Fighting Forgiveness

Today I came across this daily devotional, which I think best describes how to forgive someone in the simplest way :

But when you are praying, first forgive anyone you are holding a grudge against, so that your Father in heaven will forgive your sins, too. Mark 11:25 (NLT)

It might be one of the hardest things to not only say, but mean. It is a phrase that destroys your pride and rips into your ego. Yet, something this dramatic and profound can be exchanged in two simple words. "I’m sorry."

The flip side is not much easier. To forgive can be just as daunting and trying. When someone has hurt you or wronged you, it is hard to accept that two simple words can fix it. However, is it all that much easier to bottle up your feelings and hold everything inside?

Let’s face it. When we have pain or cause pain, it is more than just words that get in the way. It is our feelings and emotions. The more time that goes by, the more entrenched the memory becomes, until it consumes everything in you to the point that you are to terrified to ask, or too scared to give in.

Take a moment, right now, to think of the people you need to forgive. Then take a few minutes to think of who you need to seek forgiveness from. No matter how hard it may be, or how long ago it might have happened, it is never too late to do something about it. A simple "I forgive you" or an "I’m sorry" could go a long ways to fix something that was once unfixable. While it may not solve everything, it sure is a good start.

Now, after reading that, I'd like to share my personal experience of trying to forgive my dad. Some of you might not know about my life, but about 5 years ago is when I felt my whole world was falling apart. My parents had been fighting a lot and finally my mom moved out of the house and filed for divorce. To blame the whole entire thing on my dad would probably not be right, but for some reason I always had in mind that it was his fault. I finally moved down here to Seattle a couple months after that all happened and I held a very deep grudge against my dad. I always felt mad at him and blamed him for the things that happened with my family. After a few months in Seattle, I started going to church every week and I guess you can say that I started finding God again (I have been a Christian all my life, but when my parents started fighting all the time, the whole family stopped going to church and we were all far from God at that point). Moving down to Seattle was probably one of my ways to run away from all my family problems. I thought that it would be easier for me to run, even though I didn't know where I was really going. But after a while, running gets tiring. You only have so much energy to keep running on your own. This is when I realized that there's something holding me back. Every time I was in church and was getting prayed for, everyone would tell me that I need to forgive my dad in order to let God in my life. You have no idea how much I wanted to forgive him, but you also have no idea how hard it was for those words to come out of my mouth and actually mean it. All I could think of at the time was the pain that he caused me and my family and at that time I just started breaking out in tears telling God that I was tired of feeling this way. That was the day, that everything was released. I forgave my dad and I couldn't feel any happier, a big weight on my shoulder was just lifted and I felt that I could live my life the way that I wanted. I had a BIG God that was bigger than all of this. So remember, forgiving is one way to open up the doors to better things. As it said in the devotional, it might not solve everything, but it is a good start. Have a blessed day! :)