
Forgiveness is harder than it sounds
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It's not healthy, I know.


My hardened heart comes honestly, I think.

My Granny prided herself on her unforgiveness.


"I ain't spoke to her in 55 years, and I ain't got no plans to speak to her now," Granny said about someone one day when she heard they were gravely ill.

"They may pass away," I told her.

This did not sway Granny. "I doubt it," she said. "They are too mean to die. And more than likely, this is a ruse to see how many flowers they get or who still cares. They won't be getting that from the likes of me!"

I thought she was made of some tough stuff to feel that way - to not care that someone may pass away without resolving those unmended hurts. But Granny did not care.



She still to this day cannot stand my first grade teacher.


"Mama, I don't worry about that woman," I said one day after Mama was commenting her disgust. "And that was how long ago? Can you do like an overplayed Disney princess and let it go?"


True, that woman should not have been allowed to mold young minds. But she's probably close to a 100 years old if she's alive now.... surely she had asked for some sort of penance?

Mama didn't care.

I sighed. I had my own grudges to nurse.



You start to think, "Hmmm...maybe this is some kind of message?"



Oh, bother, as Winnie the Pooh would say.

I had heard all this forgiveness stuff before - who hasn't? - but had not put it in action yet.






"But what if..." I thought.

They didn't know what this person did to me.

It didn't take into account the pain I had felt or how that person had treated me.


I was, too.

Let me tell you, if you sat down and heard my side of things, you'd realize I was right and that the other people were wrong and they didn't deserve forgiveness or compassion or even kindness.

I didn't want to forgive.

Didn't that mean it was OK what they did?

Didn't it mean that I was giving in and letting their actions go unnoticed?

I thought about all the people who had wronged me - the people who had lied, the ones who had let me down, didn't do what they promised, and who had ended up hurting me when I least expected it.

How could I forgive that?

And here was someone I thought so much of, saying how we needed to go to the person and explain how we - not them, we - had been affected by the situation and ask for forgiveness about how we had felt and reacted.

We - or rather, me.


What if I had been the one in the wrong - and not the other person?


I could hear Granny's voice in my head, telling me it didn't matter, it was never our fault, we were never wrong and no one - no one deserved forgiveness, least of all us because we never did anything wrong.


Holding grudges and having a hardened heart was something we had nurtured for quite a while and had elevated to an art form. But sometimes, forgiveness isn't for others; it's for us.

And maybe, some forgiveness is in order.
