Forgiveness Rocks

If someone runs a red light, hits your car, and injures you and/or other family members, the obvious emotion is anger. That's a no brainer. But what if someone is hurting someone you love in such a subtle way that they don't even know it's going on? I'd say it's still anger. If it involves someone I love, it's moved up to anger to the umpth degree.

Anger is a very real, raw emotion. It takes a lot of energy to be angry, and even more energy to stay angry. Plus, anger creates a lot of stress in your life....trust me on this one. At times, I feel I am the queen of stress. There is only one way to get rid of anger....forgiveness.

Since I'm on a quest to be more stress-free, I need to dig deeper into learning to forgive. But, honestly, that's a toughie for me. And there are times when I just say "I don't wanna". But I know I have to...I need to.

I looked up verses in the bible regarding forgiveness. It's obviously a pretty big deal, because wowsers is there a LOT in there about it. I was like "Ok God, I get it...I need to do this, especially if I want to have any chance to be stress free." Then, like a little child, I roll my eyes, because well, I'm human and I still don't wanna. But then I read this:

For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. Matthew 6:14,15.

And it was like "Whoa...wait, he's not going to forgive me, if I don't forgive others? So, not fair!" But I realize that by saying that I'm thinking I'm better or somehow more deserving of being forgiven than someone else. So I'm working hard on being more forgiving. I'm not very good at it regarding some situations, but I think God's ok with that. He knows I'm trying. But, I have noticed by letting go of things through forgiveness, my stress really has been lowered some, which is totally cool.

So work on forgiving someone you're holding a grudge against. It'll help you be more stress free.