Forgiveness can be challenging. When you forgive, you let go of any control you had. Letting go of control, even if it is only a ‘hoped for’ kind of control is hard to do, especially when it’s your spouse.
When you feel so totally out of control, letting go of what little control you have is difficult. Besides the challenge of letting go of control, what makes forgiveness tough are the many misconceptions about forgiveness.
Those misconceptions get in your way. They distort and mangle what forgiveness really is all about.
Those misconceptions give people wrong headed ideas about forgiveness and end up confusing rather than simplifying what it’s about.
You may be thinking that forgiveness means that you are giving permission for the affair. Forgiveness is not about giving permission at all.
If they did nothing wrong, why would forgiveness be needed at all? What they did was wrong. It was a wrong against you, against God and against their own promises.
When you realize how many things the affair violated, you begin to see that the challenge of forgiveness was about the pain of being violated and let down more than ‘giving permission’.
The forgiveness is about letting go of giving the cheater what they really deserve. For all the violations they committed, they deserve consequences.
Forgiveness involves stepping into the law of cause and effect and interrupting those consequences. Forgiveness keeps the cheater from getting what they ‘deserve’. It changes things.
Forgiveness interrupts the law of cause and effect to some degree. There will still be consequences, but the severity will be lessened.
It is no wonder that forgiveness is so challenging when you begin to see what all is involved in the process.
What about you? Want to learn how to forgive? Then I suggest the video on forgiveness (Forgiveness: Stop the Pain, Tear Down the Walls and Remove the Roadblocks). It’s not very hard and it begins giving you results quickly.
Best Regards,
Jeff
