We’re not responsible for how someone responds to our forgiveness. We’re only responsible for what we can control — ourselves.
Once I recognized this, I noticed how my bitterness slipped away.
— Christi Paul, Love Isn’t Supposed to Hurt, p. 135
I realized then that when you forgive someone, you unchain yourself from the anger that’s clinging to you. Suddenly your world is wide open.
— Christi Paul, Love Isn’t Supposed to Hurt, p. 132
We don’t often know why things have happened the way they have in our lives. What we do know is that we were hurt, and part of that hurt is toward Jesus, because in our hearts we believe he let it happen. Again, this is not the time for sifting theological nuances, but this is why it is so important for you to look at the world the way Jesus did — as a vicious battle with evil. When you understand you have an enemy that has hated your guts ever since you were a child, it will help you not to blame this stuff on God. Anyhow, the facts are it happened, we are hurt that it happened, and part of us believes Jesus should have done something about it and didn’t. That is why we need to “forgive” him. We do so in order that this part of us can draw near him again, and receive his love.
Perhaps part of the fruit of that restoration will be that Jesus will then be able to explain to us why things happened the way they did. This is often the case. But whether we receive this or not, we know we need Jesus far more than we need understanding. And so we forgive — meaning, we release the offense we feel towards him.
— John Eldredge, Beautiful Outlaw, p. 164-165
One thing I have learned over time is that if we cling to our feelings of anger, or worse, if we fan the flames of hatred, we are the ones who suffer. The person with whom we are angry may be affected for a moment or two, but no matter how much we rant and rave they go on with their lives. We are left with the fire burning inside. We lose sleep. We can’t even enjoy a book, a movie, or a hot fudge sundae. As the Buddha said, “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.”
— Allan Lokos, Patience, p. 27
The people who have hurt you have possibly done something that is very wrong, and wrong is wrong — that’s all there is to it. When you forgive someone, you don’t excuse the person’s wrong actions; you merely detach yourself from your involvement in that person’s actions and drop your burden of pain about the situation.
— Mary Hayes Grieco, Unconditional Forgiveness, p. 22
Patience is supported and nurtured by a quality of forgiveness. Understanding that others, just like ourselves, are affected by stress, disappointment, and frustration is the first step toward being able to forgive, to let it go. Forgiveness of others becomes possible as we learn to forgive ourselves. When anger, resentment, bitterness, irritation, and other such feelings take hold of us, we can’t enjoy peace or a feeling of ease. When others sense our anger, and they will, they can find it difficult to trust us. Thus, we create unrest not only for ourselves, but for those around us as well. On the other hand, when we begin to conscientiously overcome our anger, happiness and inner peace will be present more often.
Allan Lokos, Patience, p. 26
I would say that my deepest spiritual understanding is that God also sees and forgives my smallest detail, even my flickery, prickly, damaged, jealous, vain self, and sees how I get self-righteous and feel either like trash, often, or superior, and like such a scaredy-cat, and God still understands exactly what that feels like. Because God has had the experience of being people, through Jesus.
Jesus had his good days and bad days and stomach viruses. Not to mention that on top of it all, he had a mom who had bad days and good days of her own. She’s like me and Amy, like all of us; she would have been as hormonal, too. And she must have been jealous sometimes of the people Jesus chose to spend time with instead of her. Jealousy is such a toxic virus. “Who are these people? And what do they have that I don’t have?” It’s pretty easy to be deeply selfish when it comes to sharing your child. Even Mary must have been like: “Back off! He’s mine.”
— Anne Lamott, Some Assembly Required, p. 228-229
Some of the most amazing people we meet are people with the worst personal stories. Their stories were their training grounds and the laboratories of understanding that became their greatest gifts to others. They discovered that once they digested and released the energy of sorrow and trauma, it was replaced by a large capacity for compassion, wisdom, and a passion to contribute to the well-being of others. The degree of personal greatness some people achieve is directly related to the amount of forgiveness they had to do. In this way, self-healing is intimately related to living a purposeful life.
— Mary Hayes Grieco, Unconditional Forgiveness, p. 10
Forgiveness is a private process that we do for our own sakes, and there is no experience of hurt, loss, betrayal, or disappointment that is beyond our power to heal and resolve. When we forgive someone, we are saying that even though this experience of hurt (painful, difficult, unjust, abusive, and so on) has happened to us, we are going to completely release that pain and move forward without it. Even the most broken heart can be mended through forgiveness, and the steady practice of forgiveness throughout our lives will reframe for us the worst stories of our human journey. When we are wounded and suffering, an attitudinal choice lies right in front of us: will we feel and believe that we are victims of cruel fate, slogging through unrelenting and meaningless struggles? Or will we empower ourselves to take the opportunity to travel to higher ground, employing universal spiritual principles? In the hot laboratory of daily life, day by day and year by year — no matter how difficult it gets — each one of us has the power to transform our painful stories from those of a victim to those of a willing student of life. Like a master-in-training in a customized wisdom school, we can turn our wounds into wisdom as we complete each lesson of the graduate level course called Unconditional Forgiveness.
— Mary Hayes Grieco, Unconditional Forgiveness, p. 1-2
The experience of forgiveness is profound and refreshing. When we do the gritty, methodical work that goes into healing and resolving an old hurt, we dissolve the stagnant weight of resentment inside us, and our bodies are flooded with new energy. Forgiveness mends our tattered personal boundaries, improves our health and relationships, and empowers us to move forward with hope and creativity. As we release the past, we also release ourselves into the richness of the present and the possibilities of the future. We find ourselves on new ground, ready to walk forward into our goals and dreams.
— Mary Hayes Grieco, Unconditional Forgiveness, p. 1