Forgiveness is Hard

To have a person that you love deeply put their hands on you in anger. The first thing that goes through your mind is it is your fault. You did something wrong to cause such a hateful act. But you know what it isn’t your fault at all. Maybe you pushed a button to anger them. That is no excuse for these actions. But for some reason the feelings that we have for these people over power the actions and we forgive them.

Forgiveness is not easy when we are close to the person and we are wronged. We are quick to forgive a stranger for some of the same actions. Why is that? We tend to make excuses for the ones that we don’t know, like they didn’t know any better, they must have needed it more than I did or some other excuse that fits the action. So why is it so much harder to forgive the same actions with people that we love? Why is taking some form of retaliation make it better? Tit for tat, an eye for an eye?

I have done my share of wrong doings in my life, things that I am not proud of. I have done things with the knowledge that other people would get hurt. I have my crosses I bare and demons that I battle every day. I use to have the attitude that I didn’t care if these people ever forgave me for my actions but in the long run the actions themselves have gotten the better of me and I have asked most of them for forgiveness. I am also going through and evaluating what was worth the pain and forgiving those that have wronged me.

Every action can be forgiven without some form of retaliation. Every person deserves a chance to redeem themselves and make it right. It is not healthy to carry other peoples burdens and if you can not forgive without “paying them back” in some way then it is their burden you are carrying. The deed was done now you can keep that with you and live your life in pain and angry or you can just realize that life is way to short to worry about everyone Else’s mistakes. If we were all perfect we would not truly know what it is like to be loved and love someone else. We would not know the importance of the smile and the sound of laughter. If we never experienced pain than how would we know what pleasure was? We need to experience failure to know how to succeed. We need to live life to survive, without being able to forgive all we do is hide in our own little worlds sheltered from anything that may wrong us again. Does that sound like living to you?