By Kayla DeKraker
Actor Zachary Levi knows the power of forgiveness firsthand in a deeply personal way. He grew up with an abusive mother, and it wasn’t until he put the words on paper as an adult that God worked in his heart and helped him release the pain.
“Unforgiveness is like drinking poison, hoping that the other person will die,” he said during a conversation with PragerU’s Marissa Streit. “When I went to therapy, I had this assignment to write a letter to my parents. And I went to put the pen to paper, and girl, I could not stop ugly crying, weeping crying.”
Levi explained how trauma “gets stored in us” and reflected on thoughts he previously had about his mother.
“‘How dare you treat me and your daughters the way that you treated us. You were supposed to be our mom. You were supposed to be our protector,’” he recalled thinking.
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But, when he turned the paper over to continue writing, something shifted within him
“I put the pen back on the paper with every intention of continuing down that line of thought. And it was like God, in that moment, switched off the anger and switched on the empathy, like it was God writing. It was like ‘You did that because your mother abused you,’ and I could feel my heart breaking for this woman who had broken my heart,” Levi said.
He added, “That’s forgiveness. It’s not saying it didn’t happen. God forbid we ever somehow turn our eyes. ‘No, no, I wasn’t abused. No, no, I wasn’t.’ No, nobody’s saying don’t acknowledge what has happened, like let’s forgive and forget. No, you don’t need to forget, but you need to let go of the toxicity that’s attached to the memory.”
Colossians 3:13 reminds us of the importance of forgiving others because God has forgiven us: “Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.”
In 2022, Levi told the Christian Post more about his experience with childhood abuse and how it affected him.
“As a young boy, with this big heart, who just wanted to go and love people, it was a very detrimental environment to grow up in,” he said. “And what I learned was how to constantly run from the pain that I was suffering constantly. Go and run away from the abusiveness that was in my household through various addictions…it all became very unresolved, unhealed trauma.”
When he hit rock bottom, Levi turned to God and was met with peace and clarity for the first time.
“I was crying out; literally like screaming and crying out to God to help me understand what was going on with me,” he said. “And I wasn’t getting any answers. I wasn’t getting anything of the things that I had previously in my life, feeling like I had gotten clarity and answers and vision from God. So it really, really rocked my world.”
Though forgiving those who harmed us can seem impossible, with God’s help, we can release that bitterness and anger.
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