Forgiveness

In Church lately, there’s been a lot of talk about Forgiveness, restitution, and the Saviour. I had always thought I forgave easily, but I didn’t know true forgiveness until just recently. A year ago, I had a friend break my heart.  To say I was hurt would be an understatement. It hurt me so bad I cut off all communication. For what I’m still not quite sure of. Punishment? Stubbornness? Probably. Did it make my life happier? No… it just was.

So then I went to a lesson at Church a couple of weeks ago about forgiveness and what it meant. Actually, it was a lesson on repentance, strangely enough. But within the lesson we were also talking about forgiveness, as it’s one of the steps of repentence – to ask forgiveness of our Heavenly Father. And the teacher said, “As soon as we’re forgiven, it’s forgotton by our Heavenly Father. Could you imagine if it wasn’t? All those things we have been sorry for piling up in a book for us to see later on?” How does that even make sense? Of course once we’ve been forgiven the slate it wiped clean. God doesn’t go back to our past mistakes and bring it up.

So then why should we?

This last question weighed heavy on my mind and my heart. It was there because all I kept thinking about was this friend who I had ‘forgiven’ but who I had also cast completely out of my life. After 25 years. Why would I do that? So I prayed for an answer. The answer came quickly. “If you have truly forgiven this person, you will still love this person. This person should still be in your life. They should still be a friend.” And I knew that was right. And good.

As soon as I accepted that answer, an amazing rush of warmth came over me. All of that hurt and bad-feelings were instantly wiped away and substituted in my heart with Love. Pure Love. True Forgiveness.  It’s incredible to experience something like this.

I am amazed by Heavenly Father every day. Each day we get so many blessings in our lives and tiny miracles we don’t even know about because we’re too busy to look.  I’m trying to look and sometimes the joy I feel from this is just so overwhelming. I know there is a higher being watching us and guiding us. He’s letting us know the way to happiness and glory. It makes me sad when people don’t know that or fully understand what we take for granted. But I thank God everyday for everything He’s done for us, and the strength he gives me to do what’s right.

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