The Ultimate Act of Freedom: Forgiving Everyone
Letting go of old hurts isn’t just a saying. Forgiveness clears your mind, lifts old weights from your heart, and changes your days for the better. Many of us hold grudges without noticing how heavy they become. The truth is, there’s already too much hate and anger in the world.
If you’re tired of bitterness weighing you down, it might be time to let go. These reasons to forgive everyone for everything. No matter how big or small. It could change your life!
The Ignatian Guide to Forgiveness offers a 10-step process by one of the Catholic orders. True forgiveness is complicated due to the pain of betrayal, loss, deception and personal attack, as we cling tightly to emotions and memories.
To forgive, is to set a prisoner free, and discover that the prisoner was you. Lewis B Smedes
As long as you don’t forgive, who and whatever it is, will occupy a rent-free space in your mind. Isabelle Holland
Holding onto anger is like dragging a heavy bag everywhere. Letting go gives you freedom—freedom from the pain, the replayed arguments, and the stress. Forgiveness can make you feel lighter, even if the other person never says sorry. Here are some good reasons to forgive:
Being bitter ruins both lives
Someone once wrote that if you don’t forgive, it’s like drinking poison – then expecting the other person to die. If you don’t forgive a selfish person, he or she won’t care anyway. They will move on with life, and you will left drinking the poisoned chalice.
It’s essential to move on
If you want a fresh start, you must stop carrying yesterday’s problems into today. Forgiveness is a real way to shut the door on the past and walk forward. Without it, every new day feels like dragging your old troubles behind you.
It sets a powerful example
Nobody likes someone who is bitter. There was a woman years ago who was treated terribly by her ex-husband, when he ran off with someone else, and left her and her children.
A newspaper journalist, about five years later, she was still writing about it. People got fed up. Yes, he did something wrong. But just move on, rather than harking on about it over and over.
Staying bitter will keep you depressed and bitter, and likely lose you friends.
There’s enough hate in the world
Every act of forgiveness adds a little more peace to your surroundings. With so much fighting, rage, and blame out there, your choice to forgive becomes a small act of rebellion against a world that often chooses hate.
That doesn’t excuse the hurt. It just says that you are free to move on with your life.
Today I decided to forgive you. Not because you apologised, or because you acknowledge the pain that you caused me. But because my soul deserves peace. Najwa Zebian
The real victory isn’t in making someone regret how they treated you. It’s reaching the place where their opinion and their attempts to diminish you, no longer matter. Vex King
Incredble true stories of forgiveness
If you think that you could never forgive someone, it may help to read of those who chose to forgive in exceptional circumstances:
Alison Botha was in her 20s, when she was dragged off the road in South Africa, where she was raped and stabbed by two men, who slit her throat and left her to die. Saved by a passing veterinary student, she eventually forgave them to move on, start a family and create a peace foundation. She is now fighting a brain tumour, but amazes others with her humour and tenacity.
Eva Mozes Kor and her sister were two of the children (after the rest of their family were killed) used in Hitler’s infamous medical experiments (her disabled sister died early).
After years of feeling bitter, she was asked to lay a wreath in memory of Jews who died at concentration camps. She agreed, but only if a former SS soldier joined her – who then told her he had nightmares of guilt ever since.
Many people were angry at her, for forgiving the Nazis. But Eva said just before her death that Hitler did what he did, due to hate. And she said ‘I don’t want the world to have another Hitler’.
The Forgiveness Project was set up by an Italian journalist, who interviews those who have chosen to forgive: mothers of men who have murdered their sons, adults forgiving abusive parents, and sons forgiving terrorist fathers.
She recently interviewed two fathers (one from Palestine and one from Israel) whose daughters were both murdered – by an Israeli solider and two Palestinian suicide bombers). Both now work for peace organisations, to prevent the vicious circle of violence continuing.
Did Jesus teach we shoudl all forgive?
He did, and even forgave those who crucified him. And he would teach forgiveness in the form of parables (the lost sheep, prodigal son). We all know what he said on the Cross, as the whole notion of Christianity is that he died, so our sins would be forgiven:
‘Father, forgive them for they know not what they do’.
However, some believe that forgiveness sometimes is not good, when it puts the onus on victims. How do we forgive child killers, animal abusers, Catholic priests who abuse children and get moved around, and then tell us to forgive?
Some believe that forgiving yourself for things you feel guilty about, could mess your head up even more. That’s ‘stuffing feelings’, rather than acknowledging you feel bad, and to ‘try better next time’.
Say you have been a terrorist. She believe that you shouldn’t forgive yourself. Instead, you should ask God for forgiveness, and spend the rest of your life doing good, to make up for the wrongs of the past.
We know from trauma theory that expecting victims to repeatedly revisit the scenes of their abuse means they are being re-traumatised each time that happens. I have not always been able to grant forgiveness. I am also tired of hearing that this makes me or anyone else a bad person. Kaya Oakes
