Forgiveness

Forgive me as I ramble a bit in this blog. I have something in my head that I am trying to get on the outside, and I am hoping that it make sense to someone.
I sat down with a counselor last summer to process a 'critical incident'. It was a chance to move on from a particularly hurtful scene that happened early in my nursing career. After our talk, she mailed me 2 (not one), but 2 books on forgiveness. I have only read one. I plan to read the other one for Lent. It seems to be such a very simple thing to do, forgive someone. Yet, I am beginning to think that it is one of the most misunderstood things in the world. And I think the reason it is so misunderstood is simply a lack of awareness. We are not always aware of how we hurt others. Even worse, we are not always aware of how someone has hurt us. That leads to a series of unconsciously hurting each other back. We don't always realize that we do something, just to hurt the other person back. It becomes a series of justification of actions. Justifying our actions keeps us from being accountable to them.
So how do we be accountable for our actions?
First, we need to be aware of what we are doing. We also need to be aware of how we are affecting other people. When we have hurt the other person, we need to say "I'm sorry." We may even have to ask for forgiveness. This doesn't mean that we should feel terrible. It simply means we made a mistake, and there were unintended consequences.
I remember, very distinctly, a pivotal point in my mothering. I was exasperated with our oldest. I was tired, working nights and absolutely miserable. She wouldn't do something that I wanted her to do, and I yelled at her. She looked at me with hurt in her eyes. I stopped to look at the hurt. At first, I didn't want to acknowledge it. I didn't want to acknowledge that I could hurt my own child that much. I didn't want to acknowledge that part of me existed. After a few minutes, I went and apologized. I asked for forgiveness and went into work that night. I quit that job that night and decided to move onto other things in my life. It was a very, very good decision for me. That was a big lesson in my life. I needed to move into a state of forgiveness with my children. I needed to be willing to face my own ability to do harm and to be harmed. Most importantly, I have all too human limitations.
A couple of weeks ago, Oprah was talking about forgiveness. She said "Forgiving is giving up the hope that the past could have been any different." It is simply a way of moving forward. Unfortunately, I think the human side of us keeps us wanting to stay in the same place. Moving forward is unknown and probably uncomfortable. Plus, forgiveness is an ongoing process. In our most important relationships, we should always be looking for, and giving forgiveness. Sometimes we have to do it over and over. Sometimes, we might even get it right and heal a hurt. Most importantly, we may even get to a place of being able to forgive ourselves. We may start living a life of someone who realizes that everyone makes mistakes.