Forgiveness.

Forgiveness. It’s a big word. Three syllables. For-give-ness. There is so much in that word. So much to be said and so much to be accomplished.

Forgiveness is critical to living a healthy life. You cannot move forward until you have faced your past and learned the art of forgiveness. It’s so much easier to hold a grudge than to learn to forgive. We are experts at holding on to grudges.
Think about those who have wronged you in your life. I mean really wronged you. The big ones. The ones you think you’ll never let go of. Where do you feel that in your body? Do you feel it in the pit of your stomach where it churns and burns? Does it create a heaviness in your chest and a weight on your heart? Does it drudge up pictures of pain and sorrow in your mind? Do you think those feelings are affecting the person who wronged you, the one you need to forgive? Probably not. That’s the funny thing about holding a grudge. It doesn’t affect anyone but you. It might affect those directly around you since it impacts your attitude, but really, you are the only one that is being hurt by holding on to the anger and bitterness of being wronged. Unforgiveness affects you. It prohibits the love from flowing freely from you and allowing you to fully experience all the goodness life has to offer.

Can you identify those you need to forgive? It can be a painful process. I mean, who wants to bring up all those old feelings, those painful memories, those cuts so deep? Who wants to actually look inside themselves and acknowledge the blackness within their own soul? Spend some time thinking about that person, the wrongs that were committed and your continued connection to that individual. Are you ready to let go? I think that sometimes we hold on to grudges because we aren’t really ready to let go of that person. We are not ready to completely sever that connection. I think we also feel that if we forgive them, we are saying that what they did is acceptable. However, the truth is, forgiveness does not condone their actions; it simply releases that negative energy from our own lives and sets us free. The actual act of forgiveness may seem like a simple one, but I think that letting go is much harder than we realize. Those feelings just keep popping back up in our hearts and in our minds until we truly and completely forgive. And only then, will we be set free.

Think of the areas in your life where you need to practice forgiveness and how that inability to forgive is affecting your life and your future. It may be deep inside you, a blackness that you have buried so deep that you barely know its there anymore. But it is. Its there, and its affecting you. Are you ready to let it go? Are you ready to free yourself from the chains of unforgiveness? Its up to you. For I believe that only by practicing complete and utter forgiveness in our lives can we truly heal our hearts and our souls and move into the future more complete people, set free from the past that binds us.

Bring forgiveness into your life. Bring that light into your spirit and soul. The healing power of forgiveness.