Forgiveness

Forgiveness is more powerful than you may realize.

….I forgive you. 

Those three words are so powerful. Recently, I have learned (in very hard ways) to forgive. Not necessarily for the person on the receiving end, but for me. 

I hate to divulge this information but! I am a very sensitive and emotional person, to be quite honest. When I love, I love HARD. Recently, I’ve had to forgive a lot of people in my life. Why? Because I was hurt, and when I get hurt, I usually hold a grudge. 

YES, I SAID IT … a Grudge.

It’s my way of not continuing to get hurt … my defense mechanism.

I’m not proud of that. It has ended a lot of friendships and unfortunately, a couple of years ago (two to be exact), I lost my Dad and didn’t get to say goodbye because I hadn’t forgiven him for things he had done to my Mom … to me, as his only daughter … and I was beyond hurt. At that time, I had recently lost my Mom and NEEDED MY DAD. It’s a very complicated story, but, because I didn’t forgive him … I never got to say goodbye. He was 2,000 miles away in Barbados … suffering and dying from prostate cancer … alone, really … and, I didn’t know he was in such grave condition because I had stopped talking to him about five months before he passed. Because it is thick in my blood-line, on my Dad’s side, to hold a grudge. To not easily forgive.

I am ashamed.

He died and I wasn’t there. 

I should have been there …

… what I have learned is that I should have forgiven him. 

Forgive– stop feeling angry or resentful toward (someone) for an offense, flaw, or mistake. 

Forgiveness doesn’t necessarily mean that anything will change. It doesn’t mean that things will get better. But with forgiveness comes peace.

Here are some things I, personally, have noted about forgiveness and I hope it can help someone else:

-We want to be forgiven, we want “grace”, so how can we expect this from others when we don’t do it ourselves? 

-To forgive someone doesn’t mean you are dismissing or minimizing what that person has done to you. It also doesn’t mean you will forget what has been done. 

–Forgiveness may also include walking away from a toxic relationship or situation. It doesn’t mean that you have to go back to the way things were before. A relationship may certainly be reconciled or it may not. 

-When we don’t have forgiveness for someone it ends up hurting us far more than it hurts the other person. We start to have a “hardened heart”. 

Forgiveness isn’t always easy … it can be very difficult and in this case with my Dad, it was extremely difficult. I felt as if I would be dismissing all the bad things he had done if I had forgiven him and trust me, he had done a lot. I have only recently forgiven my Dad … but, it hurts that he isn’t here.

I’ve also had to forgive myself. I can’t get time back with him … but …

All I know is that I am moving forward and not letting that happen ever again. 

I don’t hold grudges anymore …

I won’t have a “hardened heart” …

Forgiveness comes in all forms. Whether you haven’t forgiven someone in years … a loved one, a friend … or maybe you need to receive forgiveness because you yelled at your kids during the rush of a crazy morning and you just had a bad moment.

Give grace, as you would want someone to give to you 

… forgive.