Healing Our Memories

From someone who knows, who thought they could never forgive and absolutely never forget a portion of my memories...with God's grace, my heart is filled with compassion and not only is forgiveness healing my life but my memories too...guess it is no coincident that for the last three days the meditations sent from the Henry Nouwen Society was exactly what I needed to hear....embrace forgiveness and your life will turn around!


Sunday January 29, 2012       

Healing Our Memories

Forgiving does not mean forgetting. When we forgive a person, the memory of the wound might stay with us for a long time, even throughout our lives. Sometimes we carry the memory in our bodies as a visible sign. But forgiveness changes the way we remember. It converts the curse into a blessing. When we forgive our parents for their divorce, our children for their lack of attention, our friends for their unfaithfulness in crisis, our doctors for their ill advice, we no longer have to experience ourselves as the victims of events we had no control over.

Forgiveness allows us to claim our own power and not let these events destroy us; it enables them to become events that deepen the wisdom of our hearts. Forgiveness indeed heals memories.