To Forgive

I've been thinking a lot about forgiveness lately. Mainly because I know that I need to forgive the person that hurt my feelings. It's been an interesting path, that I've learned a lot about. Some interesting things have come out of all this.

Initially when it happened, I automatically thought, "I need to forgive them for being so mean to me." Then, as the days progressed, and feelings, memories, and other experiences went into play, it became really hard to want to forgive them. I realize now, it's because there were many past things that I needed to forgive them for, but they were so little that I had just let them gather like small little whiffs of smoke until it became a nice little fire of hard feelings. Then, as I would try to forgive them for what I felt was a huge thing, it was almost impossible because of all the little things that I hadn't let go of, and hadn't forgiven them for. It was quite eye opening for me as I went through and realized all this.

As I was thinking about all of this, I began to think about people I knew who were good examples of forgiveness. The Savior came to my mind instantly, where He forgives them while he's being crucified. My little offenses seem paltry compared to what he was willing to forgive.

Then I thought of one of my heroines, Corrie Ten Boom, who wrote the book "The Hiding Place." I remembered at the end of the book, how she was working to help people forgive after they had been in concentration camps, and had awful things done to them. Then, as she was giving a seminar, someone came up to her to shake her hand, and it was one of the guards from where she, herself, had been imprisoned. She realized, that she couldn't shake his hand. The one who had taught all these people and encouraged them to be forgiving, and she couldn't do it herself. So she prayed and asked the Lord for help and turned it over to him. She shook that man's hand, through the help of the Savior.

As these instances came to mind, I realized a few things.

One- I needed to have the desire to forgive. It wasn't enough to just know that I needed to forgive them. I needed to want to forgive them.

Two- I knew I couldn't do it by myself.

So I prayed. I prayed that I would see this person the way the Lord does, and love them the way He does. I prayed about all the hard feelings I had, all the things that this person had knowingly and unknowingly done to me, and my desire to let all the hard feelings go so I could forgive them.

That was last night.

This morning, the pain is less. I think about that person, and the past experiences don't bother me so much. I am glad, because I know that now I am on the path of forgiving this person, and letting all the negative things go. It's a good feeling.