Today Matthew West’s song “Forgiveness” came on the radio.<\/p>\n
<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I got to thinking that there’s more than one stage to forgiveness. You can try to clear away the anger, and you can do that — you can choose not to be angry.<\/p>\n<p>But with a traumatic wrong, such as being betrayed, there’s an extent to which you have to learn all the ways you were hurt. You can’t just bury it away, or you won’t be healed. You have to uncover the lies told about you — because if you don’t, even if you try to cover them over and forgive them being told, you’re going to believe them.<\/p>\n<p>I’m thinking about things that maybe never even registered in your brain — but hit you in the heart.<\/p>\n<p>What made me think of all this? Listening to the song didn’t make me cry. I think it’s one of the first times I’ve heard the song and I *feel* lovable. I am no longer hurt by the lies that my husband left because I didn’t deserve to be loved.<\/p>\n<p>And feeling lovable again also makes it easier to forgive.<\/p>\n<p>Mind you, what I’m trying to say is that it takes time and work at healing. (Ten years in my case. And the work is never finished.) <\/p>\n<p>I do believe forgiveness helps the healing. But healing also helps the forgiveness.<\/p>\n<p>And today, for at least the length of the song, I felt happy and lovable and forgiving and loving toward my ex-husband and thankful for the family we had and our years together — as well as excited about the future and simply knowing there’s lots about me to love. And finding someone who does will not be impossible or incredible. And I’m going to live an exciting, vibrant life, whether single or with someone who loves me.<\/p>\n<p>And I am, in fact, worthy of love. And, yes, forgiveness is freeing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today Matthew West’s song “Forgiveness” came on the radio. I got to thinking that there’s more than one stage to forgiveness. You can try to clear away the anger, and you can do that — you can choose not to be angry. But with a traumatic wrong, such as being betrayed, there’s an extent to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forgiveness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1255\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}