Forgiveness…
Can you forgive and can you receive forgiveness? You are on either side of the aisle when it comes to conflict resolution. There is no in between.
People including friends, extended family and your spouse may get on your nerves and you may not know what to do or how to respond to what has just been thrown at you. You could be so angry but the other person isn’t looking or taking notice or taking accountability for their wrongdoing. This makes you even more mad. “What does he take me for?” “Who does she think she is to treat me that way?”
You can no longer stand the presence of this person who has hurt you so bad and you feel like cutting them off from your life forever. But why do we feel hurt by the people we love the most? That’s the one million dollar question. This is however common place in most relationships.
Related: How To Find Peace In Your Marriage
Actions and attitudes by family and close friends tend to cause more pain because of several factors but the proximity of the relationship and their placement in our lives is the number one reason why this happens. Think about what just made you angry and imagine for a moment if the person who did this same thing that made you lose your cool to you was a stranger. Do you feel differently? Why is this so?
Hint: Because you don’t really know this individual so you don’t care and therefore, it doesn’t hurt as bad.
Related: How To Resolve Conflicts In Your Marriage
Now that we know that the effect of what we experience and our reaction to being pained depends on who is doing the hurt, before you decide to curse your family out or pack your bags, there are some things you need to keep in mind:
1. Remember this is family and family has come to stay. No matter how much you wish them away, you can only do so much. There always will be a lingering thought trailing you around as a result of that relationship.
2. Running away from the situation causing the hurt is not a viable solution. I understand that the person causing the hurt does it all the time, but sweeping things under the rug, leaving them unresolved or not talking about them at the very least will bring no good results in the situation.
3. Leaving things the way they are will only cause you more pain. It’s very easy to feel like walking away altogether will do the trick. Not necessarily, as a matter of fact, it does more harm to your emotional well being. Think about carrying around all that weight of emotional torture simply because there was no outlet to diffuse your anger and release those emotions.
4. Talking about what went wrong could either lead to a peaceful resolution or not. It all depends on your delivery and what the other person’s stance on the situation is. But regardless of how the other person may react, still opt to do the right thing which is pursuing peace.
5. You need to make a conscious decision to forgive.
6. Once you have done everything within your power to make things better but it seems not to be working, take it easy on yourself and stop beating yourself up on things you can’t control.
7. Once you have decided to forgive, no matter how hard it feels, time most of the time will heal. Allow yourself to go through the process.
How do you receive forgiveness? Are you willing to forgive?
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