Got More Misery?

     Even though I blogged last week about the pain of resentment, I’m still wrestling with how hard forgiveness is. A reader wrote me he’s in the middle of forgiving a friend of 53 years. “I’ll overlook a lot to keep a relationship going,” he says. “Grudges weigh too much, and I don’t need any extra weight.”
​     Nor do I. Yet I let grudges weigh me down. I may take a first step toward forgiveness by choosing to pardon, what Denver counselor Dr. Michael Ballard calls the “decisional” phase of forgiving. But what trips me up is the huge backpack of emotions I lug around. How can I unload them? When I don’t, I fall into a tar pit of misery, hurting myself way more than the original offense committed against me.
     What helps me to unload the bricks in my backpack is to remind myself that my creator God could have turned his back on me when I turned my back on him. But he didn’t. In the same way, I shouldn’t turn my back on others, but extend forgiveness. This may not restore trust and friendship, but it’s a start.
​     How do you unload your backpack of tough emotions so they don’t weigh you down?