make all things new” (Rev. 21:5), was coming true. Before I started my prayerful assignment, I couldn’t go forward or around the huge boulder that seemed to be blocking my spiritual progress. I began to see that my pathway Spiritward was no longer blocked. I felt only love and kindness toward my ex-husband.

Even after these sweet revelations came to me and I was certainly making bigger strides Spiritward, I still did not feel satisfied that I really understood what forgiveness is. Yes, I wasn’t afraid of my ex-husband anymore; yes, I felt in a great measure that I was freed and relieved from the effects of the abuse, but I really needed to understand more clearly what real forgiveness is.

Mrs. Eddy wrote, “A deep sincerity is sure of success, for God takes care of it” (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 203). I needed to go deeper.

A number of years went by and during those years I was striving to practice more and more gratitude. As much as possible, while I was going about my day, I constantly turned to the spiritual view of God’s creation in every direction in my experience, and silently I would say, “Thank You, Father, for . . . .” I would pause, wait, and listen for something to come to me that I was grateful for. Each time, something fresh would come into my thought such as thanking God for the beauty expressed right where I was standing; thanking Him for my dog’s happy face and wagging tail showing God’s love to me expressed as my dog; the way the breeze moved the beautiful trees, etc. This had become a natural habit of mine that I was constantly striving to live as much as possible, and I think this way of praying caused the final chapter of the healing to dawn in my thought.

This final break-through came one day as I was finishing the dishes. I picked up the kitchen towel and began to fold it. For many years whenever I finished the dishes, instead of folding the towel and putting it neatly to the side of the sink, making a statement to myself that I had completed my little job, I used to throw the towel off to the side of the sink in an angry reaction to the memory of when I was married to my ex-husband. If I didn’t fold the towel and place it on the right-hand side of the kitchen sink properly, he would come up behind me and try to break my arm and threaten that if I didn’t fold the towel when I was finished with the dishes, he would continue to break my arm. After I left him, for years I rebelled and tossed the towel aside in anger. On this day, as I began to fold the towel, because I now wanted to fold it for myself and no one else, and as I was doing this, I turned my thought to God and I silently said to our heavenly Father, “Father, thank You for . . .” and then the thought came, “Thank You for this experience that I had with my ex-husband that taught me that these actions of his were never the real, spiritual, perfect image and likeness of You!”

That is when I saw a brand-new view of my ex-husband! I saw a mental photo of him standing on a large rock on the seashore, looking out toward the ocean with the water gently surrounding the base of the rock that he was standing on, but the water wasn’t ever touching him. Right then, I saw the demarcation that Christian Science refers to of the real man that is spiritual and the unreal mortal man. I saw that the mortal view of him was the result of years of being programmed and taught improperly as a child, through the example of his father, that through physical violence, this was how a man needed to treat his wife. (It also has helped me to learn that my ex-husband and his sweet father were the victims of evil and not the originators of it.)

In that new moment I recognized the difference between the two views of man and I could see most clearly that there was nothing to forgive. There was nothing to forgive him for because the violence of his actions over the years was never the real man that God knows, upholds, and expresses Himself as. There was absolutely nothing to forgive because evil never touched his spiritual identity as the perfect son of God. Jesus taught us to “love one another, as I have loved you” (John 15:12). God was causing me to see how this was possible for me to do through the persistent daily mental effort to see God everywhere and in everything. It is very easy for me to love others now.

Why did this prayerful work in practicing gratitude finally free me? Because, in my turning to God, habitually, and thanking Him for every bitty evidence of good, this brought my thought closer to God. “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you” (James 4:8, New King James Version). I felt the love of divine Love rinsing, purifying, comforting, inspiring me and God was gently showing me more of what real love and forgiveness is. Those horrible memories were true about a mortal, but they were never true about an immortal idea of God.

The loneliness, self-hatred, and low self-esteem I had been feeling began to do the only thing they could do and that was to vanish. Joy and freedom replaced their spot in my life.

I was able to share with my ex-husband my healing of fear and resentment and how I realized there was nothing to forgive. And he said to me many times that he was sorry and loved me very much. He passed on last year, and I just recently remarried.

In the years of striving to learn what real forgiveness is and how to learn to love the way Jesus taught us, I have become so much more loving toward others and I’ve noticed a new freedom from carrying resentment around with me when people don’t behave their best. This healing taught me to love others with more Christly compassion, with a deeper sense of freedom and fearlessness, as I walk on my new spiritual journey each day and continue to practice being grateful to God for causing me to feel my oneness with Him and to see all the evidence of good that He is revealing to me moment by moment. When I turn my thought to Him and pause, wait for a new view of His love for me and everyone to dawn on my thought, I once again say, “Thank You, Father.”