A Superpower
On Forgiveness and the Freedom of Letting Go
If I could have a superpower
just one
for a single day,
I would draw all suffering
from the face of the earth.
I would remove every pain,
every hurt and resentment,
carry them to the sun to be burned away,
and then make it rain back upon the earth
in golden drops of relief.
Would you be able
to cause no harm anymore?
And if, through ignorance,
someone stumbled again
without meaning to—
perhaps even you—
Would you be able
to let it go,
or to apologize?
Would you have
the superpower of forgiveness?
From My Old Writings — 2018.
Translated from Portuguese by AI.
“Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”
— Ephesians 4:32
There was a time when I imagined forgiveness as something simple: a decision, a virtue, a matter of good character. The older I get, the more I realize that some wounds reach places deeper than our willpower can touch.
There are offenses that linger. Words that echo for years. Betrayals that leave scars. In such moments, forgiveness can feel impossible—not because we do not know Christ’s command, but because our hearts are still aching under the weight of what happened.
Perhaps that is why forgiveness truly is a kind of superpower.
Not the kind found in comic books, but the kind that comes from the Holy Spirit.
When we forgive, we are not pretending evil never happened. We are not calling darkness light. Nor are we saying that justice does not matter. Rather, we are surrendering our right to carry the grievance forever. We place the wound, the offender, and the outcome into God’s hands.
Many times we do not feel like forgiving.
Yet by God’s grace, we can choose obedience before our emotions catch up. We can release what we cannot heal. We can entrust to God what we cannot resolve. And little by little, the Spirit accomplishes within us what we could never accomplish on our own.
The world admires the power to conquer.
Christ teaches the power to forgive.
And perhaps one of the clearest evidences of God’s supernatural work in a human heart is this: that a wounded person can genuinely pray,
“Father, I leave this with You.”
Shalom and Love of Christ!
Samara
Meditating often on the cross of Christ, accepting that—as horrible as what my X chose to do to me was, an all powerful, all knowing, all loving God chose NOT to prevent it, (for some good reason I may never understand this side of heaven) it really was a case of “There but for the grace of God go I…” Asking Abba for the power to say, and really mean it, “Father– forgive US– – WE didn’t know what WE were doing….” helps as I continue to labor daily to forgive the humanly unforgivable….. the lies….the infidelity…. The betrayal, the slander…. The cruelties for no reason I could grasp…. because I do so very much wish to be a child of MY Father…….and obey His commandments.
"When we forgive, we are not pretending evil never happened. We are not calling darkness light. Nor are we saying that justice does not matter. Rather, we are surrendering our right to carry the grievance forever. We place the wound, the offender, and the outcome into God’s hands."
AMEN🤍 whew... the weight that is lifted when forgiveness is given released is so freeing!