I Forgive You….

If you have wronged me, I have forgiven you. If I have wronged you in anyway, I sincerely apologize and hope that you would forgive me.  I hope you forgive me not because I want you to and certainly not because I deserve it, but because you deserve it. You deserve the peace that forgiveness brings and the closure that will surely follow. Forgiveness isn’t about what is right and what is wrong. It’s not about what happened or what was done to you. It’s about letting it go. Forgiveness is about healing. Some people think forgiveness is about forgetting and thinking everything will be okay. It is not. Forgetting means excusing behaviors and no lesson learned. Forgetting means pretending it didn’t happen. I had a friend who had stolen some money from me and I have since forgiven her. I am not her friend anymore because I didn’t forget what she did, but I don’t care anymore because I have moved on. You may think you have forgiven someone but if just the thought of them makes you angry or you hate them and call them bad names, then you haven’t forgiven them. Don’t let someone have this much control over your emotions. Forgive them and let it go. I’m not saying it is easy, sometimes it is hard.  Maybe you can’t avoid seeing them again or maybe they are apart of the lives of those who are close to you. Maybe you still care deeply for this person and it is too soon to even try. Letting go is hard for me, not necessarily because I have a problem forgiving, but because I’m a fixer. I want to fix the problem. Now, the situation with my old friend was never going to get fixed, so letting her go was very easy. But some people I want to know why they did what they did. What if I could have done something to prevent the outcome. And if not, what if I could do something to fix it. I am only human like the rest of us. I speak my mind and have been known to be a little judgmental, but I do try to give people the benefit of the doubt. What I do not do anymore is let anyone have control over me but me. I work to forgive so that I have peace, but I’ll always remember so my mistakes won’t be repeated.