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Thursday, September 18, 2014

Forgiveness


Every Thursday Holly Mueller from Reading, Teaching, Learning, creates a place where readers can share their spiritual journeys.

Forgiveness is difficult.  Forgiveness is complicated.  Forgiveness is freedom.

Throughout my life, I have had a difficult time with forgiveness.  My relationship with my father was strained from my teenage years until the day he died.  When he and my mother divorced, our relationship began to divide even further because I blamed him for breaking up our family.  Many things happened after the divorce, and I let those things control me.  Forgiveness was difficult.

I felt in my heart that when I forgive, I must admit what was done was OK.  Many times it is not.  It certainly was not with my father.  A part of me did not want to forgive because it was synonymous with approval.  I wrestled with this for many years.  Forgiveness was complicated.

I remember watching an episode of The Oprah Winfey show where she talked about an "aha moment" about the definition of forgiveness.   Oprah quotes a guest on her show, "Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could be any different."  


I do believe I came to a point where I forgave my father.  It was not that I accepted what he did, or that forgiving made it right.  I accepted what was done, and the past was not going to run my life.  Through the grace of God, I was able to let it it go.  Forgiveness is freedom.

5 comments:

  1. I like the way you structured this post. When you said that forgiveness feels like you are accepting the act and saying it's okay, I thought about the video on Michelle's post by Matthew West. The woman on the video talks about forgiveness not meaning that what happened was okay. Oprah kind of says the same thing. Definitely complicated and difficult! "Letting go so that the past does not hold you hostage." Thanks for your post today!

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  2. Forgiveness is very hard for me. For small things, you bet. But when my children are involved, or the issue was close to my heart, soooooo hard. I work on this all of the time. Great post.

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  3. I love this post! Such wise words!! "Forgiveness is freedom." Yes and still so hard, even though we know that!! Thank you for your beautiful post!

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  4. I understand the difficulty to forgive a parental figure - my biological father wanted nothing to do with me from the age of four. I grew up thinking he didn't even love me enough to want to be with me, though as an adult, I think it was more that he didn't know how to admit to his failure. It was freeing when I forgave that.

    It's certainly not easy. It also doesn't change what happened . . . it just allows for a shift in perspective.

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