Forgive and Forget

Yesterday in my group we were talking about forgiveness, and how the first step to forgiving someone else is forgiving yourself. This makes a lot of sense to me- if you don't have the self respect to forgive yourself for whatever you have done, then how can you expect anyone else to? I try to be very forgiving in my everyday life- even if people have pushed me to the brink. A good example is me and my grandma occasionally getting annoyed at each other. Yeah, we'll yell at each other a bit, but by the next day if not a few hours later we are back to laughing and talking as if nothing had ever happened. You never know when life will come to a crashing end- and if anyone was to die while I was mad at them it would hang regret over my head as it is harder to forgive someone who you feel is no longer there.

I am glad that I got things sorted with my Mom before she passed. I would have an EXTREMELY hard time forgiving myself if she had died and I had a grudge against her or was still mad at her. People think that just because someone passes away that they are gone. They aren't- they are just not HERE. You can still talk with them and say sorry to them- they just won't answer back. Certainly in heaven it is easy for your friends, family- whoever you were mad at to forgive you. The BIGGEST leap you can take truly is forgiving yourself.

I've forgiven myself- have you forgiven?

Maddie