forgiveness

[myscratchpost]

while reading Journey into God's Heart, the chapter where tony left Jennifer broke my heart. it was a chapter so full of pain and betrayal felt by her but yet beautifully woven with words of acceptance, faith and forgiveness. from jennifer, i realise that forgiveness can be such a hard process even for people who are so annointed, simply because we

Comments

[theturtlebook]

I feel really inadequate on this subject. Haha.

To put it in a mild way, I'm not really a forgiving person. (I carry my anger and hate for a very very long time.) I find it extremely hard to get rid of it. So usually I don't.

For me, time is usually enough to bland the anger. I can't forgive, but I usually forget. Forget why I was angry, forget why I hated. Of course this takes an unusually long time, but I guess this is my own way of handling the issues.

But one thing that bothers me is that by washing off the anger with time, I don't think I have ever truly forgiven. Which really irks me sometimes. Ugh.

[myscratchpost]

yes i so agree with you~~~ with time, we tend to forget e reason of anger and the feeling of anger but that is not forgiveness, its just poor memory! and i hate that feeling. and if i think harder enough, i realise anger can easily be drawn back if true forgiveness was never given.

[theturtlebook]

Hmm. I wonder how exactly do you go about truly forgiving someone? Is having the intention enough? If deep down I truly want to forgive a person, but I still feel a little anger - which I suppress - whenever I see/think about the person. Is that forgiving?

[myscratchpost]

of coz everything begins with an intention to do it right!
if u suppress that bit of anger every time u think/see that person in question, u are acting out the act of forgiving in my opinion.

what do you think about that? (and xinyi too)

[solitude_in_me]

Hmmm...actually I think both intention and blanding of anger are forgiveness. You intend to forgive and so you work towards it like supressing your anger until it reach a point where there's no need too. Similarly blanding of anger with time may or may not be poor memory. It can actually be that the anger no longer bogs you down and with time you just move on. If it is purely poor memory you can recall them like what jy said. But if you intend to forgive the person you won't choose to recall them.

Forgiveness to me is not a switch kinda thing. It's to choose to overlook at what angered you and focus on the big picture. It's a choice that you have to keep choosing not to recall and not to get angry.

[myscratchpost]

i agree with the part tt forgiveness is not a switch kinda thing, as mentioned before i think its a continuous process till one day those painful memories become nothing but one of the memories.

and on the recalling part, i think sometimes memories tend to flood subconsiously and not so much of a choice unless u are trying to remember something.