5 thoughts on “Forgiveness

  1. chariots

    Means giving up or laying down or letting go. Means recognizing that I give someone or something else a lot of power if I let that person or thing ruin my life. If I let it go – I help to save myself.

    For some reason, it’s very hard to let go sometimes. Or maybe, it just takes time. Ya – I think forgiveness can take time. But ultimately – it’s not a feeling. Forgiveness is an action that is not based on my feelings. I can be extremely angry at someone and still choose to forgive them….. for my own sake really. If I can never get to the place of forgiving someone, I am the one who is trapped – not them.

    I also know that forgiving someone has nothing to do with trusting them. There are consequences for actions – and one consequence may be that I never trust that person again or choose to be around them.

  2. jigsaw analogy--ellis

    well, there’s letting go, and then there’s forgiving. i always thought that forgiving meant something more than just letting something go. like being able to be around that person and act as though nothing bad had happened, or not think of it every time you hear their name. stuff like that.

    i can let things go, but with me, it also means keeping a whole lot of distance between me and the person who hurt me. that’s not always true, come to think of it, because there are people who have hurt me unintentionally, who made efforts to fix what they had done, and i do pretty much forgive them.

    but my family? for the most part, while they wouldn’t do the exact same things as when i was a kid, they would still hurt me, and deny they were doing it. and i think a wound can’t heal, if the person who inflicted it insists on picking it open every chance they get.

    i tend to be willing to drop things, to not bring it up, but that doesn’t mean i’ve forgiven the person. there are some things that, in my mind, are unforgivable. so i tend to pull away from the people who did them.

    or maybe it’s a matter of not being able to be honest with some people. with my partner, i find it’s much easier to forgive her for something once she’s acknowledged that what she did hurt me.

    maybe forgiveness requires work from all the sides involved. it’s not just one person saying “oh, you hurt me, but i forgive you.” the times i can think of when i’ve really forgiven people, they’ve been willing to acknowledge that they did something that hurt me, and they have made it clear that they are sorry for having done that. and the people i can’t forgive insist that they didn’t do anything wrong, and they refuse to acknowledge that i was hurt, let alone that they have any responsibilities to rectify what they did.

  3. chariots

    When I say “letting go” – I mean I’m actively working on letting go of possibly that unforgiveable person. It means I’m moving on and not letting that person have such a hold on my life anymore. A “hold” would be me spending lots of time figuring out revenge or ruminating about that person in one way or another.

    I think forgiveness is a concept that is often misunderstood. I know for sure that it doesn’t mean you go back into a situation and pretend everything’s fine. It’s a verb – it’s an action – it’s a choice. And I don’t have to feel warm and fuzzy toward someone to forgive them.

    And bottom line – forgiveness is for ME and only has to do with ME! It has nothing to do with the other person or their actions or continued actions. How could I move on and heal, if I have to wait for my offenders to apologize? It would mean I could never be “ok” – because some people will never apologize or change. It would mean I would be under their power for my whole life.

    A really famous guy once said, “Forgive them Lord, for they know not what they do….” And his forgiveness had nothing to do with any of those people apologizing for torturing and killing him.

    RECONCILIATION – now that is a situation where both parties have come to terms and are able to forgive each other and feel warm fuzzies and get back together, etc. Maybe that’s what a lot of people confuse forgiveness with? Reconciliation takes both sides cooperating and isn’t always possible. I may never be reconciled to my father again. Forgiveness only takes one person, and I definitely can get to a place of choosing to forgive my father, for my own sake, even if I never choose to see him again.

  4. jigsaw analogy--ellis

    i get letting go. that, i’m pretty able to do. i think it’s my base approach to 99% of the people who have hurt me. i just kind of guard myself in the relationship, and mostly just stop spending energy on it.

    i looked up the definition of forgive and i guess what i do is forgiving.

    the problem is that i’m not at all skilled with reconciliation. when someone hurts me, i’m more likely to think, well, ok, i’m going to let it go, not spend any more energy trying to get this made right. they made their choice, and i will just stop thinking about it. i guess it’s like forgiving a loan–i might stop worrying about the money, but i’m not gonna loan money (or, say, my trust) to that person again.

    but i find that too much forgiving without reconciliation gets in the way of having a close relationship with that person. if i let go, without feeling like the person is going to change, or without feeling like they’ve recognized they hurt me, i’m not able to be close to them, not able to have a genuine relationship with them. it becomes really superficial. and that’s something i’d like to change, because i’d rather have relationships where i can expect something out of people, and feel like if they hurt me, i can tell them, and have that issue resolved, rather than me just letting it go.

  5. jigsaw analogy--ellis

    all of a sudden, i thought about where i got my idea of forgiveness. there’s that thing catholics say in confession: forgive me, father, for i have sinned. well, i’m not catholic, but one would hope that you’re not asking god to just cut you off, let go of the hurt and not care about you.

    on the other hand, i guess that a person who asks for forgiveness is acknowledging that they did something wrong, and maybe that’s different from forgiving someone who insists they didn’t do anything wrong.

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