Forgiveness Is a Tricky Thing

We have all had these life-changing moments, when we choose to forgive or ourselves are forgiven.  Either is freeing, but the thing they don't tell you is that there will be seasons when you will need to forgive that person who wronged you, yet again, or seek inner forgiveness from your own actions.

Life is complicated like that.

But I think that the hardest thing is to be told you are forgiven when you don't know what you have done wrong.  You can guess, but you aren't really sure.  And, when the person doesn't want to share from what action or inaction you are forgiven, you are left forever wondering.

Now comes the even trickier part, how does one forgive the person who is currently causing you great anguish by forgiving you of the "thing that must not be named."  Seriously, living and loving in this world can be incredibly hard.

I come from a long line of people who don't share what really happened, whose family housed many secrets, generations of people who have been reticent and then raised reticent children.  Then there is me.

I choose decades ago, during my teen years, that silence isn't always golden.  In fact, in my childhood home, it was a sign of trouble brewing.

So, I talked, I explained, I asked, I tried to understand, to get to the core of the problem.  To be honest, it doesn't always help the situation and can actually make things worse, but I was determined that I was not going to be afraid of facing the truth, because I didn't want to be in bondage to fear, to the unknown.  I'd rather know and deal with something, then to pretend that it, whatever the "it' was, didn't exist.

Back to present day, back to the problem of being told you are forgiven for something you don't know you did but are not allowed to know, back to whispered conversations of others who know you and know them and want to keep the peace even though you are anything but peaceful about this situation.

What does one do?  Wait, press, pray - all in the process of doing, but peace is not coming, nor is a resolution at hand.

So, I wait and wonder, why is forgiveness so hard, so complicated, so unending?