When I rethink forgiveness, I don’t just think about it in terms of me forgiving others, I also think about it in terms of others forgiving me.
Am I okay when others don’t forgive me of wrongs I’ve caused against them? Frankly, I have no choice. I have to be okay with it and move on because each person is entitled to their own willingness or lack of willingness to forgive or not to forgive.
People can do whatever they want to do. They make their own choices, and for whatever the reasons, there are some people who will never forgive us.
I have learned this for myself. There are some people who will never forgive me. There are some people I know who haven’t forgiven me for circumstances that happened in my childhood (despite them not knowing the full story). Even when I perceived my slights against others to not be that great of a deal, those people still never forgave me.
The reality is that my slights against them were real to them. I offended them, and they chose not to forgive me. They chose to not let the things go that I had done to them or not done to them (in most cases). Even though I apologized or may not have even intended to cause pain, I did, and for many that I hurt, there was no forgiveness for me.
In fact, a person can make the choice not to forgive me, and there is nothing I can do about that. There is nothing I should even try to do about that. I have to let it go, and I have to let them go. In time, the person may come to forgive me, but I have to live with the fact that the person might choose to never forgive me either.
In particular, I have quite a few people who have chosen not to forgive me for various reasons. Instead of wallowing in pity for myself and pleading with them for forgiveness, I choose to simply move on and live. Even though I had to learn this over a course of time, I realized I had to accept the fact that forgiveness isn’t always freely given by others, and that’s okay.
Sometimes, not forgiving someone else is the way that a person protects themselves and their boundaries. Sometimes a person might just hate someone so much that they won’t forgive the other person. That’s okay too. It’s always a person’s choice to forgive or not forgive. It’s really none of my business.
Whatever a person’s reasons for choosing not to forgive me, I choose to accept. It might be hurtful, but I must move on because life goes on, and I will either live and learn from the experience or I won’t. But I cannot make another person extend their hand of forgiveness towards me just because I choose to do so.
People are entitled to making their own choices about the way they will choose to navigate the elements of forgiveness. I let them.
My Voice Unchained 