When I forgive someone, the memory of the wound stays with me a long time, sometimes it never really goes away.
But forgiveness changes the way I remember, and the way I think and live. It turns a curse into a blessing, pain into something softer. I’ve had an awful time forgiving people in my life, I am just beginning to learn how to do it.
It was hard for me to forgive my parents for the awful home they provided for us, I sometimes need to forgive my friends for their lack of attention or understanding.
But when someone hurts me, I always – always – pause to forgive them, and let the hurt go away. This is selfish, not a noble thing.
One of the things I discovered is that when I forgive, I no longer experience myself as a victim, or blame myself for being one. I stop resenting people for what they might have done to me.
I see that most people do the best they can, and most of us have little or no control over the events in their lives.
Forgiveness gives me my pride and self-respect back, it helps me claim my power and keeps the hurts in my life from eating away at me, draining me, defining and distracting me.
Resentment makes me weak, forgiveness makes me stronger.
I see those wounds as gifts that deepens my wisdom and patience. Forgiveness heals memories and makes room for them in my heart.
Forgiving does not mean forgetting. It means healing.
Amen
Being grateful for the wounds of life as gifts is essential to a peaceful life, but a difficult endeavor! Looking back, sometimes years later, times of “being wronged” can also be seen as times of growth and finding new ways when we forgive (and not forget) but move on . . . thanks for the reminder of this importance!
Ah, Jon, powerful words – resentment, forgiveness. In recovery circles “resentment is me drinking poison expecting someone else to die.” Resentment coarsens me, makes me a person that life is happening TO rather than the real truth, which is that life is what I am creating. Forgiveness is a balm for the soul, and allows us to drop the chains that bind us to others. Life is much lighter this way. I think I may have worried that forgiveness would make a doormat out of me; instead, it has made me a softer, kinder person. Funny how that works.
Thank you to Jon. Thank you Karla Kuriger!
This was very helpful to me in getting to a place a compassion with a relative.
“If her past were your past, her pain your pain, her level of consciousness your level of consciousness, you would think and act exactly as she does. With this realization comes forgiveness, compassion, peace.
The ego doesn’t like to hear this, because if it cannot be reactive and righteous anymore, it will lose strength.
When you receive whoever comes into the space of Now as a noble guest, when you allow each person to be as they are, they begin to change.”
~Eckhart Tolle (Stillness Speaks pg.92)
Thank you, Jon. ~Forgiving Does Not Mean Forgetting. ~ I will never forget what he did. I forgave myself for staying with him for “too long”. I would tell myself that our children needed the “family unit”; hence, I should not leave. But, then one night after an “event”, I realized that we had to leave…for our safety. We left. That was almost 24 years ago. People who say, “Forget it and move on.”, they don’t understand and never will….and I pray that they never, ever “walk in my shoes”. Your message today means so much to me. I have saved it to read again. Thanks again….Peace.
Forgiving is certainly a “learned” response. I had so much baggage and it comes back from time to time. But I decided to rise above it. The people who hurt me or maddened me are living their carefree lives, giving little thought more than likely to what they did. So why should I suffer? Move on and learn from it. The past is the past.
I have learned to forgive, but I never forget. I have learned to draw healthy boundaries with the person who hurt me. You should not put yourself in the position to be wounded again by that person. That’s healthy!
I learned to forgive when I realized that forgiving is something I do for myself. It’s not for the other person, in truth.
The hardest person to forgive is myself. But by forgiving myself and not forgetting, I have the chance to change my behavior now and in the future.
That is one way in which I can grow into the person I want to be.