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Forgiveness – One Very Necessary Lesson
Forgiveness--such a simple word. But such an often difficult concept to master. Forgiveness is typically defined as, “the process of ceasing to feel resentment, indignation or anger for a perceived offense, difference or mistake, and ceasing to demand punishment or restitution.”
Sounds rather ominous, doesn’t it? St. Augustine said that “Resentment is like taking poison and hoping the other person dies.”
One of the foundations for a happy life is learning the art of forgiving. Holding onto the anger, resentment, frustration and pain in your life, hurts you more than anyone else. All that misery is bundled up inside of YOU, no one else. It causes stress, depression, and even illness. So doesn’t it stand to reason that it is in YOUR best interest to figure out how to forgive?
Forgiveness is a gift of peace you give to yourself!
Many of us need to start with first forgiving ourselves. We often ask God for forgiveness, but how many times have you asked for that forgiveness for the same things, over and over again? Not because you keep repeating the behavior, but because you haven’t actually forgiven yourself?
Life is a process of learning, growing and evolving. Maya Angelou says, “You did then what you knew how to do. Now that you know better, you’ll do better.” Forgiving yourself doesn’t mean that you have abdicated your responsibility to improve your character. It merely lays the groundwork that will enable you to become the person you were meant to be. You are not forgiving yourself just to “let yourself off the hook”, you are doing so to imitate God’s example of forgiveness and you are demonstrating your desire to move forward in a positive direction with a clean slate. You are learning to love yourself as God loves you, which starts the process of learning to love others in the same way.
And here is where it really gets tough--forgiving someone who has hurt you. It is a universal human experience. We have all been hurt by others. And in order to truly experience joy in our lives, we must figure out how to forgive those people who have injured us in some way.
A good friend recently shared with me an experience whereby she was grappling with how to forgive someone who had hurt her very deeply. And as it often happens, this was someone whom she loved and trusted. She vacillated back and forth between wanting to retaliate and wanting to just put it behind her and move on. And she noted an alarming fact--this experience had the power to make her into someone she did not want to be.
Therein lies the problem with holding onto the resentment. If you refuse you to forgive, YOU are the changed party here. You become a willing participant in perpetuating your own pain and you allow the negativity that surrounds your circumstances to multiply and continue through your attitudes and actions. And who do you think suffers the most by this? Of course, you do--you take the “poison”. You primarily hurt yourself. Unresolved hurt festers within our souls and negatively impacts our future far beyond the situation itself. Holding onto hurt is an ongoing, continuous wound to our psyche. Failing to forgive is giving power to your offender to continue to injure you, over and over again.
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