Forgiveness

When someone wounds you, what needs to happen for you to forgive them? Forgiveness hasn't been a big struggle for me in the past, maybe because I am very aware of God's mercy toward me. Recently, I have come to realize that I seem to need to understand where a person is coming from and why they did what they did to let the offense go and forgive. Perhaps in some way that allows me to rationalize the offense and in that understanding to forgive. That sort of reasoning has worked pretty well for me.

But, what do you do when someone wounds you and you cannot understand why they would do what they did, because it is irrational? This is where I find myself. I don't think I recognized my struggle with recovering from this wound as unforgiveness. When I think about what happened I feel sad and hurt and confused, but I feel no anger. Actually, I have felt very little anger over what happened. So, I thought I had forgiven.

But, one of the pastors at my church tells me that to forgive someone you need to recognize the wound and not minimize it. You need to say, "Yes, he hurt me, he wounded me. What he did was wrong and he sinned against me. He owes me." Only then can you decide to give that offense to God and let the wound heal.