How have you exercised your forgiveness muscle lately?
I’d really love to know how you find healing within.
Need help figuring out adoption relationships? Schedule a complimentary consultation with Lori Holden, M.A.
How have you exercised your forgiveness muscle lately?
I’d really love to know how you find healing within.
Lori Holden, mom of a young adult daughter and a young adult son, writes from Denver. She was honored as an Angel in Adoption® by the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute.
Find Lori’s books on her Amazon Author page, and catch episodes of Adoption: The Long View wherever you get your podcasts.
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13 Responses
I’ve tried. I have. And I’ve also tried to get an old but seperated friend try to exercise her’s too.
I know that true forgiveness is the only way to truly show love ..to be able to look past something that might sting and ache, and to instead go with the healing, to care for that wound.
If I had one wish this christmas , it would be that this friend would show me forgivness and allow me back in her life, even it’s in a limited capacity.
thanks for posting this, it makes me believe that in this season of hope, miracles and forgivness I might be worthy of some.
HUGS
I wanted to share something I read yesterday:
“Peace is the child of forgiveness.
Forgiveness is the child of love.
[…] Peace is the fruit of prayer”
How true. When I find it difficult to forgive someone, I pray for both that person and my heart and things get much easier. Also, if I think that I might have hurt someone, besides apologizing directly (and sometimes it is not always possible), I pray to the person’s guardian angel that he may whisper my heartfelt apologies to her/him and plant the forgiveness seeds in her/his heart. It helps me tremendously.
Silvia, this is so beautiful. Thank you for sharing such wisdom and sentiment.
Forgiving is the way to find peace. I always aim to forgive. Why carry around anger? It does not do any good.
Ha. No.
On the plus side, I mostly avoid people who do things that would require me to forgive them…
I feel like I have earned my forgiveness PhD this year. We are in the process of adopting, and were deep into a match (two weeks away from the birth) when the birth mother made the decision to parent. She did not let us know, and instead let us text and call and receive no answer. We only found out after we called the agency. We were hurt for so many reasons, and so heartbroken. I somehow knew that the only way to move on would be to understand where she was coming from, and to forgive without any qualifiers. It really has left me with a sense of peace about everything, and I’m grateful for the experience.
Dr Jessie, that sounds like such a difficult situation. That you handled it with such grace flowing through you is inspiring.
I don’t know if this will make any sense, but I find it so much easier to immerse myself in giving, the kind that expects nothing in return, than exercising that forgiveness muscle. One of these days, I will put it on the top of my to-do-list, but until then…
Oooh, when I first say the title, I was about to scream, “yes!” because I ran for 20 minutes yesterday and then danced for two hours. But then I read the rest of the sentence and realized it had to do with forgiveness. Er…not so much. But I don’t know if the people who need forgiving in my life even want my forgiving. And those who would take it don’t actually need it because that forgiveness reflex is instantaneous.
No…not recently.
I am definitely working on this one, though I don’t think of it as “forgiveness” so much, but more as coming to terms with the past and not harboring anger.
A fantastic quote I’ve heard a couple of times lately is that it is often helpful to get angry, and it is almost never helpful to stay angry.
Yes. And the muscle was really sore for a few days.
I’m with “a”…sometimes they are people I still love very much.