I briefly covered the general reason in my first Forgiveness Sundays post – Forgiveness Sundays – March 17, 2019. I am not go into too much detail with this post. I am not outing a blogger although the blogger‘s post is why I believe there is a need for forgiving others. Basically, the blogger lost a loved one to murder. They wanted the murder to suffer for taking their loved one. I will not go into the details as what all they wanted done to the killer.
I can relate on a slightly different level. Next month, I am doing a post about a niece I lost to a hit and run driver in February 1992. The driver was never caught. I forgave them a long time ago. I pray for the driver, but my prayer is the person find Jesus. I don’t pray for them to turn themselves in. I don’t know the age or gender of the driver. For all I know, they may have died since the accident. I didn’t know my niece very well as she was 11 and I rarely saw her as I had lived out of the area most of her life.
Forgiveness is about you the person doing the forgiveness, not the person you are forgiving. Should you forget what they did? That’s a theological question you can take up with someone who is better qualified to answer. As I mentioned in the post above
Ask yourself is there anybody you need to forgive? You don’t have to answer in the comments section. Also ask yourself, is there anybody you need to ask to forgive you?
My parents had some rules on saying you are sorry. First, you had to know what you were apologizing for. Two, you had to mean it. It can be easy to forget that part or be obvious when you spit out an “I’m sorry” in a mean and hateful way. I raised my daughter with those rules. It’s difficult to apologize if you don’t what you did wrong.
Other Forgiveness Sundays posts: https://upsdownsfamilyhistory.wordpress.com/tag/Forgiveness-Sundays/
Ups Downs Family History 
I have never lost a loved one at the hands of another but my family was very badly and very deliberately harmed . I don’t know if I can ever forgive as such but I have let it go because I feel it is important to honor our lives going forward. Maybe I am just too stubborn to allow anyone to destroy my family and I with anything they have done.
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Apologize if this is long and rambles a bit. I had a good response saved last night, but apparently my laptop needed a midnight snack and ate the file.
You make a good point about honoring lives going forward.
When I was much younger and less wise, I got angry at someone for something they did. I don’t remember who or what was done. A co-worker asked me why I was giving control of my emotions to the person. I looked at her like she had two heads from the puzzled expression she gave me back. We spent lunchtime debating how I was/was not doing that, reaching an agree to disagree point. However, she was so sure that I was giving up control of my emotions that I thought about it for months. At some point, I realized she was right about me giving the person control of my emotions.
I have seen a person destroy my relationship with my now ex and my daughter. Why? Some power trip would be my guess. She wasn’t happy with her life and didn’t think we should be happy if she wasn’t happy. It has taken years to rebuild the relationship with my daughter and my ex is civil to me which as good as it will get with her. It took a bit to forgive the woman, but I decided that letting her have control of my emotions was not a price I was willing to pay.
In terms of forgiveness, I do my best to forgive everyone. I may not tell them I have forgiven them as sometimes that’s the worst thing I can do as it would only encourage them to continue doing what they were doing. In other cases, I mention it to the person if I think the person needs to know. I believe we are responsible for how we respond what others do things to hurt us and they are responsible for what they did to hurt us.
I would say that sometimes the best solution is to cut someone out of one’s life when possible. I know it’s not always possible due to the situation.
I can’t control what others do, be it trying to destroy a family relationship, doing mean spiteful things, or killing a loved one. All I can do is control how I respond. I find forgiveness is the route I take as holding it in only hurts me. In some cases, the person doing the harm would get perverse pleasure for me holding it in.
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I appreciate your Forgiveness Sundays series
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After seeing the post made by the blogger, I prayed long as to how to respond to it.
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Glad you prayed about it first
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Me too. I do that with each post. I will sometimes spend hours on a post, only to not post it or post it later because I get the sense that’s not the post I should be doing right then.
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Glad to hear you are guided by the Lord brother with your post
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I do my best to listen to His direction as when I don’t, it tends to come with a cost I prefer not to pay.
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What an example to others
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I try. In the past, when I moved and the Lord had made it clear I shouldn’t move, the cost was not worth it. About 9 years ago, I had the money to move and paid for a couple of months and felt the Lord warning me against the move. I chose to listen.
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Yeah gotta listen to God
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