FREEING YOURSELF WITH FORGIVENESS

Something that I’ve been working in the last several years and especially one of the big things I’m focusing on as of late is...forgiveness. There are people that know they did you wrong and they don’t care. There are those that hurt you and own up to it.  There are others that hurt you and they have no idea. Other times, the person that hurts you is YOU. I’ve encountered all the above. In the month that I was focusing on myself and working on being a better me, Nick, my co-worker told me to work on forgiveness.

He told me about the law of forgiveness when you forgive someone, even if they don’t know they did or care that they hurt you, that you release that negative energy off yourself, as well as them, and then positive things will enter your life. Nick wrote down a quick prayer to say when I’m ready to forgive those have hurt me.  It said:

“Dear God/Lord/Universe/whatever you believe,
I forgive (insert name) for (insert actions) for they not knew not how it would make me feel.”

There are several people in my past that I have completely forgiven. I feel nothing for them anymore. That’s a big step for me because I used to have such anger and resentment towards them.  In some cases I held onto the anger for years.  It wasn't until the day I realized that my resentment and anger for that person, who I thought did me wrong, was doing nothing to them, but only hurting me.  At that moment I kinda snapped out of it.

Recently, I've forgiven someone that didn't treat me the best.  I went through different emotions when getting to the point of forgiving them.  I'll be honest, I still have had thoughts of disappointment of what they did and their following actions, but in the end I think they did the best they could with where they were in their life at the time.  I don't think this person intentionally tried to hurt me.  I don't think their actions were malicious. However, I do think that they acted selfishly, and like a lot of us, he messed up and wasn't ready or willing to fix the things he needed to to make things right.  I do think there's a good person in there, but I just didn't get the best version of him.  I don't hate this person. I am disappointed in them, but I forgive them. 


I've also had to forgive myself. I had to forgive myself because I took what they did very hard and blamed myself even though I didn't do anything wrong.  I blamed myself because I picked wrong. I blamed myself for another failed attempt and blamed myself that I didn't see it coming and ignored signs that I should've paid attention to.  I blamed myself for the pain that I felt, because in some way I blamed myself for their actions.  I'm still working on forgiving myself.  It's interesting, because it was way easier for me to forgive the person that hurt me, than  it was forgiving myself.  I’m still working on it all, but I’m getting better. I need to say my prayer myself.

Dear God, I forgive myself, Erin Austin, for the choices I’ve made in dating and the choices in people I dated, for I knew not at the time how my choices would end and how they would make me feel. Everyone makes mistakes.

Dear God, I forgive _________, for they knew not how their actions and choices would effect me and how they would make me feel.