Immeasurably More

Forgiveness, God, Healing, Marriage, Trust 0

I think the main thing is, if there is any confusion or doubt as to what you should do, to err on the side of trusting that God can do the impossible….

God can do immeasurably more than you could ever ask or imagine.  He can heal your heart, and he can resurrect your marriage, no matter what state it’s in.

As mere humans, we tend to limit God, especially in this extreme type of situation.  But where there is room for repentance, there is also room for forgiveness and grace.  If you can’t imagine such a miracle in your situation, choose to believe that God can and does.  And in practicing that power you possess to believe God and take him at his word, you will find the strength to commit to acting on that belief.  As we know from experience, reconciliation is a matter of trust, and it begins between you and God.

We didn’t have to remarry; biblically, the grounds for divorce were sound.  But that doesn’t negate the truth that God created marriage to be the foundation of the family, and he created the family to be the foundation of society.  The best thing we can do for ourselves, our children, and our society as a whole is to preserve marriages.  If you choose to give up your right to your ego and your pain and walk the road of forgiveness and grace, you are glorifying God and living according to his purpose.  You are giving an immense gift to yourself, your spouse, and your children.  If you allow God to heal your heart and bolster you with his grace and love, choosing to walk the difficult path, you will never regret it.

— Cheryl & Jeff Scruggs, I Do Again, p. 174-176

The Need to Blame

Forgiveness, Growth, Healing, Letting Go 0

The need to blame (ourselves or others) runs so deeply at times that it can feel like a basic necessity.  Part of the need arises as a defense against shame.  As shame encroaches, fending it off requires that someone else be proved the villain.  And it is not enough that we protest what they’re doing, that we have our say.  We have to nail them to their crimes, make them confess, make them feel bad and promise to be better.  Only then can we finally have the satisfaction of being free of the denunciation we direct at ourselves….

Knowing oneself is integral to growing up.  But, to the extent that we live in a blaming system, we do not want to know the truth about who we are and, therefore, resist growing up.  We don’t want to know our own murderousness, selfishness, greed, envy, because all of these very human feeling states have been made a source of so much guilt and shame that they lead at once to total condemnation and self-rejection.  We can’t know them, and we can’t know how we came to them.  As a result, we miss out on the experience of self-empathy and self-care, which might be the basis for doing something new, for beginning to emerge from these things we don’t like in ourselves but which hold us prisoner.

Some of what we do is bad and should be changed — the way we bully, deny, manipulate, shirk, indict…. But if we make every misdeed or character orientation into a capital crime, into evidence that our very being is worthless, we will not be able to let ourselves know the full complexity of who we are.  If there can be no mercy, no leniency, no understanding, no forgiveness, no simple tolerance for the magnificent complexity of being human — if we face every flaw or disliked quality as evidence that our blackened souls require rejection and banishment — we will not be captured by our own awareness and motivated to change.  The blaming system, therefore, puts a brake on a fundamental area of growth….

Blame is very absorbent.  It soaks up sadness.  It dries the tears.  It provides an opportunity and a target for fury which is felt as preferable to experiencing pain or loss — whether the loss is a cat, a spouse, an aspect of physical health, a loved object, a piece of work, a good night’s sleep, an election, a colony, or a war.  Blaming and vindictiveness are ways of not feeling one’s sorrow or shame and, by corollary, of not caring for oneself.  Blame is the anti-mourn and, hence, the anti-self.

— Robert Karen, PhD, The Forgiving Self, p. 110-112

Forgiveness Is Letting Go.

Forgiveness, Letting Go 0

The very person you find hardest to forgive is the one YOU NEED TO LET GO OF THE MOST.  Forgiveness means giving up, letting go.  It has nothing to do with condoning behavior.  It’s just letting the whole thing go.  We do not have to know HOW to forgive.  All we need to do is to be WILLING to forgive.  The Universe will take care of the hows.

— Louise L. Hay, You Can Heal Your Life, p. 22

Beloved by God

Forgiveness, God, Love 0

If you believe that you are the beloved, you can offer forgiveness, even when it cannot be received.  For still you say, “I set you free and I am willing to forgive you even when you cannot forgive me, because I claim my belovedness.”  And you can move on, saying, “I can ask your forgiveness even though you cannot give it to me yet, and perhaps ever.”

