Move On

I've heard a lot of lessons on the principle of forgiveness.  I've asked to be forgiven my share of times.  I know it's the one thing that everything else hangs on.  Nobody is perfect and the atonement makes forgiveness possible,  plus it's the thing I have to learn how to do to somehow deserve it in return.

I got the most in my face, practical, unmistakable lesson in forgiveness.  I watched an  85 year old man preparing to shred the childhood photos of his stepchildren and their mother and their grandmother because he felt he had been done wrong.  He's planning to sell the house he's been comfortable in for decades just so they can't  have it when he's gone.  Wow!  I just can't get there.  I'm not prepared to say he's a bad person.  Who am I to say?  BUT,  I wish he could see what his hurt and bitterness has done to him.  Moving at 85?  Just to stick it to somebody?

It's no wonder that we are taught over and over in the Bible that we need to forgive.  It can eat away at us--literally.  It really is the greater sin.  It keeps us from our own happiness.  There's a scripture that says if we choose to be unhappy now, we will be unhappy later.  I have it marked with, "Get Happy Now." 

I think over the next couple of days, I will be considering who I need to forgive and what I need to let go of so I can move on.  I want to be happy now (as happy as I can be--yep,  I'm talking about Ian again) and I want to be happy later, forever.  This is only one thing I need to work on.  One thing among many.  This is about me, not the 85 year old.  I can only change me.