Forgiveness: A Gift to Others and Ourselves

Forgiveness is something that most of us acknowledge as good. Despite the common acceptance of the need for forgiveness, we struggle with understanding what forgiveness means. We also struggle to know how exactly to forgive. It can be hard to tell if we have truly forgiven someone. This is understandable. Forgiveness is a process. We often are not sure if the process has been completed. It is possible we could have forgiven someone cognitively (with our thoughts and even verbally) but not forgiven them emotionally. Sometimes this occurs because we fear the wrong or hurt happening again and don’t let our guard down. Also, we might, due to our faith convictions, embrace the concept of forgiveness and thus readily extend…