Your marriage gives you untold opportunities to practice kinder speech and more forgiving attitudes. Your lover will be gracious enough to challenge your assumptions and courageous enough to be different from you. You can trust me on this.
— Dr. Fred Luskin, Forgive for Love, p. 206
It is possible to close ourselves to grace, both human and divine. But only grace can pry open the door that has been shut in its face. So God continues to give to the ungrateful and to forgive the unrepentant. Christ stands before the closed door of a grace-resistant heart and knocks gently with a nail-pierced hand.
So should we. When things go well, gifts engender gifts, and forgiveness gives birth to forgiveness. That’s the power of giving and forgiving. When things go ill, gifts fall on hard soil, and forgiveness remains barren. That’s the impotence of givers and forgivers, for they can only “knock at the door” by giving and forgiving. And then they must wait . . . and knock again and wait — trusting that the Spirit of the resurrected Christ will make the seed of their forgiveness bear fruit.
— Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge, p. 205
Happy women know that forgiving doesn’t let the offender off the hook; it lets you off the hook.
Dan Baker, PhD, and Cathy Greenberg, PhD, What Happy Women Know, p. 235
Along with trust there must be gratitude — the opposite of resentment. Resentment and gratitude cannot coexist, since resentment blocks the perception and experience of life as a gift. My resentment tells me that I don’t receive what I deserve. It always manifests itself in envy.
Gratitude, however, goes beyond the “mine” and “thine” and claims the truth that all of life is a pure gift. In the past I always thought of gratitude as a spontaneous response to the awareness of gifts received, but now I realize that gratitude can also be lived as a discipline. The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love, a gift to be celebrated with joy.
Gratitude as a discipline involves a conscious choice. I can choose to be grateful even when my emotions and feelings are still steeped in hurt and resentment. It is amazing how many occasions present themselves in which I can choose gratitude instead of a complaint. I can choose to be grateful when I am criticized, even when my heart still responds in bitterness. I can choose to speak about goodness and beauty, even when my inner eye still looks for someone to accuse or something to call ugly. I can choose to listen to the voices that forgive and to look at the faces that smile, even while I still hear words of revenge and see grimaces of hatred.
— Henri J. M. Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son, p. 85
Now that I come to think of it, I remember Christian teachers telling me long ago that I must hate a bad man’s actions, but not hate the bad man: or, as they would say, hate the sin but not the sinner.
For a long time I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life — namely myself. However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself. There had never been the slightest difficulty about it. In fact the very reason why I hated the things was that I loved the man. Just because I loved myself, I was sorry to find that I was the sort of man who did those things. Consequently, Christianity does not want us to reduce by one atom the hatred we feel for cruelty and treachery. We ought to hate them. Not one word of what we have said about them needs to be unsaid. But it does want us to hate them in the same way in which we hate things in ourselves: being sorry that the man should have done such things, and hoping, if it is anyway possible, that somehow, sometime, somewhere he can be cured and made human again.
— C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, quoted in A Year with C. S. Lewis, edited by Patricia S. Klein, p. 226
Positive intention is shorthand for talking about why you want your relationship to succeed, or what you are going to do to make it work, or how you can grow from a challenging experience. It is the opposite of complaining. Positive intention helps you see the big picture of a successful relationship and stops you from focusing on the little picture of disappointment or grievance. . . . I want you to share stories with yourself, with your loved one, and with your friends and family that reflect a strong and positive commitment to your marriage. These stories do not have to be long or detailed, but they should anchor your relationship in the idea of goodness and the continued possibility of success.
— Dr. Fred Luskin, Forgive for Love, p. 204
For a Christian, however, a bottom-line principle can never be that we should get what we deserve. Our very existence is God’s gift. Our redemption from the snares of sin is God’s gift. Both are undeserved, and neither could have been deserved. From start to finish, we are always given free of charge and given more than our due. It is therefore only fitting that we give others more than their due — give them gifts that satisfy their needs or delight their senses and imagination, and give them the gift of forgiveness that frees them from guilt and the obligation to pay for their misdeeds.
— Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge, p. 203-204
Recognize that what your partner does is a problem, but it’s not the problem. The problem is how you react to what your partner does. If you make your partner the problem, all you can do is hope that he changes or try to get him to change. That’s a disempowered position. As you increase your ability to respond to the negative things your partner does, you are going to empower yourself and increase your own self-esteem. This single concept is the driving principle behind almost all books on improving relationships.
— Ellyn Bader, PhD, and Peter T. Pearson, PhD, Tell Me No Lies, p. 141
Whenever possible, you want to speak of your lover and your relationship with kindness. That is the overarching message of this book. Look for any way you can be kind to the person you share your life with. Don’t be tempted to say nasty things when your lover screws up or to put your lover down when he or she fails…. Setting boundaries and expressing ourselves is good, but talking about our relationship negatively and highlighting our lover’s failings is bad….
Remember that what comes out of your mouth says more about your character than it does about your partner’s…. We think that we are describing our lover’s weaknesses, but our words and actions are actually showing our own….
The truth is that we can choose how we talk to and about our partner. Sadly, many people choose to discuss their lover negatively…. A lot of relationships struggle with the cost of holding a grudge and the sense of blame it causes. Getting rid of the blame quickly and regularly is hugely important if you want your relationship to thrive and move forward.
Dr. Fred Luskin, Forgive for Love, p. 201-203
Nothing clarifies boundaries more than forgiveness. To forgive someone means to let him off the hook, or to cancel a debt he owes you. When you refuse to forgive someone, you still want something from that person, and even if it is revenge that you want, it keeps you tied to him forever.
— Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend, Boundaries, p. 134