Every single day of my life I battle with trying to find the courage to forgive you. Our whole lives we have all been taught you must forgive who caused the pain in order to move past it. What if you have tried with all of who you are, but still find yourself holding on to the same grudges you have tried so hard to let go of?
It's like she wants it to be this way, I reach deep inside of me with hope I will wake up one morning and feel different...... but I don't. I know and believe God wants us to forgive over, over, and over again. But why can't it be that easy?
Matthew 18:21
Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, "Lord how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times? "Jesus answered, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times."
I try again and again, but what if it is not a matter of forgiveness. What if it's character with in her that will never not repeat... what if she continues to hurt me over and over and over. Am I still suppose to continue to be opened armed and filled with forgiveness? A part of me gave up on you along time ago, but the other half still has faith.
Are any of you in this situation and have any type of inspiring insight?
I've been in this situation before, several times. It really depends on who causes the problem, I believe, that determines how you react.
ReplyDeleteI have a very close friend, who was there for me, until I really needed it. She abandoned me and left me to deal with everything by myself. It was the worst feeling in the world and caused me to pull away from my other best friend, for fear of losing her the same way, even though I needed the support. In the end, it occurred to me that how dare I be angry and not get over that? She was there for me so many times, why should I remember the one time she wasn't? In that situation, I needed to look at the bigger picture, and not focus on how I'd been hurt.
Now, I had another friend, around the same time as this, and sadly, she's now my ex-best friend. When I was going through a lot of stuff, she decided that she couldn't take it any more, and was going to hate me. I lost all my friends and was a mess. Slowly, over the next four months, I managed to deal with it myself, and got to a place where I was happy again. Unfortunately, this girl didn't want anything to do with me. One day she'd be lovely and we'd talk about being friends again, and the next, she was spiteful and just plain mean. This hurt a lot, because while I was putting in effort, and hoping to get her back as a friend, she kept building me up just to ruin my hopes of that again. It reached a point where I realised that I'm worth more than that. I'll always be here if she needs me as a friend, but I refuse to have her bring me down any more. That's the thing. You can keep forgiving someone, but it reaches a point where they don't care and they won't learn from their mistakes. (Often, of course not all people are the same.) At this point, I would simply take a step back from the situation and try and attempt to stop becoming hurt, as opposed to having to forgive the person who has hurt you. When I stopped wanting to be her friend, I stopped being hurt by her mistreating me. It just became boring and repetitive, and I was still able to be civil, even when she wasn't.
I'm not sure if my anecdotes help at all, that's just what I think. I definitely think it depends on the situation and the relationship you have with the person, and how they react too.
Hope everything works out. :)