Forgive

“when it’s time for you to love, you’re going to love, the same way when it’s time for you to hurt, you are going to hurt. you’re going to hurt, your life is perfectly balanced, you will hurt and love, when its necessary Nothing more, nothing less.” RMD   
           

Ever experience a time when had your heart closed like iron doors slamming shut? 

Practicing the F word. Everyone just says oh forgive and forget… move on… forget it about it. But it’s not that easy. Whenever you experience the ultimate sense of betrayal, you don’t just get over it. You want to hold onto every single painful memory and play it over and over again. Thinking this will prevent it from happening again. But just because your mind is in the past does not mean you want to return there.  Going through the surrender. However, you reach the point where the surrender feels like a giving up….   

“You go through something so life-shifting, mind altering, and deeply traumatic, and you find society only has a small bandwidth for tolerating your fear. And here is what you are allowed: You’re okay to cry, you’re forgiven for being sad, or canceling a few plans here and there. You’re permitted a few days off work, someone listen to you vent a handful of times. But processing and accepting gravity of something that touched every inch of you is not something you can do on a mental health day. It’s not something the world affords you enough time for, and so you botch the job and carry on.”          

When you forgive you give up the desire for revenge and feelings of resentment and instead show generosity, compassion, and kindness. This does not mean that you forget the offense that occurred nor do you excuse it. 

“Forgive to live,” a study done by Luther College psychologist  examined the health benefits of forgiveness. The study examined a relationship between forgiveness, spirituality, health, and morality. Luther and his colleagues tested the life-sustaining benefits of forgiveness against 7 components… 
•    Conditional forgiveness of others
•    Unconditional forgiveness of others
•    Unforgiveness of others
•    Belief in God’s conditional forgiveness  
•    Belief in God’s unconditional forgiveness
•    Ability to forgive yourself
•    Feeling forgiven by others  

Results revealed that people on the high scale of conditional forgiveness, meaning they would only forgive others on conditional terms died before people scored low on this measure.   
How do we release the emotions that have a hold over us and relax into the open space?  To be ourselves again. What are the action steps to take in order to forgive? 

1.    Journal… just let it all out! 
2.    Try to put yourself in the other persons shoes and empathize with them. 
3.    Send them love and light
4.    Forgive yourself too! 
5.    Be grateful for what they taught you. 

You may still have to repeat these steps before finally moving on but it’s a start, as people suffer from the injustices of others, they often realize, they themselves become more sensitive to others pain.”   

You sit looking for a way to piece yourself back together but as you look for the forgiveness while staring out the window of the bus and your house and you don’t find it and another day passes you by.  You don’t want to die young, life is too beautiful for that. So you make the choice to forgive and make the most of the precious time you have left.