We so often read or hear about the act of granting forgiveness.    We most certainly learn that forgiveness is important to our well-being, even if we have not been asked for it.  But, what about the actual act of granting forgiveness?  How much responsibility do we incur when we say “I forgive you” to another?

I have heard it said that we must forget the incident or words that caused someone to ask for forgiveness.  But I don’t believe forgetting is required.  Memories stored in our mind are not disposed of simply by willing them gone.  The simple act of willing would keep it in our memory.  And, even if a memory disappears from our conscious mind, it would not be wiped from our subconscious, which remembers everything.

However, granting forgiveness is not a matter of simply saying the words “I forgive you.”  There is an attitude that must accompany the words if they are truly sincere.  In order to be truly healing for everyone involved, forgiveness must contain the desire and fulfillment of never holding the incident up to the other person as any kind of example of their behavior.  In other words, the incident has no meaning from now on.  The affront you might have felt is wiped from the record of your mind.  To repeat, it is the feeling of affront that must be eliminated from your mind, because. . .if you still hold hurt, resentment or anger regarding the incident, you have not truly forgiven.  You are mentally holding the incident over that person’s head as long as the thought of it brings about a negative feeling.  It is your mind’s ability to still hold a grudge that would indicate you were not sincere in your forgiveness.

If we have truly forgiven, the chances are very good that we will also forget, in time, at least on a conscious level.

Forgive!  Perhaps forget!  And let it go!

Forgiveness ought to be like a canceled note—torn in

two and burned up so that it never can be shown against one.

                                                          Henry Ward Beecher

I wish you the peace of forgiveness in your heart,

Lana Keating