— Henri Nouwen, Turn My Mourning Into Dancing, p. 80

Unconditional Gratitude

Forgiveness, Gratitude 0

There may be a desire to keep another locked in a web of blame and guilt.  Unconditional gratitude given in these situations may at first feel as if we are letting people who we dislike “off the hook.”  I can assure you from my own experience that it is ourselves we are letting off the hook.  Gratitude, like its sister, forgiveness, frees the giver first of all.  Gratitude brings freedom to our self-imposed prison of hatred and revenge.  Perceived past wrongs are our prison bars.  Unconditional gratitude melts these bars away.  Hatred not only locks us in a tiny cell of self-pity, it keeps out those who are seeking to bring love into our life.  (Hatred includes everything from rage to a seemingly innocent desire to avoid someone.)  Our past, released with gratitude, frees our present to be as it could be.

Finally, the most marvelous gift that unconditional gratitude gives us is clarity and vision.  Giving unconditional gratitude, I begin to see that everything is here to bless me.  I really cannot explain how this happens.  It just does.  It makes no sense in terms of our worldly thought processes.  Only the actual act, in which you give gratitude unconditionally, brings the fantastic results of seeing clearly.  As I keep extending my gratitude to everyone in my past and my present, I start to see that all that surrounds me is actually in harmony.  I begin to see that what I judged as harmful and unfair was really a misinterpretation, a faulty judgment based on my perception, which is very limited in its scope.

— Lee Coit, in Gratitude: A Way of Life, by Louise L. Hay and Friends, p. 40-42

Finding Treasure

Compassion, Forgiveness, Healing, Joy, Life, Trials 0

Adopting the perspective of the Stargazer not only leads us toward our future best destinies but actually transmutes past unhappiness into treasure.  This is because, in emotional terms, everything is made from its opposite.  The raw material for joy is sorrow; the raw material for compassion is anger; the raw material for fearlessness is fear.  This means that the very people who hurt you worst may turn out to have enriched you most.  “Forgiveness” isn’t even an issue from the position of the Stargazer.  Why would anyone bother to “forgive” someone who’d made them rich?

— Martha Beck, Steering by Starlight, p. 76

Better Late Than Never

Forgiveness, Growth, Life 0

As we renew our commitment to the processes of life, then the processes of life will recommit to us.  We’ll feel forgiven for a past that wasn’t all it should have been when we commit to a future that is all that it can, should, and will be — now that we’ve finally grown up.

The prodigal son did get home late, having partied hard, but his father rejoiced to see him.  And so does ours.

Wherever you’ve been, and whatever you’ve done so far, your entire life was building up to this moment.  Now is the time to burst forth into your greatness — a greatness you could never have achieved without going through exactly the things you’ve gone through.  Everything you’ve experienced was grist for the mill by which you become who you are.  As low as you might have descended, in God there are no limits to how high you can go now.  It is not too late.  You are not to old.  You are right on time.  And you are better than you know.

— Marianne Williamson, The Age of Miracles, p. 9

Forgiveness and Illness

Forgiveness, Healing, Letting Go 0

We all have opinions on who was right and who was wrong according to our own perceptions, and we can all find ways to justify our feelings.  We want to punish others for what they did to us; however, we are the ones running the story over and over in our own minds.  It is foolish for us to punish ourselves in the present because someone hurt us in the past.

To release the past, we want to be willing to forgive, even if we don’t know how.  Forgiveness means giving up our hurtful feelings and just letting the whole thing go.  A state of nonforgiveness actually destroys something within ourselves.

No matter what avenue of spirituality you follow you will usually find that forgiveness is an enormous issue at any time, but most particularly when there is an illness.  When we are ill we really need to look around and see who it is we need to forgive.  And usually the very person who we think we will never forgive is the one we need to forgive the most.  Not forgiving someone else doesn’t harm the person in the slightest, but it plays havoc with us.  The issues aren’t theirs; the issues are ours.

The grudges and hurts you feel have to do with forgiving yourself, not someone else.  Affirm that you are totally willing to forgive everyone.  “I am willing to free myself from the past.  I am willing to forgive all those who may have ever harmed me and I forgive myself for having harmed others.”  If you think of anyone who may have harmed you in any way at any point in your life, bless that person with love and release him or her, then dismiss the thought….

If you feel ripped-off by another, know that nobody can take anything from you that is rightfully yours.  If it belongs to you, it will return to you at the right time.  If something doesn’t come back to you, it wasn’t meant to.  You need to accept it and go on with your life.

— Louise L. Hay, The Power Is Within You, p. 89-91

Forgiveness Is a Journey.

Forgiveness, Growth, Healing 0

Forgiveness about injuries this deep does not come easily or quickly.  There can’t always be a moment of forgiveness, when suddenly our lives are transformed.  We are human.  We need time to process our experiences, to mourn, to separate, to grow.  Forgiveness brews within us, expedited according to our own creative capacities, impeded by our conflicts, a mysterious product of the human spirit.  The reclamation of love and of the forgiving self is an arduous and profound journey.

— Robert Karen, PhD, The Forgiving Self, p. 60