Forgivness

"I am sorry". "Please forgive me". These are common phrases we use or hear all the time. Sometimes we don't really care if we are forgiven or not, we just say it because the person we hurt needs to hear it, or because its the polite thing to do, and even because it will get us out of trouble.

But how often do we think of how hard it is to forgive someone? How hard is it to be able to move on, to say "You are forgiven" or "I forgive you". Its not that hard to say it, but it is very hard to actually feel according to what you say. Sure you can forgive the husband who had an affair, the best friend who betrayed you, the son or daughter who lied to you or the parent who never told you you are adopted.

What happens when you want to forgive someone and you think you have the power to do so, but you're still hurting because of their words or actions? If you are like me, you will probably expect the other person to be able to move on and get things back to normal the moment they tell me I'm forgiven.

I had to deal with this recently. A friend who hurt me more than I ever thought she has the power to. She said she is sorry, she asked me to forget all about it, and she asked for forgivness. I love her. She is my dearest friend, so after a day or two of just sitting in bed weeping i decided I won't let some words ruin a long, beautiful friendship. So I told her I forgive her, and that made her very happy, and it made me happy to see her happy. But...now she's acting like nothing ever happened, and I'm still struggling with the pain, I'm not healed yet. My soul hurts because it was a deep wound. And now she expects me to trust her again, to be her best friend again, but she doesn't seem to understand that it will take me a long time to heal, and maybe even longer to trust her again.

But I did forgive her, I think...though I know that my forgivness is nothing compared to God's. When He forgives, He also forgets. He decides to trust you again, even though He knows you will do the same mistake again maybe as soon as you are forgiven. He forgives, and expects us not to sin agains Him again, or maybe not... Maybe God doesn't have such great expectations of us not sinning after we are forgiven because He surely knows us, and if its not going to be the same sin, something else will come up. "Go and sin no more". So maybe He does expect us not to sin after we get our forgivness. I have a serious theological dillema here and my pastor is out of town! And I don't have anyone else who might know the answer.

Well, bottom line is that i want to stop hurting. Its not the first time she hurt me like this, and back than she did promis to never hurt me this much again. Shame on you if you fool me once, shame on me if you fool me twice...

I don't like it when I'm naive like I was now, but I think I'll just give her one more chance...though it scares me like crazy. I just don't like pretending that things are perfect when they're not.