Friday, August 1, 2014

Forgiveness

Lehmann Laughter

If you’re new here, this link-up is every Wednesday (until the 30 weeks are up and unless I forgot about it like I did this week…and last week, oops). It’s based off these two articles – here and here. You are welcome to take the points in any direction you choose, what I go off of is only something to get the ol’ brain ticking. Original post is here.

I hope you’ll join me!

Previous posts: Week 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14,15, 16 & 17.

Week 18.

Let It Go
(Yes, I totally based the title off the theme song from Frozen. No shame.)
How do you forgive? Can you forget?


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Forgiveness can be really hard – especially if something has truly hurt or disappointed you or just straight out surprised you (in a bad way). I know I’ve had more than my fair share of those moments in my life but whenever something like that happens, I step back. I try to put myself in their shoes and see it from their perspective. Sometimes I can understand where the hurting me came from and in those instances, forgiveness seems to come easy. I don’t forget how they hurt me though but I try to learn from it. I am more cautious of our relationship and building that trust up is a process but it can be done.


The problem lies within those hurtful things that I don’t understand, where I can’t see their reasoning clearly – and that’s what muddles my forgiveness gene. It takes soul searching, time and prayer for me personally to push past that.


Once I was hurt by a friend (or who I thought was a friend) and I couldn’t understand why she’d do something like that, it still baffles me to be quite honest, and so I really tried to push past it and let it go. We didn’t talk for months and then randomly ran into each other one day, it took everything I had not to push her down 3rd grade style, kick dirt in her face and yell at her. Instead, I focused on everything that was great in my life and smiled politely while we small talked before going on our way to our separate lives.


I cried later to Alfred who very accurately reminded me of all the drama that surrounded this person and how much negativity I had in my life when she was around. Having someone there to be objective about a situation really does help me find my happy place where I’m comfortable giving forgiveness. Sometimes people don’t even know I have (or more than likely that don’t even know it was warranted in the first place) forgiven them and it’s just easier to move on with life without making a scene about it. Also, I’m pretty sure I’m the one who’s needed forgiveness before – so thinking about that keeps me in check.



Do you have a hard time forgiving others?
Can you just let it go?

2 comments:

The Lady Okie said...

My mom is really good at forgiving people, and she's been a great example to me of what that looks like. We talked in church a few weeks ago about forgiveness and righteous anger, and I've been trying to remember to have that kind of attitude.

Adrienne said...

I've been loving these posts! What a good way to get writing but they're also deep. Forgiveness is really hard sometimes. I love your attitude about it. :)