- You can whisper gossip behind their back.
- You can deceive them on purpose.
- You can break your promise.
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Gift of Forgiveness
Archive notice: This is a historical post from Mary’s years of blogging. Some older posts may mention products, courses or shop items that are no longer available, as Mary now focuses her time and energy on supporting widows inside her private Facebook community. The guidance and stories remain here as a free resource for widows.
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The gift of forgiveness is for us not them. Holidays are emotionally exhausting when grieving and un-forgiveness can hold us back from healing.
What they did was wrong. They don’t deserve your love, but they do deserve your forgiveness. Otherwise they will grow like a weed in your heart and choke out your peace. The only person who will suffer, is you.
Forgiving isn’t something you do for someone else. It’s something you do for yourself, so that you don’t get trapped in the past. We can get messy, bitter and even angry during the holidays and there are often incomplete communications that add to the strain in our relationships.
We expect more from family and friends and they often fail us during this very difficult time. We can’t control what they do, but we can control how we let their action or lack of action, affect us. So forgive them all – not because they wanted or needed it, but because you don’t want to carry it around.
Sometimes we have to cut the ties of old friendships and the expectations we had. This is especially true when it comes to old “couple friends”. You need to protect your inner circle and having a very small circle of close friends is so much better than having a large group of fair weather friends.
We aren’t responsible for the bad behavior of others, but we are responsible for who we allow in our lives – we get to choose.
I suggest that you write out a letter in detail about what went wrong. Their part and what if anything you could have done differently. Then write out your forgiveness, ending with destroying the letter.
They don’t need to even know about this because you are doing it for you – to release the stress, anger and tension that the situation was causing you. Remember – this is about YOU, not them.
If you don’t forgive, will you instead try to destroy them? There are many ways to get back at them: