"flying high on the wings of forgiveness"

so what if all of my titles for the week have been song lyrics? let me be great.

I just told ILYT a little about my story of a real break-through that I experienced yesterday. You know my life is pretty much an open book and I will share the story with you folks later (since I am a firm believer that the things we write can help others in some way). ILYT's response was "see that's why forgiveness is so important." She's right.

When we are hurt or feel like we've been wronged-we feel that we are justified in the actions that we take in response. We don't see what we did as wrong because "they" started it. When we are hurt it is easy to overlook our own faults in the situation.

The hope is that we each grow and learn each day. For those not of some type of spiritual walk, I'm not sure what this looks like, but for me it means as I grow in my walk with God, I also mature in my thinking and doing. It means that in my goal to be a better me, I spend some mirror time and some reflection time to learn from what I've experienced. So one night at bible study, Reverend Parker was in the middle of his relationships series. He suggested that we ask for forgiveness (from God) for the way we have handled some people in our damaged relationships and also to forgive them in our hearts. That night, (and so many other nights) a certain relationship was in my heart. I asked God to forgive me for my wrongs in the way I handled that person and that relationship. Then I truly forgave that person in my heart for my hurt. In that moment, I realized that while I had been praying for restoration of that relationship- forgiveness on my behalf had never even crossed my mind.

Again, this is a part of our nature to point out the things wrong in other people's lives and what they did wrong while ignoring the fifty-leven times that we've stumbled and fallen. This truly reminds me of many Christian's judgement of homosexuals while they are out with every Tom, Dick, and Harry doing whatever feels right at the time forgot about that verse while you were thumbin' through the verses to tape to the bottle of holy water that you are throwing at Miss Jay, huh? . I digress, the moral of this story is that we have to be willing to forgive others but we have also got to be bold enough to ask for forgiveness for the things that we've done. That ultimately boils down to us being big and bold enough to face ourselves and call ourselves out on our own BS. No one is perfect.