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Forgiveness Reflection

Satisfactory Essays

Forgiveness is a concept that most people do not understand, and I must admit I was one of those people before I took the class. My experience with this concept was mainly through church sermons where the pastor explained God forgave us of our sins to restore a relationship with us. Therefore, my definition was clouded by these sermons and I would have said forgiveness was saying you are sorry no matter who was at fault, showing remorse for your actions, changing your actions, and reconciling to the point of being civil to the person that had wronged you. Thankfully, because of the class Forgiveness & Communication, I have obtained information that will empower me to move forward toward a more forgiving life style. Through class lecture, class participation, and different types of resources I have learned many things including, the need to forgive, what forgiveness is not, what forgiveness is, effective methods of letting go, and the tools to know if you have truly forgiven and are now different. The need to forgive affects us physically, mentally, relationally, and spiritually. The intensity and duration of the unforgiveness can cause it to become debilitative. Accordingly, unforgiveness does not affect the other person, it affects you negatively. For instance, like the quote of Marianne Williamson “unforgiveness is like drinking poison yourself and waiting for the other person to die.” Research shows a lot of our sicknesses such as high blood pressure and heart trouble are intensified by the lack of our not letting go of past hurts. Mentally we spend time thinking about a past transgression more than we spend time thinking about happy events in our lives. I think it is like ivy growing in your mind, you first think the ivy is pretty but then it starts to grow and eventually covers the wall of your mind and chokes out all other flowering vegetation, leaving you with only the transgression and no beautiful memories. If we do not forgive it will affect our relationships and can eventually cause the relationship to cease to be. Lastly, our spiritual growth can be hampered by our lack of forgiving and we cannot have peace in our lives. Booker T Washington once said, “the moment I begin to hate a man

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