
Let’s face it. It is impossible to get through life without some hurts and pains. Big, medium or small, life offers up thousands of opportunities for we humans to be perfectly human in all our human imperfections.
Often, the other person may not have intended to hurt us. They may have been acting out from their place of pain. They may not even realize there is pain in their response. Just as when we have been the one to cause pain or hurt, we did not intend it or did not know the source of our own unease that caused us to say or behave the way we did.
It isn’t what happened that makes the difference in your life today. It’s what you do with it.
Give a little forgiveness.
No one deserves to be abused, lied to, manipulated. No one deserves the countless things that happen in their lives that push them down. Name calling, deceit, the loss of a loved one, loss of any kind, feeling humiliated, feeling alone, feeling like you don’t belong.
No one deserves to have their feelings ignored, their truth called a lie, their beauty called ugly.
Yet, it happens.
The challenge is, when what happened ‘then’ continues to dictate how we feel, behave and see ourselves in the now, it isn’t the past that’s hurting us any longer. It’s our repetition of ‘the story’ we’ve created about what happened that is causing our distress.
Give a little forgiveness.
Sure, it may feel awkward, uncomfortable, different. Do it anyway.
And, if your mind immediately leaps to “I will never forgive ____________.” ask yourself, what does holding onto resentment, bitterness, distress get me? How does it serve me today?
This is not a big sweeping, I forgive you, will forget it ever happened or a ‘it’s okay, I swore I’d never let you back in my life and I still don’t trust you but I will’, kind of forgiveness. You may never want to let them back into your life. And that’s okay. That’s your decision. Only you know what is the best for your life.
Forgiveness isn’t about making what another did right or okay, or acceptable. It’s about releasing yourself from the past, letting go of the story you are telling yourself that keeps haunting you, hurting you, holding you down.
Forgiveness is not for them. It’s for you.
And once you’ve started practicing a little forgiveness, keep practicing. It’s not about biting it off all in one big chomp. It’s about taking tiny little bites that are manageable. Bites that slowly nourish you with their soothing grace, setting you free to flow into life without the wounds of the past limiting your brilliance today.
Give a little forgiveness.
And don’t forget to give yourself the same grace.
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