I am grateful for forgiveness.

I do not deserve forgiveness. I have hurt others. I have taken advantage of others. I have mistreated others. I have been selfish and inconsiderate and have lived the kind of life that was deplorable. Multitudes of people have died from making the kind of choices I have made in my life and in times of retrospect, I am shocked to have survived much less be happy. Nonetheless, today my life is abundant with laughter, love, trust, forgiveness and joy. Many of the people that are in my life today have been witness to, or victims of, my destructive and manipulative behavior. But for reasons I don't always know or understand, they have chosen to forgive me in spite of that. They have chosen to love. And I do believe that is what love is...it is a choice. It is not a feeling. It's something that has to be chosen over and over and over. I have come to understand forgiveness in the same way. I now recognize it's not merely a feeling. It is something that can only be fully experienced if I take action. I used to pray that God would bring relief to my heart and my spirit if I needed to forgive someone or myself. I would ask Him to simply give me a feeling. But now I fully grasp how misdirected that line of thinking was. If God had granted me the feeling of forgiveness I longed for, I would not have had to put in the work required to truly experience the blessing that comes just on the other side of forgiveness. Getting to that place of forgiveness is a journey just like everything else. It is there to teach me something about myself and about God. It is there to make me stronger in some ways and gentler in others. The journey requires that I examine my heart, my mind, my motives- often my most sensitive and vulnerable hurts. I have to break open the grief, the trauma, and the pain and look at that piece of my life courageously and with rigorous honesty. Then I give all of that to God. For a time, I may experience a measure of peace, but I usually take the hurt back again. And then, just like before, I have to examine it and give it over. It is a process and, more often than not, it is a slow one. It's picking it up and turning it over. Again and again and again until little by little I realize that the burden doesn't feel quite as heavy. I realize that my heart doesn't hurt quite as much. I realize that I have come to the place in my journey where I can recognize the pain, but I no longer need to carry it with me. I can let go and it is only then I realize I have forgiven. I Know the people I have hurt that are still a part of my journey have had to go through this same process. And I know it was painful for them. It took a long time for forgiveness to transpire in my relationships. It was difficult for people to begin to trust that what I was saying carried truth- that I was going to be where I said I was going to be, and I was going to do what I said I was going to do. Over and over and over I had to show them. I trusted my sanity long before they did and that was sometimes frustrating. But I also recognized that it was my fault and all I could do was the next right thing. All I could do was put in the effort and trust God with the outcome. Little by little, laughter, and joy began to seep back into my relationships and then, one day, I knew the trust had been restored as well- I knew I had been forgiven. So, no, I do not deserve forgiveness. But thankfully, I do not have a God who gives me what I deserve. He carries that burden for me when I allow Him to. 

"I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded; not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night." - Khaled Hosseini