All of us have been hurt before.\u00a0 All of us have experienced being let down and disappointed.\u00a0 We have all had someone we love betray us, some of us in major ways and some of us in smaller ways, but we have all been through the experience of being hurt by someone we care about.<\/p>\n
On the flip side of that I am quite confident that all of us have also played the hurting and disappointing and betraying role at some point in our lives. I have yet to meet a perfect human being during my life, so I have no problem stating that we have all made mistakes.<\/p>\n
So how do we handle it when someone hurts us?\u00a0 Are we the person who holds onto that hurt and becomes bitter and resentful?\u00a0 Or are we the person who can forgive and move on?\u00a0 While you are considering the answer to that question let me have you step back and think about a few things:<\/p>\n
Have you ever seen someone who holds on to a hurt and refuses to let it go?\u00a0 It is one of the saddest things to observe because you can literally witness a person move slowly down a dark hole of anger and bitterness as more time goes on where they couldn\u2019t just let it go.\u00a0 They are angry and hurt and all they can focus on is themselves and how wronged they have been.\u00a0 All they want is for the other person to pay for hurting them, or for the other person to be hurt just as badly, as if that will somehow help to rectify the wrong done to them.<\/p>\n
You have to stop and ask yourself, who is really hurt worse here?\u00a0 The person who committed the wrong act?\u00a0 Or the person who can\u2019t forgive them and let it go?<\/p>\n
It is so easy for people to get caught up in the \u201cthat person wronged me and they haven\u2019t fixed it so I don\u2019t have to forgive them\u201d or the \u201cthey haven\u2019t said sorry to me so I don\u2019t have to get over it\u201d syndrome.\u00a0 \u00a0But when we get caught up in that mentality we are forgetting the most important thing of all, which is that we need to forgive people for OUR OWN SAKE!\u00a0 Not for the other person\u2019s sake.\u00a0 It is us that needs the ability to forgive and let go so that we don\u2019t get trapped into that downward spiral of bitterness and anger that we will carry around every day of our lives until we come to the point that we are able to forgive and let go.\u00a0 \u00a0When we are in that state of holding on to our anger we end up hurting every other healthy relationship around us because we are distracted and angry that pushes others away.\u00a0 It also causes us to miss out on all the good that happens around us because we are too busy wallowing in our own self-pity.<\/p>\n
\u201cRefusing to forgive is like taking poison and hoping the other person will die.\u201d\u00a0 -unknown<\/p>\n
Here are the facts:\u00a0 People are going to disappoint you.\u00a0 People are going to make mistakes.\u00a0 People are going hurt you.\u00a0 People are going to do dumb things.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because they are human and we all make mistakes.\u00a0 Hopefully we don\u2019t make horrible mistakes that are hard to fix, but inevitably we are all going to make mistakes and there will be times when all of us will be asking someone else for forgiveness, hoping they will be kind enough to grant it to us.<\/p>\n
I have been through experiences in my own life where I have been hurt deeply.\u00a0 By friends, by family, by coworkers, by a loved one.\u00a0 I have been through times in my life where I was the person to hold on to those hurts and have them fester inside, and I have been through times where I have made the choice to forgive those hurts and move forward with truly letting them go.\u00a0 There should be no surprise to hear that the lesson I learned was that I am a happier and stronger person when I have the ability to forgive and let go.\u00a0 Not only am I stronger and happier but I am also at peace and the ability to be at peace is a genuine blessing in life.\u00a0 I learned that letting go is for my benefit, not for the benefit of the other person.\u00a0\u00a0 I also realized that forgiving didn\u2019t mean I had to stay around the person that wronged me.\u00a0 You can forgive someone and be wise enough to steer clear of them in the future.\u00a0 That applies often times to situations where someone has been abused.\u00a0 They still need to forgive their abuser for what they have done to them so that they themselves can move forward in their own life, but they certainly don\u2019t have to allow that abuser to be part of their life going forward.\u00a0 You can forgive someone without allowing them to be a part of your life.\u00a0 They are two different things.\u00a0 Forgiveness is about letting go of your anger or hurt caused by another person.\u00a0 It\u2019s about deciding that you are not going to try and judge the other person because you don\u2019t know everything that has gone on in their life to cause them to act the way they have acted and you don\u2019t understand what their motivation or intention was because you are not inside of their head.\u00a0 It\u2019s about realizing that it\u2019s really up to God to judge that person, not you, and all you can control is how you will handle yourself.\u00a0 You have to truly let go of trying to do God\u2019s job of judging them and worry more about how God will judge you for how you have behaved, cause that is the part that you can control.<\/p>\n
Forgiving and letting go is one of the best ways to bring happiness and peace into your life.\u00a0 It builds character to learn how to truly let go.\u00a0 It will teach you compassion and empathy for others which will also give you more peace.\u00a0 Is it hard to do? Sometimes.\u00a0 But is it worth it to do?\u00a0 Always.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cRemember, heaven is filled with those who have this in common: They are forgiven. And they forgive.\u201d \u2013 Dieter F. Uchtdorf<\/p>\n
Today\u2019s challenge is to consider anything you are holding onto in your life that you need to forgive and let go, and then choose to do that!\u00a0\u00a0 Then enjoy the peace that comes into your life because you will have earned it!<\/p>\n
~Amy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
All of us have been hurt before.\u00a0 All of us have experienced being let down and disappointed.\u00a0 We have all had someone we love betray us, some of us in major ways and some of us in smaller ways, but we have all been through the experience of being hurt by someone we care about. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[46,102,103,104,35],"class_list":["post-1332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-attitude","tag-forgiveness","tag-hurt","tag-let-go","tag-love"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1332"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1651,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1332\/revisions\/1651"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}