I Refuse To FOR-GIVE! — Tips/How To Walk In the Freedom Of Forgiveness

Hello Everyone,

It’s great to be joining you again! This month I wanted to talk about a topic that many of us struggle with and that topic is FORGIVENESS. Isn’t interesting how the word breaks down, it’s almost like it gives us insight on how to apply it. FORE, meaning BEFORE anyone hurts you because imperfect people (which we all are) are guaranteed to do that, we are already prepared to GIVE them a pass for their sloppy humanity…FORE-GIVE-NESS!

The other day I received a call from another author friend of mine and during our call she began to commend me for being a consistent person. She went on to say how every time she encountered me I’m always consistently kind and how that was a rare trait. She said, “Even what you post on Facebook is consistent.” I laughed because little did she know moments before she had called me I was having an emotional moment. I begin to share with her how I had just typed a long Facebook post ranting about a person who had hurt me, but before I could hit send embarrassing myself with my innuendo of a post (You know the ones you read where a person is talking about someone, but they don’t say their name, however they give just enough clues so the person who they’re talking about knows its them and anyone who knows the person may know as well.) I pressed cancel instead. As we talked further I begin to explain to her that the situation just wasn’t worth me putting out more negative energy and that I had to release this person from the hurt they had caused me and let it go. My friend then says, “You need to make a video or something about forgiveness, people need to hear about that.” So here you have it, a blog. 🙂

In the proceeding paragraphs I’m going to give you some tips from life of how I walk in forgiveness. Let me first say walking in forgiveness doesn’t mean that I don’t ever get hurt, offended, mad, or upset at those closest to me who can affect my emotions in such ways. I feel all those emotions, however I work through them until eventually I end up on the side of forgiving them and letting the offense go. I’ve decided no person is worth me losing my peace, my mind, or dealing with health issues. Anyone who has ever dealt with some serious offenses at the hands of someone else’s reckless behavior understands that you leave your life open to some serious self inflicted damage when allowing un-forgiveness or bitter emotions to stay.

Below are 8 life principles I use to aid me in walking in forgiveness. (In no specific order):

1.) You must first be in a healthy emotional state. What that means is you’ve taken the time to walk down every broken are in your life. That doesn’t mean you sweep it under the rug and pretend like that whatever has caused the breach in your life never happened. That means you take the time to visit that painful place and you allow God to heal it. Now this step is not an overnight process, but a journey. But, once you make a decision to be healed you simultaneously make a decision to forgive the person who caused the inflection. Read this very careful, you are not healed if you haven’t forgiven the person who harmed you. So make a decision to deal with your pain and begin the process of healing.

2.) Understand that the people that you love will hurt you and have grace for their trespasses. This statement doesn’t mean that you allow anyone to abuse you physically, mentally or emotionally. Of course at some point in your life you will need to forgive the perpetrator, but don’t stick around and allow someone to abuse you. (Remember forgiveness is always, always for you, for your emotional well being and health.) The type of offenses I’m speaking of are the ones that come with being in relationship with people and many times they aren’t done on purpose. In fact you and I have even caused people in our life pain and hurt, not on purpose, but as a result of being an imperfect person.

3.) Now that you understand people are going to hurt you that allows you the freedom to FORE-GIVE them when they do and let it go.

4.) Number 3 works best for me when I stay in the mindset of taking nothing personal. Here is a conversation I’ve had in my head one time when someone I was working on project with was being nasty to me. I was like, “Oh they are tripping! They must be having a bad day and I’m not going to entertain that ignorance and ruin my good day!” See, how I was very clear to keep their issue, their issue and not mine. This keeps me free of taking ownership of something I didn’t cause and it releases me to still be kind because, “awe bless their heart they have issues.” I didn’t take it personal. Everyone’s issue with you doesn’t have to be your business, that’s their business to work through. Let it roll off your back.

5.) I remind myself that’s it not that deep. Everything doesn’t deserve a conversation. Sometimes, we want to fix other people’s issues with us. I know I’ve been guilty of wanting people to see me the right way and when they didn’t, I used to get upset. Subsequently, I would have these long conversations trying to convince them that they had me wrong, but I learned some people see you wrong because they want to and no conversation or amount of behavior proving your point will ever change that. Finally I decided you know what Anesha let it go, it’s just not that deep to be getting yourself all worked up over. Some conversations just aren’t worth having. If it doesn’t make something better, edify the situation, bring some light or clarity, or some positive outcome it won’t be had. I find that most little tiffs work themselves out overtime anyway.

6.) Allow yourself to feel your emotions and work through them. Sometimes we can’t avoid feeling the blow of an impact when someone has damaged us. Pain, distraught emotions and hurt feelings are a natural part of life. The bible gives us permission to be angry, but not to allow our anger to cause us to sin. Often times we think we can “stuff our emotions”, but there is no such thing as a stuffed emotion, it will eventually surface to the top again and can manifest in some pretty ugly ways. So allow yourself to feel the pain of being a hurt human, you don’t have to be SUPERwoman or SUPERrman, you are allowed to feel your emotions and even cry if you need to. Get it all out, you can even write your emotions out (kind of like I did in the Facebook post that I didn’t send, but was still able to unleash all the emotions I was feeling) and release it. There’s something about giving yourself permission to feel that allows you to heal and healing will ultimately lead to forgiveness.

7.) Don’t be selfish. Growing up as an only child it’s almost a natural response to view life through a selfish lens because you never have to share anything, not toys, not your parent’s attention, nothing. It’s just you and life is all about you! It took me well into my 20’s and after the birth of my children to begin to look at life from a perspective of not being all about Anesha. Sometimes you have to allow yourself to experience life in someone else’s shoes and feel their emotions, which can be difficult to do when we live an age where the word “selfie” was the most hash tagged word used last year on social media. Often times those who hurt us the most are wounded themselves. There’s a saying, hurt people, hurt people. One of my prayers this year has been, “Lord allow me to be more selfless and see things through other people’s perspective and not my own.” That prayer and journey has been amazing, it has afforded me the experience of seeing how selfish we can be and not even be aware of it.

8.) Whenever you’ve been wounded always remember to pray, talk to God about it. The Holy Spirit is our comforter, he will always aid us in time of pain and walk us through to forgiveness.

These eight tips that I’ve shared have totally revolutionized my life. I am a naturally happy person, but these life principles I’ve been applying to me life have not only made me happier, my life is so much more easy going, I feel so much freedom, I no longer allow people’s issues with me to trap me, I forgive more quickly and I laugh more at things that used to cause me to cry in frustration. Literally things that people used to do that would offend or hurt me, I literally find myself laughing at the situation. I work in ministry and with people, lots of different types of people, I am a wife, a mother, a daughter, a friend, and so many other things, all the roles and hats I wear require me to be on the frontline in people’s lives and we all understand in war terms those on the frontline are more susceptible to getting injured. But, I’m thankful to understand that while I may get injured I can be healed and I can walk FORE-GIVE-NESS!

Love and Blessings to you,

Anesha A. Sharp