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Complete Forgiveness

 This topic of forgiveness has been on my heart as of late, so I write.

What does it mean to forgive someone?  There is a great deal of internal processing that must happen for us to completely forgive someone.  First, we must see them as human and fallible, just as we are.  We must consider them and place ourselves in their position and understand that they made a mistake.  We shouldn't have to be asked for forgiveness by those who have done us wrong.  True and complete forgiveness is done beforehand, internally.  This calming of the retaliatory, reactionary anger and then forgiving is a true sign of maturity.  Over the years and after many examples of the opposite response, we grow weary of carrying those burdens.  We learn that is better for us to forgive and move on.  Do we forget?  Unless we want to keep falling victim to users we will never truly forget.  But you can remember what happened, learn the lessons, not dwell on it and forgive.

When we learn the lessons, often times we contract a bit and protect ourselves in the future from similar situations.  This is where we must be careful, or we will miss out on some of those beautiful life experiences and relationships.  Complete contraction and closure to the world just because you were taken advantage of once or a few times, this is not the answer.  We give and serve because we have abundance in our heart, and we know that most people are honest and good and living in love just as we are.  Yes, we will run across those buggers who will take from us and do us wrong.  But we forgive and place appropriate boundaries around that person and move on.

Over the years Megan and I have run across some real doozies, let me tell you.  But I won't tell you, because I don't want to bring up those old emotions that I have moved on from.  But every time the initial disappointment and pain, that never really changes.  We put ourselves out there and someone takes advantage of that and uses us for a short term, temporary gain.  There is that initial stab against our hope and faith in humanity.  Is everyone like this we ask ourselves?  But that is just the enemy placing bad thoughts in our mind.  We temporarily forget all of the friends and strangers who have helped us out countless times in our lives.  Then we breathe and we remember those good people and we realize that we need to forgive and move forward.

When I first meet someone, I treat them the same as I treat the people that I call family and friend.  I am kind and friendly to everyone, as long as they remain kind and friendly to me.  If they show themselves to be on the dark side, I kindly remove myself from their presence and choose not to spend time with them, because I don't want to live a guarded and suspicious life, I want to live in kindness and love.  This has taken me many years to reach this point and it only happens through prayer, meditation and many hours alone in nature.

Thank you for reading, this has been helpful for me and I hope you take something from these words.  Have a blessed day, friend!

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