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 It’s time to Let Go
Completely
From our thoughts and our heart
It’s time to Let Go
Completely
 So we can move forward
To forgive someone is sometimes easier said than done. 
What is it to forgive someone?  I have been hurt physically & emotionally.  It will take a lot for me to get over all the hurt that I had to endure and yet I must find a way to forgive.  It is very easy to see or feel how much someone hurts us, however we may not always see or feel how much we also have hurt others.  Maybe if we could understand where our hurt comes from, it would be easier to forgive.  If we could find a way to let go completely we would be able to move forward. 
My husband and I didn’t communicate to each other and that caused us both to jump to conclusions based on our past.  We didn’t love ourselves enough to be honest about our own hearts and feelings.  We didn’t allow ourselves to become one because we both held on to our past hurt so much.  By holding onto those past hurts we let ourselves experience the hurt over and over again instead of allowing us to heal together.  We were our own worst enemies.  We knew we had something special because God brought us together to help each other.  We knew that we had gone through the same things and therefore should be able to understand each other.  We should have been able to help each other and yet we let our own feelings cause us the pain we tried so hard to avoid.    My husband and I experienced a selfish -kind of hurt.  I say that because we were too concerned about ourselves rather than being concerned about each other.  This selfish hurt caused us to not let go and therefore, we could not move forward.  The sad thing about it is that we caused our own problems by being selfish.  He did not cause my hurt and I did not cause his hurt, we were both responsible for our own hurt. 
How could we ever forgive each other if we were not willing to let go of the hurt we had built up inside ourselves?  In order to forgive others we must first look in the mirror and see who we are.  Are we holding onto hurt feelings and holding someone else responsible for our feelings?    Everyone has a past and our past makes us who we are, however our past is just that…”our past”…it is not our future.  I had to look inside myself to find what drives the force of forgiveness for me personally. I had to look within myself to find the peace in my heart that allowed me to forgive.  My life consisted of many experiences which I held on to.  Some of those experiences were good and some were bad.  I realized that by holding on to those experiences, they had a part in developing me as a person.  I choose how to categorize each experience and how to let each experience shape my life.  Because, we as humans, tend to dwell on the bad or negative, I allowed those bad and negative experiences to control my inner self.  I don't think we realize when we do this.  I don't think we even realize that it is our choice how we live. We are in control of our self no one else can control what is in us...only we have that control.  I had to realize this to understand how to forgive.  My husband was not responsible for the feelings I had.  Those feelings were in me long before I even met him.  My feelings of insecurity, my feelings of being unloved, my feelings of having no self esteem were my choices.  It was my choice to allow my feelings to be confirmed by his words or actions.  It was my choice to allow him to affect my life in a negative way.  What happened to me...was not me.  I had always tried to live my life in a positive way.  One of the main beliefs I lived by was that everything in life is a gift from God.  Everything is an experience that God has allowed us to have.  You do not know the reason, however at the very base we were given each experience to learn from and possibly to use to help someone else in the future who may also go through the same experience.  I lost this belief, because I choose to.  I was not strong enough within myself to realize what I was allowing to happen.  I had to look within myself to be able to forgive myself enough to let go of the choices I kept buried in my heart.  I had to let go of the bad choices I was allowing to control my life and my feelings.  I had to accept that my choices are mine...no one else's.  To understand the unique person that God made me to be, allowed me to not only accept myself as a beautiful creation of God, I was also able to forgive myself and accept my own choices.  By accepting my self, I can accept that my husband is his own person also....an equally beautiful creation of God who was allowed his own unique choices (good or bad).  In realizing this, I realized that my husband is responsible for his own choices and I don't have to allow his choice to affect me in a negative way.  The story I have expressed was from my heart, however it is not a true story in that it was not only my heart that was involved.  My husband went through his own types of pains and hurts.  My husband was also a victim of my choices.  My husband deserves the right to be who God created him to be without judgment or blame from me or anyone else.  Just as I became the person I became, he also became the person he became due to his past and the very hard and unique challenges he had to experience.  No one can say that either he; nor I was more or less to blame... we are who we are because God made us this way.  God has a reason for each of us, that is why he created us each as a unique individual.  I am blessed and able to accept and love myself and my husband as the unique and blessed people that God has created us to be.  I am a perfect creation of God and so is my husband; that is the reason God brought us together… for each other.  For me to forgive was to find peace within myself through Christ.  To forgive I had to replace the hurt in my heart with Love.
I forgive because I accept the blessings God has given us as individuals.
Maybe to forgive others
means
to be able to forgive ourselves;
and now in front of the world...
I proclaim
To my Husband.....
Donell,
I forgive you!
Can you forgive me?