I have spoken a lot about forgiveness lately,
Last week during a book discussion my friends and I spoke of it in regards to a character in my book and on Saturday, my son and I talked about it in depth, I explained to him that forgiving was biblical and about the forgiver, more than the forgivee and that the phrase forgive and forget was man made. God wishes us to forgive, man wants us to forget so he can do it to us again...we need to remember so we wont be the same fool twice.
I can recall years ago as a grown woman I had become quite friendly with my stepfather. Now mind you, this is man who had hit my mother, and hit me when I tried protecting her when I was in my teens. At the time I didn't understand why my mom forgave him and I spent years angry with her and hating him. However, after leaving home and marrying and having children, I was able not to be angry anymore. I had grown closer to God, had married a man who loved me and my life was moving in a great direction and as clear as the sun is in June, God spoke to me, asking me to forgive them both and move forward. I did, he and I became friendly, he was close to my children because I knew he was no longer the man he had been and I sort of understood mama. I say sort of because I cannot to this day understand allowing someone to hit your child. But, who knows what I would have done in that situation. Most importantly, I did not try to poison my children against anyone. The persons who were like that were dead and gone (not literally) by the time they came along. So I forgave, remembered and lived!
The reason I am saying this is because I know and love a lof of people who are walking around bitter and in a state of non-forgiveness. They can't forgive parents, ex spouses, God, the preacher, or the lady who let her dog poop in their yard and you know what, the only person they are hurting is themselves. Not forgiving harms the non-forgiver. Ofttimes we are bound up in anger and bitterness and the persons are going on with their lives. Is it easy, hell to the no, but it is so possible.
Now forgiving doesn't mean rolling with the person. If someone harms you or your loved ones, have them arrested if it warrants that and forgive them so you can live. If they hurt you, remove yourself from their space, so you can live. The bible clearly teaches us that there are folks we must simply remove ourselves from.
Holding on to past hurts and anger only diminshes the quality and potentially the length of your life, because bitterness, stress and anger manifests itself in diseases such as high blood pressure and could lead to stroke, heart attacks and or substance abuse which will take you right on out of here, while those people you couldn't forgive are going on with life...
Be BLESSED!
angelia
