Originally Posted by
soulsurvivor 
deserteyes quote makes alot of sense.. THAT i get.. and could possibly do.. someday..
someone else told me that the feelings of anger i have towards my mother and brother inside of me..that are hurting me physically.. those feelings dont know they are for them.. They only know they are inside of me and hurting me..
i was just sitting here listening to "Jesus take the wheel" and want that feeling of just throwing my hands up and saying and meaning,, whatever happens happens.. It aint my plight any longer....
then i think of how much they hurt my son.. thats what paralyzes me.. thinking of all those months he BEGGED to see them and called them and they ignored him bc they were mad at me.. Monsters dont deserve forgiveness..
i still cant believe they could EVER hurt him like that.. i cant wrap my brain around it,, its hard to fully process..
i will never trust them again.. but i still cant imagine seeing them and not having an overwhelming urge to rip their heads off.
i just dont think i'm ready...
What good would it do to rip their heads off?
I was going to use the "taking poison and waiting for the other person to die" homily, but rayofsunshine beat me to it -- so I'll offer another favorite:
Forgiveness is giving up hope for a better past.
Put another way, "forgiveness" does not require you to say, "It's all good, no harm, no foul, everything's fine, it was all in fun, and the fact is, I enjoyed the whole thing." But it does require you to decide, "I'm not going to hang onto this resentment like a dog with a bone and let it ruin the REST of my life, going forward."
I've never explicitly "forgiven" anyone for what I may have felt they did to me. If I walked up to my Dad and said, "Dad, I forgive you for being such an ******* these 46 years," he'd have no idea what I was talking about, and if I started explaining, would fly into a rage. So that's not what I'm suggesting that forgiveness implies -- it's more about accepting the past (since it is, after all, stuff that really did happen) and figuring out how to heal and move on.
Have I figured it out myself? Not really -- it's a lot easier to preach than to practice. But that's the concept, anyway....
T