Today I give from my heart.
There is a scene in the movie Sex in the City, where Miranda hurt Carrie and then badgers her for forgiveness while she herself could not forgive her husband.
Miranda: ‘You have to forgive me.’
Carrie: ‘You badger me to forgive you in three days and you won’t even consider forgiving Steve for something he did six months ago.’
Miranda: ‘It’s not the same thing.’
Carrie: ‘Its forgiveness.’
Forgiveness is an act or decision or exercise in “letting go”. It is hard and very often takes time. It is a sacrifice and in loving relationships, we are called to forgive more times than we would like. It is never easy to admit wrong-doing and to ask for forgiveness and it is sometimes even harder to give it. It’s one thing to say “I’m sorry” but for me often times, saying, “I accept” is easier to than the “I forgive you” part.
I realised today that I have been holding on to a hurt for a while and when the person who did the hurting contacted me today, I had a moment of clarity. For months I have been avoiding this person. And it was because even though I had accepted the apology made months ago, I hadn’t done the forgiving part. While I didn’t bring up the hurt, it was there like an invisible force around me keeping this person out. And the thing about invisible force fields is that while they protect you from outside forces, you are also kept from the outside. My light was a little dimmer, because I was letting this hurt hold me back.
Today, my gift was truly accepting the apology made so many months ago and actually forgiving the hurt. It was time. We talked, not about the hurt, just talked and it was during that conversation I decided to forgive. And that was the end of it. Before you can truly accept an apology, especially when the hurt may have gone deep, you have to think the whole situation through, acknowledge that a mistake was made and then let it go. This whole process can take mere minutes to years sometimes, but the longer we take to do the forgiving the dimmer our light becomes.
There is freedom in forgiveness and life is way to short not to be free.