Forgiveness: to stop feeling anger towards an individual who has wronged you; to stop blaming (someone); to stop feeling anger about something
Grudge: a persistent feeling of ill will or resentment resulting from a past insult or injury; be resentfully unwilling to give, grant, or allow something
Soooooooo today I felt the need to address one of the things that we all seem to have an issue with, the one thing we all seem to struggle with at one point in our lives, the thing that we all have to learn…………..what is that thing you ask: “Forgiveness”. Now believe me when this topic was given to me to address, it was not meant to be just for my readers by any means, but its something to this day that I am still working on.
To forgive someone is something that is not always complicated, well at least not in every situation, but still something that is so troublesome depending on the size of the insult, injury, or act. Its not easy at all, but a lot of us think just because we’ve forgotten about it, that’s it. Not the case at all…….we don’t entertain the situation anymore, but as soon as we see or come in contact with the person that has caused any disfunction for us, we don’t speak or even acknowledge the presence of the person in question. So is this what we really think forgiveness is? Is that how we truly think the person in the wrong should be handled?
This is where holding the grudge comes into play. We can say all day long that we have forgiven the party in question, but we haven’t truly forgotten the act. Due to the act not being forgotten we act differently towards that person and we say ” I have just learned how to handle them, but please know that will never happen again”.
I am such a victim of this, but how I handle this type of situation is very different. I am not a forgiving person at all and in all honesty I am a three strike type of person depending on the situation and the depth of the damage done. In some situations I am a one and done girl, don’t ask me why. I am currently in the process of trying to truly grasp the idea of forgiving someone and letting go. I mean its really bad, I realized I was still angry at people who did things in middle school, what makes it worst is it wasn’t always just random individuals or old friends, it was family members as well. It took for me to one day realize that this was occupying to much of my memory and also to consider how many times my loved ones or friends had to forgive me for something. The thing that made me put forth the most initiative was the fact that I claim to be a Christian, a true believer in God and he has forgiven me and wiped my slate clean I don’t know how many times and I still to this day screw up. If he can do it for me then who am I to not do it for another human being or most of all for HIM. We all mess up and we all make mistakes, that is honestly how we learn…….You will never know how it hurts until you realize how much it hurt someone else when you did it.
The thing that is the hardest for me right now is learning to not only forgive, but also giving optional and additional chances. Now I am not in any way saying be a fool or continue to do the same thing for the same person, but what I am saying is give other options and take different avenues. There is always another way to get to a destination, you always have alternate routes. Mapquest is so useful, not only for directions on the road, but also through life, if you learn to read deeper into the application your using. Whenever I use my app for directions, I always look at all the routes given, this is how I have started to look at situations with people in my life. If I feel as if one route has already been taken and we had entirely to many bumps in the road then I take an alternate route the next time. Well let me stop lying, I am currently trying to learn that. I will be the first to tell you that forgiving people is not easy or something that I want to do or like doing, but understand in order to get something great you have to be something great. Broken down: you can’t get something that you’ve never given.
Forgiveness is unlocking the door to set someone free and realizing that you were the prisoner. -Unknown-
Forgive others, not because they deserve forgiveness, but you deserve peace. – Johnathan Lockwood Huie-
Holding a grudge doesn’t make you strong, it makes you bitter. Forgiveness doesn’t make you weak it sets you free.
-Jai-
Very insightful.