Forgiving someone can be a difficult process, especially if you do it correctly and with the finality that forgiveness should entail. Depending on the situation it can take a long time and a lot of effort to forgive someone but no matter what the situation it is possible. Sometimes a person does not deserve your forgiveness but it is still important that you give it because holding on to that unforgiveness only hurts you in the end. It only affects your life negatively it certainly does not affect them in any way. In fact they may not even care that you are forgiving them or they may not even think they did anything that requires you to forgive them but again the point is not to forgive to help them, but to help yourself.
When we let unforgiveness live inside of us, it hurts us. It can take root and spread to other areas of our lives and even hold us back from accomplishing our goals and living the life we want to live. On their end it generally does absolutely nothing, it does not hurt them that you do not forgive, it does not keep them up at night or cause them to stumble through life filled with depression and remorse. There may be some cases where that is the case and forgiveness can then be incredibly healing for both of you but a majority of the time it’s for you, the forgiver. Just do a quick Google search and see all the research out there on the negative physical effects of unforgiveness and how people who are quicker to forgive can actually be more satisfied with life.
So to answer the question of when do you forgive, it’s always. You should always work towards forgiveness of someone as it will free you from the burden of unforgiveness. Some things are easy to forgive and move on from, and some things might take a long time to get to the place where you are able to forgive. That’s ok, work towards achieving forgiveness and get it off your shoulders. You deserve not to be burdened down with things you can let go and forgive. You deserve to live a light life, with happiness and joy and not live weighed down by unforgiveness and the dark mindset it brings on. My next post will be about how to forgive, so think about some things in your life that you might need to work towards forgiving and we will start to work through that next post
Recent Comments