Forgiveness

Forgiveness isn't something you have to earn, it's not something you can work for, it's not a commodity to be traded or exchanged.  Forgiveness is what we give when we truly love ourselves and one another.

If I truly love you, no matter how much you hurt me, I must forgive your missteps and painful actions, because love isn't limited to the nice things we do for on another, it's not just about the ways we build each other up and cheer each other on.  Love, real love, is about radical acceptance.  It means saying, "yes, you are flawed, yes, you hurt me, and yes, you should feel remorse, but I accept you for who you are, for what you need, for your weaknesses as much as your strengths, for your shortcomings as much as for your successes, and I forgive you because to hold back forgiveness would mean denying myself the right to love you."

When we love our neighbors as ourselves--and we should all love ourselves enough to forgive our own failings--then we simply have to love those who wrong us.  If we cannot extend that pure hand of forgiveness, then the love we believed we felt was never real, it was just an illusion of what we thought love had to be.

Real love sees and accepts everything.  Real love forgives.  This does not mean you should be a doormat for those who have hurt you, and it doesn't mean accepting violence or neglect.  But, when the human beings we love turn out to be simply human, flawed and capable of failure, our own humanity must surface so that we can heal and continue to love because that is, after all, why we are here. 

There is nothing more important.