Let Forgiveness Change Your Life

culled from:morningcoach.com

Like me, I’m sure many of you have had moments in life that left you feeling crippled by the severe hurt and pain you felt when a family member, a teacher, a clergyman, a friend, a lover, or perhaps even a criminal acted or spoke in a way that was incredibly damaging to your mind, body and spirit.
These events are traumatic to our psyche, not to mention our physical body, and can often leave us feeling scarred and broken.  Unfortunately, many of these events sometimes happen to us as children or adolescents, when we don’t yet have the mental or emotional maturity to cope and recover in a healthy and meaningful way.
Often, we are left projecting and operating from an altered perception of the world by these situations for perhaps most of our adult lives.  We perceive the world differently based on this pain and hurt we have experienced and put up walls of fear that cage us in mentally, emotionally and physically.
Sadly, we seem to perpetuate and attract this pain and hurt.  Future relationships are frequently skewed because we see things through a blurry lens based on this old hurt and fear. In addition, we even begin to see ourselves with this blurry lens as well.
This manifests in our lives as perfectionism, revenge, low self-esteem, self-hate, addictive behavior or habits, or being critical, just to name a few. Operating from the place of pain and fear keeps us trapped in a vicious cycle that can perpetuate over the course of our lives if we do not wake up and become aware of it.
The only answer I have ever found to break the blurry lens and vicious cycle of pain and hurt is to begin to operate from a place of love and forgiveness.  Is that easy to do?  No, not for a human being.  Is it necessary?  Absolutely!
Once we begin to see ourselves with love and forgiveness, we then can offer that to those who have traumatized us in some way.  Does it make what they said or did okay or right?  Of course not.  Forgiveness, first and foremost, frees the one who was hurt.
Forgiveness breaks that cycle that keeps us playing back the painful movies in our head about what the person did or didn’t do to us. Forgiveness allows us to loose the chains of fear that are binding us and altering how we operate in the world . It allows us to begin to incorporate love in how we see ourselves and in how we see others and the world.
Forgiveness is one of the most powerful ways that we can demonstrate that we truly love and value ourselves.  It is our marker that we have found connection with God and his love.  As we begin to heal and release the old pain and fears, the more we rely on love and forgiveness to strengthen our lives.
We end the cycle of feeling damaged by the past and finally break free to move forward.  We begin to project love out into the world, instead of fear.  We begin to attract and perceive experiences from a new set of lenses and from a new place of expansion, joy and freedom.
The next time you find yourself in a situation with another person that evokes pain and hurt, acknowledge the pain, but more importantly, acknowledge how much you love and value yourself.  Then when you are ready, offer your forgiveness.
Love yourself enough to set yourself free from the pain and go forward in love.  You will truly find the greatest peace and joy when you do.