Why is it so hard to let go of the words floating around in our heads. You know the ones I mean. The ones that represent mistakes we made so many years ago. I remember when I was a young adult I had a friend who held on to a great deal of shame and self blame in her life. She told me that she knew deep down inside that she needed to forgive herself to ever have a happy normal life but she just couldn’t do it. She told me, “Every time I try I have this conversation in my head I end up reliving the whole situation, all the facts come up in my mind, the why’s and the why nots, the pain and the blame. I begin to think “I wouldn’t have done this if they hadn’t done that. I just can’t seem to let it go.”
Learning to forgive herself had taken on the same untouchable desire as learning to love herself. Both things she thought she was failing at miserably.
And isn’t funny I said to her that the often people in your life are more willing to forgive you and you can forgive them easer than we can forgive ourselves. Wouldn’t it be great if we could just take ourselves out of the equation? We are our own worst enemies aren’t we?
I can blow off something someone does to me much easier than I can stop being made at myself for something I shouldn’t have done. I have come to realize I just don’t have the power. I guess I realized at some point in my life that I needed divine intervention. Asking God’s forgiveness is the same as asking God to relive you of the burden of your own mistakes. Your saying I can’t make this go away on my own.
The important thing is that even if you never get to the point where you forgive yourself, God forgives you. The past is gone there is nothing left to hold on to. The only stipulation with God’s forgiveness is that you forgive others.