Forgiveness

Thank you for your excellent explanation by rewording it as "coming into terms with" as opposed to "forgive". As you said, it is difficult to come to terms when the offense is repeated especially by someone who is near and dear to us. Apart from everything you said, incest is another painful one where the emotions are hard to subside. Actually, reliving those incidents through emotions and reactions is as painful as the real incident and it is hard to eliminate anger, hatred and revengfulness in such cases. In order to improve the quality of life going forward, it becomes essential to overcome that as one repeatedly suffering for the mistake of others kills the quality of life.

As you said, even if we address a few hurtful feelings, it releases from those emotions and reactions.

 

In ongoing family situation, it is really difficult to forgive when one is not sure whether the wound would heal or not or fresh injuries will happen in the same wound again and again or not. Pent up emotions burns up people quickly for sure especially when they don’t have anyone to share. Standing up for self-esteem and self-preservation is the easiest and first solution in such situations, if possible. In fact, that might be a necessary step before even one finds whether forgiving would work or not. In some cases, standing up for one’s own self-esteem may heal one faster making forgiving redundant.It is not necessarily responding word for word. The second option is talking to a psychologist to release those emotions and in case of in-laws, if the spouse is supportive, sharing it with him or her. Living with such internal emotions and reactions is bad for health. Wherever forgiveness is not an option, those two might work.

 

@Laks09,

Thanks for your wonderful feedback and for sharing Elizabeth Smart’s testimony. I have heard this testimony before. I remember the time when she was kidnapped from her own bed. It was the worst nightmare for the girl and the parents. There is so much to learn from her testimony. Once there is an understanding that resentment affects us more than anyone else, forgiveness occurs naturally. Carrying someone in our heart especially when that someone hurt us in a way that changed our life is more miserable that the act of terror. This girl lives up to her last name.

Many blamed the family members of those who were massacred in Carolina Church, when they lined up to forgive Dillon Roof in the court for not having enough love for the people who were massacred. But frankly, they placed themselves to heal faster as they could not bring their family members back to life. Only those in that situation relate well but learning from these experiences is what people with discriminative power do.

 

Dear Smt. Jayasala:

Thank you for your kind words. I always enjoy reading your responses and learn so much from them. I will definitely read your post in "Interesting shares column".

 

Dear SLN Sir,

When we forgive ourselves for our mistakes in order to make progress in our lives, we also need to give a chance to others also through our forgiveness. To err is human but repeating is sinful. Every experience teaches us lessons and we don't need multiple experiences to learn this lesson again and again.

Especially when we think hurt feeling creates more anxiety to us than the others who are responsible for it, it is obvious we need to work towards bringing our mind in order.