GRATEFUL WEDNESDAYS – Feature 11

As a people, we are very ambitious and this is good, there can however be a downside to this, if we are not careful. We could find that we lose ourselves in pursuing self-advancement; a bigger degree for that bigger salary, a bigger house, a newer car, and find ourselves wondering, why are we not happy, why does our life feel so dull and empty. The thing is, we forget to be thankful for the little things that we already have, without which, our lives would not mean much. Our relationships, our health, our faith, our freedom, I could go on.

There are times in my life when I feel I could have achieved more in certain areas, and as a result I beat upon myself and take on a 'woe is me' attitude. Thankfully, I am soon reminded that less I be accused of being ungrateful, I do have many other things to be thankful for.

In my pursuit to become a more thankful and happier person, in general then, I am urged to add a new posting feature to my blog, a segment dedicated to being thankful, which I have decided to call ‘GRATEFUL WEDNESDAYS', my gratitude journal, if you will, where I will, on Wednesdays of each week, post one thing in my life that I am thankful for, regardless of how small. 

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Today I am grateful for Forgiveness. 

Pardon, mercy, amnesty, exoneration are some of the words used by the English Thesaurus to define forgiveness.

Forgiveness is hard work and can take a long time and I would imagine all of us have had situations where we need to forgive persons who have wronged us. Many times it is persons who have the easiest access to our most delicate self, who end up hurting us the most.

When I find myself having to forgive, I usually remove myself from the person. (Well, that’s a nice way to put it, but it is just simply malice). If this is not possible, I try to limit interaction with them. As this time passes and after much processing and over-processing of the issue, after getting upset and feeling victimized over and over again, I find that I slowly begin to move towards forgiveness. This involves taking responsibility for anything that might have inflated the conflict on account of my doing; maybe if I had done things a different way; maybe if I had said things differently; maybe if I had been a little more open about my feelings to them. After getting past this phase, I find that I am not as upset with the person I need to forgive anymore, as I have taken some of the focus off them. I have taken some of the power away from them. Believe it or not, it is because we give people the power to hurt us, why they are able to. Before long I am able to embrace that person again (albeit, cautiously at first) and accept them back in my life.

One of my older sisters once said to me, sometimes persons react according to where they are in their lives; maybe they are not able to process things the way we expect them to. Sometimes hurt arise when persons judge us without knowing pertinent information about us as well. I am aware that sadly, we do suffer intentional hurt at times and for this I would imagine the process towards forgiveness is harder. Some of us might to even get there.

With this said, my path to forgiveness might not be your path at all, and I am hoping it can be of help to you.  Sadly, many of us are not really able to forgive as I have come across persons who hold on to things for years and years. This is not healthy to say the least, it causes us to become bitter and self obsessed. Further, this is certainly not the way Christ intended for us to live. In Matthew 18 Verse 21 to 22, Peter asked how many times we should forgive our brother. Jesus responded, not 7 times but 70 times 7. How about that? From one who suffered so much at the hands of mankind and was able to forgive, who better to hear this from. What this is simply saying is that we should forgive, just as Our Heavenly Father forgives us, every chance we get.

For this, I am extremely grateful.