What is Forgiveness Really?

Lately, God's been on my heart to ask for the grace to forgive and teach me what it means. 

Have you ever seen the motivational line: "No one owes you anything"? It doesn't sit entirely well with me. And, as I have been meditating on forgiveness, I understand a little more why.

We do owe something to each other. We owe each other love - we are made for love and loving. We have to know that. We have to know that so whenever we are hurt we don't get hard and callous but really "see" the truth, the injustice of what has happened, apparent from the tender wounds we now have, and then forgive the debt.

Because if you can't acknowledge the hurt is there anything to be forgiven?

The only way we can forgive is to realize that there was something owed to us that we did not receive be it love in the form of consideration, understanding, tenderness etc. To deny this truth makes us callous because we are not in touch with truth - the truth that God made us for love. To love and be loved. And when people don't give it to you that is an injustice.

It's actually a very empowering justice driven thing to do - forgiving - because it is a process that actually recognizes and mourns how you have been wronged - even if it was you wronging yourself. And recognizes, that at some level, there is no way this person (another or you) can pay you back. Because the time it took has already been lost. When we know this we may a faithful closing step of letting go of the payment of the wrong - so deep - that only God can heal and not asking it anymore of a human who can never truly repay.

Cry before God, the angels, and saints. Let God cry with you and mourn with you what was lost or hurt. Let God, the greatest arbiter honor your loss and give it to Him, joining it with what he lost and was hurt by with us. In this way our relationship with God also grows.

Forgiveness means you will not be burdened by what could have been. God's got the reward and recompense. Only He can repay what has been lost, in the end. In the meantime, we are still made to love.
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