Monday, March 7, 2011

MOODY MONDAY

YELLOW! I feel great today! Our foreign exchange student arrived last night. My initial anxiety over a stranger in our home for three weeks has gone away. She is very nice and I think we are going to have a lot of fun.

My mom came over on Saturday and helped us get the house clean and ready for our guest. Thanks mom! My mom let me know that she has read my blog. We had a good conversation. She apologized for being a source of some of my pain. I let her know that I had forgiven her, but that sometimes I have bad days where I'm sad over the situation. So is that forgiveness? I guess that's between me and God. I like what my friend Brooke said about forgiveness. She said forgiveness is love, and I truly love my mom. I can't say the same for my dad, so I have some work to do. If you would like to give me your thoughts on forgiveness just leave me a comment. I'm turning in my paper this Thursday.

Have a great week!

2 comments:

Staci said...

Are you kidding me!?! YES You can forgive someone and still feel pain. The pain and memory don't go away. Picture someone whose child is murdered. Do you think that pain will ever go away. Probably not. But to feel love towards someone & want whats best for them...means you have forgiven them. And yes it is between you and God.

Glad you were able to talk to your mom!

And glad your foreign exchange student is nice, have fun with her and let me know if you need anything!

Kendra said...

I agree with Staci. The pain doesn't go away. Forgiveness to me means you don't hold that person accountable anymore for that action. The consequences of that action can still hurt sometimes, but you just keep working on it. I don't think you can forgive someone and be done. It's a lifelong thing that you have to do, especially if it's something that brought you a lot of pain. Every time you feel the pain from what your mom did, for example, you have to remember in your heart that you have forgiven her and that you love her and then think of happier things so that you don't dwell on those thoughts anymore and you can move on. Don't let them control your life.
Another part of forgiveness that I thought about is forgiving yourself. Sometimes I think this is a lot harder to do. If you have truly repented of what you have done then know that you need to forgive yourself. Part of that forgiveness is doing all you can to do better and to not repeat the mistake again. You might still ache once in a while at the thought of what you had done, but as I said before, just remember that you have repented, and then rather than dwelling on those thoughts of your mistake, make a determination to do better and then go and do better.
I hope this helps (and makes sense). Thank you for taking us through your journey. I am so excited that you are doing better - and that you're having a yellow day!! Have fun with your new exchange student. It'll be a great learning experience for all of your (cultures and everything else).