Cora Jakes Coleman
Taking Back Power
“Forgiveness gives me boundaries because it unhooks me from the hurtful person, and then I can act responsibly, wisely.”
—Dr. Henry Cloud
Growing up the daughter of Bishop T. D. Jakes and Serita Jakes, Cora Jakes Coleman was taught about the importance of forgiveness from her earliest days. Over the course of many years and many enduring relationships, Cora has “found that when I walk with a heart of forgiveness, it requires a love that is unconditional for myself.” She learned that the love she had for herself would allow her to act with dignity and grace in any situation. By trying to remain humble and kind, living in a space of forgiveness comes naturally and has allowed her to “keep ahold of my power.”
Cora’s ability to forgive was challenged by someone she thought of as a sister. She had struggled for years to conceive a child, when her friend Julia* decided to allow her to legally adopt her son. Three years later, Julia decided that she wanted to raise the boy as her own. Cora and Julia went to court and fought for the custody of the child. This sense of betrayal—one of her closest confidantes publicly exposing her deepest struggles with infertility and motherhood—was unlike anything she had dealt with before.
The pain of this betrayal was compounded by the loss of a friendship that she’d thought would last forever. As she struggled with the fact that she would have to end her friendship with Julia, she often turned to the Parable of the Tares, from the Bible: “In this parable, a fieldworker plants his field with wheat. While he’s resting, an enemy comes in and plants the field with tare [weeds]. So when the man wakes up in the morning, he sees that his entire field has been reseeded. Instead of cutting all the tare out, he decides to let the wheat and the tare grow together. Once they have matured, he makes the decision to uproot the tare and burn the tare and uproot the wheat and make it harvest.” Cora related to being the wheat trying hard to keep a good hold on Julia, the tare, but she felt that the Lord was telling her she needed to separate herself. “I could not keep attaching myself to people, to relationships that were never supposed to be planted with me to begin with and that were going to be burned and destroyed at the end of the day. So I had to make a conscious decision to be fruitful and to be productive and to not be a savior to situations that were never meant for me to save.”
Cora and Julia fought for custody of her son for almost two years. It wasn’t until the end that Cora really felt that she was able to say she had forgiven Julia. Throughout those two years, Cora prayed for her friend daily. She would try to reach out to her to remind her of the friendship they had and the memories they had made together, with the hope that Julia would realize how hurtful the betrayal was. She recalls praying for her so much that she reached a point where God told her to stop praying—that it was okay to let her friend go. Cora wrote Julia a long letter saying she had forgiven her for everything. She asked for Julia’s forgiveness, too. After writing that letter, Cora was finally able to let the friendship go.
It was hard for Cora to accept that a seemingly forever friendship had come to an end. She felt that she needed to forgive herself for becoming attached to something that was not meant to be permanent. She had to detach from that pattern and “walk into my destiny and not feel bad about it.”
Looking back, Cora knows that being able to forgive and move on is a responsibility that we owe to ourselves in order to maintain healthy and productive relationships. While her friend is no longer in her life, Cora is at peace with her decision. Having forgiven her friend, she can move forward without resentment or bitterness. Not keeping Julia in her life “doesn’t mean that I haven’t forgiven her; it means that I have taken my power back, my responsibility back.” Cora knows that relationships have their ups and downs, and some friendships can survive the strains. Some friends work through their issues and are able to have what she calls “building-block moments”—when both people in the friendship are able to admit their faults and move forward with a better understanding of each other’s needs.
Today, the mention of her old friend’s betrayal does not trigger Cora. “It’s emotionless to me now. It wasn’t always. But that’s how I know I have forgiven her. I have forgiven you and so you have no more effect on my emotion.” Looking back, she views the end of her friendship more as a disappointment.
Cora began teaching her children about forgiveness at an early age. She instructs them to say, “I apologize,” instead of “I’m sorry”—and to learn the difference between the two. For her, “I apologize” is about taking responsibility for your own actions, while “I’m sorry” doesn’t adequately acknowledge your role in the wrongdoing or indicate that you intend to change your ways. As she says, “An apology is for you, and that means you’re not going to do or respond in that way ever again. That’s what an apology means.” Whether you are offering or receiving forgiveness, it is an opportunity to release the pain and guilt and move forward renewed.
For Cora, forgiveness is not something you give to another; it’s something you give yourself: “Forgiveness isn’t about the person who’s betraying you or lying to you or denying you; forgiveness, for me, is about me taking my power back and not allowing them to affect me emotionally.” We know we have truly forgiven someone who has harmed us, she says, when they no longer have the power to affect us emotionally: “They don’t have the power to make you angry or discouraged or insecure about yourself.”
Not all friendships last forever. A childhood friendship that’s wonderful at age fourteen might no longer be working for you at age twenty-eight—and that’s okay. We change and we grow, and sometimes friendships can’t change and grow as our needs do. It can be painful, but there are times when you have to examine an old friendship and ask yourself if it’s still healthy for you as you mature. In the past, when I felt this doubt, I would often push the feelings away, because ending an old friendship seemed wrong. Over the years, I’ve learned that, sometimes, ending a relationship is the only way to stay true to yourself.
When Cora talked about the feeling of needing to separate herself from her friend for her own well-being, I could relate. Sometimes, no matter how hard we try to help the other person or make the friendship work, it is healthier for us to move on instead. When Cora told me that she ended her friendship through a letter saying she forgave her friend, I was reminded that I had done something similar when I ended my friendship with my best friend of twenty-five years. And in my experience, I agree with Cora that you know you have truly forgiven someone when you hear their name and you have no reaction to it anymore. For me, it took several years to get to that place—it’s different for everyone. However long the process takes—from friendship to betrayal and finally to forgiveness—the journey is one of reclaiming your power as a way forward.
I loved that Cora referred to the journey of forgiveness as a “building-block moment”—I couldn’t agree with her more. While those moments for me were incredibly challenging and painful, I look back on them now as times that made me stronger. I always try to look for the lesson in everything, and, for me, the betrayal of a close friend is an opportunity to do just that: grieve the loss, forgive, and move on in order to live a full and free life.