Has someone ever asked you to forgive and forget? I cringe at the idea of another person attempting to run my feelings. If you’ve been really hurt before, you know well, that forgiveness isn’t a decision that you come down to so easily. You don’t just wake up and everything is okay, at least not for me. Forgiveness comes from within, it comes from the heart. It takes time you know, first acknowledging the fact that your feelings have been hurt, and then being sad about it, or even angry, and considering your chances of getting away with murder based on the experience you’ve gained from watching mysteries all these years.
Eventually you realize you weren’t worthy of the situation and decide to let it go, not in a forgiving way but by simply deciding not to give it any more thought. Sooner or later when you return to your happy self, you’re able to forgive because you realize were all humans with imperfections. And finally with time the event stops occurring to you, and then you can consider that having forgotten.
It’s a process. And it can even be harder when you don’t get closure. Cos without closure, you have no clearance. If someone truly hurts your feelings it takes time to forget. It takes time to move on, it takes time to be ok. And before you reach that point, you’re not in any position to forgive. That’s the truth about forgiveness. So when you ask someone to forgive you, you need to be understanding when they say no, because that’s something that’s going to have to come with time.
You might even approach them at a later time looking for a new start and they are not receptive. Be understanding still, because people react differently. Don’t write them off as a stone-cold person. It’s not that they don’t want to, it’s just that at that point in time, and they haven’t reached a place where they are in the position to forgive you.
You don’t even know the actual point in time that you actually forgive someone. If I can remember situations where I realized I had forgiven someone that hurt my feelings, it was more like remembering a moment in time after a while and realizing that you indeed let it go and truly, there are no hard feelings left. That’s forgiveness to me.
And now that I think about it some more, I can’t remember if someone ever asked me to forgive them, and not in an “I’m sorry” type of way, but actually saying the words, “please forgive me.” I can’t think of any. And the more I think about it the more I realize that if someone personally approached me asked for forgivingness, even if I were not in the mercy spirit, just the fact that they had the guts to actually say it would get me one step closer. I guess the moral of the story is that acknowledge when you’re wrong and ask for forgiveness without having any expectations.
