Forgiveness: A New Perspective

How I Found It and Why Everyone Should

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Forgiveness can be hard, don’t you agree? It has certainly proven hard for me in the past. It took me years to find forgiveness for a former friend who did everything in his power to make my like miserable. I prayed about it. I prayed for him. I prayed for strength and grace. I even bought a meditation recording on forgiveness, all to no avail.

I really, really, really wanted to forgive him, not for his sake, but for my own. When you hold a grudge, it doesn’t hurt the person you’re angry at; it hurts you. It gives away your power to someone else. By upsetting you, they win to some degree. It’s not about whether or not the person deserves to be forgiven, but rather, it’s about how you deserve the peace that forgiveness holds. Still, I could not come to terms with forgiving him. I just couldn’t find it within me. And I began to wonder, what does forgiveness look like? When do you know you’ve truly forgiven someone?

I’ve never wished the person who targeted me or anyone else harm. Even after I filed charges against him after a year of harassment, all I wanted was for him to leave me alone. If a police officer would have spoken to him and told him to stop harassing me, I would never have filed charges in the first place, but they don’t speak to anyone unless they’re either on…