TODAY THE WORDS ARE FORGIVING YOURSELF

TODAY THE WORDS are FORGIVING YOURSELF.  This topic was suggested by a wonderful friend and it woke me up with a strong need to write it today and I am waiving the topic I had in mind to bring this one. Some people have a hard time to forgive others; others forgive others easily but fail to forgive themselves. How is it easier to forgive others and so hard to extend that same courtesy to the most intimate person we know? Let’s take a look at why this might be harder, but is totally necessary for our lives to be complete. We, even though we feel we know ourselves inside and out, have a problem recognizing our weaknesses. To forgive others is to pull out the old underwear in the drawer and see how many rips and tears are visible. We have to check to see how stretched out the elastic in the waistband. We have a tendency to want to hold on to those old “undies” or as I am actually referring to are old feelings of resentment because we are more familiar with those feelings but once we have made a decision to throw them out and bring in new, fresh new feelings which stem from forgiveness, we are so happy with our decision we have made. There is however, this one pair and most of you if not all of you will recognize, we have a hard time throwing it out. So we end up throwing all of the other old, worn out “undies” while still leaving one pair which is thread worn but we refuse to give up that last pair and it stays worn and torn in the midst of the new ones. We glance at it every time and we think we should have thrown it out with the others; it is making the entire drawer look out of place. It sticks out like a sore thumb and hinders our view and our good feeling. Now for the deeper thought……that last pair of undies is forgiving ourselves. We have accomplished forgiving others but want to hang on to the guilt, the tears, the unraveling, the holes of our underwear of life (our souls) and we feel we will lose ourselves in the changing of our lives when we have received forgiveness from God and others. We know these undies better than anyone; we know they need to find the trash where they belong and when we finally remove that last pair, our self guilt and feel the freshness and the newness of an undie drawer all clean as our souls should feel after redemption; we smile and start to find the joy of salvation. Live life; love life; and live life to the fullest by not forgetting to forgive yourself. (Special note of thanks to my FB friend who inspired this message JA)