Forgiveness what does it mean?

The definition of forgiveness is to stop feeling angry or resentful towards someone for an offense, flaw, or mistake.

This makes sense when you’re the one giving forgiveness, but I lived on the other side. I was looking to be forgiven.

When I speak of forgiveness I am reminded of all the things I’m most ashamed of. The word forgiveness puts me on the road of regret, making me wish that I hadn’t done the things that I did. When I find myself using this word, I automatically start thinking of what I need to do, in order to fix what I have broken.

I always consider myself the offender. I started to feel this way from a young age. As far back as I can remember, after getting in trouble, I felt that I had let my family and the people around me down and that I was obligated to do what ever it took to correct what I had done wrong.

I struggled to look at myself in the mirror because what I saw was dark and ugly. Forgiveness always equaled out to guilt and then to shame. I walked around with this sick feeling nagging at my head, telling me to do or not to do; my conscience letting me know that it was there.

Like the image of myself looking into a mirror and seeing me on the other side saying the words “you’re an embarrassment, you’re a dumb, you’re getting annoying, and stop being a loser.”

I really never thought about how much these words weighed on me, even if I was the one saying them to myself. I carried the anxiety of not measuring up to the expectations of the world. I carried these emotions until my mid-twenties. Wow I was a mess, no wonder I got it to so much trouble. I was searching for something to show me that I had value, searching for someone to say that they were proud of me, but it took awhile before I could find that.

It took me some time after being baptized to truly understand what God had done for me! He had forgiven me, Sergio Sanchez, not because I had done something wrong to him. No, it was because he loved me. Enough that he gave his only son to save me.

The Holy Spirit started to work on my heart and exposed me to love. The lack of love in my heart was the reason I always felt I needed to be forgiven. I didn’t love myself and because of that I couldn’t forgive anyone or think I was worthy of forgiveness. If there is no love in your heart then the act of forgiveness is just an act. I had to face my demons by looking into the mirror and say “my life is forgiven!” I had to confront myself and find forgiveness from within my heart to free myself. Then the Lord took over.

I had to let God clean up my mirrors, accept His forgiveness, and to accept forgiveness from myself. These days my heart tells me that I am to love people, it tells me that I am to forgive so I can show love, and that I am to help others clean their mirrors. It tells me to do this because the Lord is with me and I am forgiven!

The bible speaks a lot about loving your neighbor, loving others, and loving God. That’s a lot of love if you ask me, especially knowing that love is a choice. And the best part is we can choose to love even if we don’t feel like it . Even when we feel someone doesn’t deserve it, we still can love. The more we start forgiving ourselves, the more our eyes are opened to how much others need the same thing.

We cannot love if we do not love ourselves. We cannot forgive if we do not forgive ourselves. We cannot show grace to others if we can’t recognize that we need grace. And how will we bring hope and healing to others, if we constantly look at ourselves in the mirror and say “I am not worthy”

Remember we don’t have to feel unworthy, we don’t have to feel ashamed, because we are forgiven. God made a choice to forgive us. So today ignore the image on the other side of the mirror and fight to find the love from within your heart and

Keep Rolling On