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Everyone seems to be an expert on forgiveness. After all, it is a pretty simple concept to understand. It simply means to stop hating or holding resentment toward a person who has hurt or offended you. How difficult is that to understand? Well, the concept is simple, but the execution is very difficult. There are many who believe they have to forgive and forget. There are many who hold to the religious tenant that we have to forgive or we are not in good standing with our God. First, I believe it is impossible to forget. Therefore including that word in the statement is ridiculous. If you can’t forget, all that means is that your mind still works. You cannot simple erase things that have been recorded in our brains, especially something that has made a deep imprint there. As far as the spiritual principle is concerned, I believe God understands our struggles with forgiveness and is patient while we work through things. In other words, forgiveness is a process, not a decision. If you are religious, you should understand that God looks on the heart. That means he takes into account our intentions, not just our state of being. For traumatic issues such as incest, rape, affairs etc, to simple be able to forgive when a wound is that deep is not realistic at all. It is like cutting into your arm two inches into the flesh and expecting to wake up the next day with it healed. So what do we do in order to clear our minds and emotions of the deep wounds that result from being severely hurt. First, we have to accept that forgiveness is not the most important thing. We have to deal with what we associate the pain with. It is enough in the beginning to simply want to one day forgive, but to admit that right now you cannot. That is OK. We have to give ourselves permission not to forgive, at least while we are still feeling the deep pain from what has hurt us. There is a time to deal with forgiveness, but not now. Working through the pain, and understanding what it is that is causing the agony, has to be understood. For example, if your husband cheats on you, forgiving him is not the most important issue. Normally, you will feel rejected, worthless and angry. All of these are overwhelming emotional responses that will prevent any progress and certainly the peace that comes from forgiving. There are a lot of things that need to be worked through. There is a grief process that must happen as well. The anger, denial, depression, bargaining and acceptance has to be experienced. There is no real time schedule for when forgiveness needs to start, but when you are finally in the stage of being able to accept what has happened without being controlled by anger and resentment, then you can begin to want to forgive. Even though you may want to, it will not normally happen for some time. I believe it is one of those things where you try for a long time and one day you wake up, and the pain seems to have subsided enough where you can feel some peace and begin to fill that void with love again. The harder we push this process, the longer it takes. If we simply give ourselves permission to wait on forgiveness until we are ready, eventually it will happen. But it will happen almost naturally rather than as a forced or obligated requirement. Religious people, I believe, sometimes put themselves through more pain by beating themselves up because they can’t forgive, then the actual pain of the event. Please don’t misunderstand, I am not making excuses for someone to avoid forgiving. The end goal is, of course, to forgive. If we do not, we will carry that resentment around with us for the rest of our life which will result in internal anger that controls us and alters all of our perceptions of people and our environment. At some point, one has to begin to at least desire to forgive, even if it takes a long time. The intention in itself, has some ability to keep the hurt from overtaking us. If you are in this state, it is vital that you have someone you can talk to and work through things with. Healing takes three things, a friend or counselor, desire to overcome the hurt and time. Eventually if you consistently do these things, the pain will fade, you will see the world again as a wonderful place and forgiveness will simple happen. For assistance with relationship issues, please see my site at http://www.lifecoachaffairs.com
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