Where does the time go? Been 10 days since I posted? geez. That was unheard of back in the day.
Anyway, got stopped dead in my tracks last night by these words of a Wise Internet Sage (especially the last paragraph). Shared with ya'll with said Sage's permission
Maybe forgiveness is simply the act of letting go of the hurt and allowing ourselves to move past it while continuing to live. To take the lesson we have learned and use that knowledge, instead of being paralyzed by the fear that it will happen again. Not to be stupid, no, nor turn a blind eye, but instead to trust ourselves, knowing that we have already faced a terrible thing and survived. We try to teach our children to learn from their experiences - why then do our own often experiences make us want to hide.
Bitterness, resentment, anger, these are all extremely heavy burdens to carry. If we can find a way to forgive, maybe we can just lay down that burden and cherish what we do have.
Sometimes I look around at other couples in their mediocre relationships and wonder if there is a bomb in there waiting to drop. Or maybe the bomb will never drop and they will simply continue to go on as they are, never realizing how much more there could be to their relationships.
Maybe we are the "lucky" ones in that we all really know how great our marriages could be, and we have this wonderful goal to strive for. All they have is what they think they know, the same thing, day in, day out. I don't know what is better: to never really live and never really hurt, existing in a state of numb indifference, taking each other for granted; or to experience the highs and lows of what we are going through - at least we know we are alive, we know what we want, we are striving to make ourselves better people and to, hopefully, make our marriages better in the process.
If you saw The Matrix (the original), you may see the parallel here - which pill would you choose?
