Today I post my thoughts
on repentance and forgiveness in a family.
In the family is where we first learn to love, serve, repent and
forgive. I say this because as a child
when I was making childhood mistakes, my parents taught me to say sorry to whomever
it was I had wronged. As they taught me
to pray, I would ask Heavenly Father to forgive me. I know growing up, I was nicer to my friends
then my family and when I think about this now, it was because I knew my family
would forgive me.
In class, I was asked the
question, “What behaviors would you imagine would be the most difficult to
forgive in your family?” In a family of
7 children we were taught to forgive everything. My older brother used to terrorize me when my
parents were gone and I would lock myself in my room until they came home. One time he hit me in the jaw, breaking my
glasses and displacing my jaw joint. I
always forgave him when he came to me and apologized through his tears. As adults, we are now the best of friends and
look back on that time with laughter, and he still apologizes. What if I hadn’t forgave him? I can’t imagine my life without him.
In my later years after I was married,
I used to think that infidelity would be the most difficult to forgive. That is, until it happened to me. My first husband
and I had been married 5 years and we had one child when I found out he was
cheating. My worst nightmare, or so I thought at the time, had come true.
I was devastated, hurt, embarrassed, and sick to my stomach, defeated,
depressed and withdrawn. Long story short, I chose to forgive. It
was the hardest thing I ever had to do but through counseling with my parents
and bishop, I knew that my son would benefit from me forgiving his dad. Over the years we have remained friends and have co-parented. People ask
me how I do it and all I can think of is that we have been commanded to love
one another and when we withhold our forgiveness from someone, we are
withholding our love. He never asked for my forgiveness, that is his
prideful side that has never ceased, but I gave it to him anyway. After
12 years, I am still grateful I made the decision to forgive.
I cannot think of any behaviors or situations
in a family that should not be forgiven. I lost a brother 4 years ago.
He died suddenly in his sleep. I didn't get another day with him to
tell him how sorry I was for judging him when he needed me the most. I've
had to forgive myself and as a family, we don't sweat the small
stuff anymore, and the big stuff we don't let happen. It's not worth
it.
In this week’s reading I was reminded of the
steps of forgiveness and I would like to share them with you:
1)
Recall the hurt. In order to forgive, we have to be clear
about the wrongdoing and acknowledge the injury.
2)
Empathize. Empathy
involves borrowing the lens of another person so we see something from their
point of view. To forgive, we must
understand the transgressor’s feelings.
3)
Offer the altruistic gift of forgiveness. Forgiving with altruism is easier when the
victim is humbled by an awareness of his or her own shortcomings and offenses.
4)
Commit publicly to forgive.
The victim has a better chance of successful forgiveness if he or she
verbalizes the forgiveness commitment to another person.
5)
Hold on to forgiveness.
It is important to move forward after the forgiveness process. (p.206)
LET IT GO!
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