{"id":5611,"date":"2015-05-21T18:00:54","date_gmt":"2015-05-22T00:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/?p=5611"},"modified":"2015-05-20T10:34:58","modified_gmt":"2015-05-20T16:34:58","slug":"forgiveness-doesnt-excuse-their-behavior","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/forgiveness-doesnt-excuse-their-behavior\/","title":{"rendered":"Forgiveness Doesn\u2019t Excuse Their Behavior"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cForgiveness doesn’t excuse their behavior. Forgiveness prevents their behavior from destroying your heart.\u201d<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0 -unknown<\/p>\n

I once knew a person who did\u00a0a lot of dishonest things that hurt people\u00a0I cared about.\u00a0Then years later\u00a0he decided to come back to attempt to hurt those people yet again. This person’s\u00a0behavior is goes beyond reprehensible.<\/p>\n

When someone does evil things and then willfully continues to do even more evil things, how do you possibly forgive them?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s one thing to forgive someone for past grievances and I think most of us get fairly good at forgiving things that happened in the past because time tends to be the great healer of wounds.<\/p>\n

But when things are happening in the present and they are causing damage to you and\/or people you care about, it is incredibly difficult to forgive the person causing it. Sometimes it feels flat out impossible.<\/p>\n

My husband and I were discussing the situation and I asked him the question of how to forgive someone who is so evil and so willing to keep causing hurt?\u00a0 My husband\u2019s response was something that really hit home \u2013 he expressed that the only way to do it is to make the decision to forgive them \u2013 it\u2019s a choice \u2013 and you have to make a choice to forgive. All my analyzing and soul searching and pondering on the matter and he had summed it up with the only answer there really is to the question \u2013 you make the choice to forgive them. Not to benefit them, but to keep their behavior from destroying your own heart.<\/p>\n

We can take comfort in the fact that bad people will get what\u2019s coming to them at some point\u2026whether they pay for their bad behavior in this life (ideally) or it will happen in the next life \u2013 but guaranteed they will ultimately have to account for what they have done. There is peace in knowing that.<\/p>\n

And so I decided to make the choice to forgive. There is far more value in focusing our attention and efforts on doing good things in the world…that\u2019s good for the heart.<\/p>\n

Have a wonderful day!<\/p>\n

~Amy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cForgiveness doesn’t excuse their behavior. Forgiveness prevents their behavior from destroying your heart.\u201d\u00a0 -unknown I once knew a person who did\u00a0a lot of dishonest things that hurt people\u00a0I cared about.\u00a0Then years later\u00a0he decided to come back to attempt to hurt those people yet again. This person’s\u00a0behavior is goes beyond reprehensible. When someone does evil things […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2576,"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":[2333,2334,697,2774,290,644,4833,3931,536,6228,1203,504,6438,1750,377,2682,282,97,2105,6435,334,6440,6439,2500,3428,6436,743,102,189,1679,29,451,118,103,2499,6433,34,6441,35,727,349,6437,3557,4527,6434,264,5826,333],"class_list":["post-5611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-account","tag-accountable","tag-anger","tag-answer","tag-bad-behavior","tag-behavior","tag-bitter","tag-bitterness","tag-business","tag-business-partner","tag-care","tag-choice","tag-colleague","tag-comfort","tag-compete","tag-damage","tag-decide","tag-decisions","tag-destroy","tag-destroying-your-heart","tag-dishonesty","tag-embezzled","tag-embezzlement","tag-evil","tag-excuse","tag-excuse-bad-behavior","tag-forgive","tag-forgiveness","tag-friends","tag-frustration","tag-god","tag-heart","tag-honesty","tag-hurt","tag-hurtful","tag-ideal","tag-integrity","tag-investors","tag-love","tag-pay-the-price","tag-peace","tag-prevent","tag-punishment","tag-question","tag-retribution","tag-rollin","tag-sin","tag-stealing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5611","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=5611"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5611\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5627,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5611\/revisions\/5627"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}