Dealing With Guilt And Forgiving Yourself

Wisdom Nuggets: “I have learned, that the person I have to ask for forgiveness from the most is: myself. You must love yourself. You have to forgive yourself, everyday, whenever you remember a shortcoming, a flaw, you have to tell yourself "That's just fine". You have to forgive yourself so much, until you don't even see those things anymore. Because that's what love is like.”

                                                                                                              -C. JoyBell C

Forgiving Yourself

Larry Sorensen lives in Lake Wobegon. He'd been saved a dozen times at the altar of a Lutheran church that never gave altar calls. He would come to the altar time after time and weep buckets and buckets of tears and come back the next Sunday and do the very same thing. Larry Sorensen kept repenting and repenting; but somehow, he couldn’t get beyond the repenting stage. Pretty soon even the “fundamentalists got tired of him.” Larry couldn’t believe that he could totally be forgive him. The guilt of all he had done eroded his will to forgive himself. Instead of being free to move on, he came to church week after week constantly feeling guilty and trying to get back on track over and over again.

Have you ever heard this quote: “You cannot give what you do not have”?

It is worthy of note that people cannot give something they do not have. Someone once said, “forgiveness is something you do, not for the other person, but for yourself”. How can you forgive others when you cannot forgive yourself?

We might have gotten involved in some shameful (or dreadful things) in the past. There are things that we are unable to forgive ourselves for, so that we cannot even expect to receive forgiveness from people we've offended. We harbour feelings of guilt for mistakes made in our past and we allow them taunt us, even after we have prayed. We must  stop crucifying ourselves for nothing. Truly, it is useless to worry about past deeds because they cannot be undone. All we can do is ask for forgiveness (make restitutions were needed), forgive on our parts and let things go.

Bill Cosby said “People can be more forgiving than you can imagine. But you have to forgive yourself. Let go of what's bitter and move on.” 

 The ball is in your court. Forgive yourself.

Picture credit: aflourishinglife.com