"Forgiveness is giving up the right to retaliate. Forgiveness is the willingness to have something happen the way it happened."
"Forgiveness is giving up the insistence on being understood."
In essence, forgiveness is letting go of your side of the argument, or incident, and your attachment to the feelings associated with it. It is the first step in moving on, in healing a hurt and growing, or the first step on the farewell path.
It is not dragging around a hurt to be brought back up and revisited. It is not harboring resentment to be slung as a barb later. Those are acts of intent and retaliation.
I found, this morning, that I am not as good at forgiving as I thought I was. I wandered around the Internet, and stopped at certain people's pages. I'm not sure what I was looking for, some glimmer of hope, I guess. But, in essence, I revisited old wounds.
According to those quotes, I have some forgiving left to do, and not just of others, but of myself. I have harbored guilt and hurt feelings, and I have to let go. "For those who accept and practice this discipline [of forgiveness], there is a release of energy and a sense of freedom." As one of my friend's songs says, "we can fly high on the wings of forgiveness."
This is me, letting go and trying to fly.
Quotes from For Everything There is a Season.
