Resentment and Forgiveness

For those of you who don't know I just finished 2 weeks of intensive outpatient thearpy at Aurora Pavilion at Aiken Regional Hospital- I learned a lot. I was sad to be discharged so soon but will be seeing a therapist/physchiatrist starting the end of June. It helped me first of all to realize that what I am going through is SO MINIMAL to what some people are dealing with. That was the first lesson I learned is to be thankful for how truly blessed I am.

Second of all we learned and talked a lot about resentments and forgiveness. Here are some pointers for you from the workbook that we used:

-Resentment is hard, cold anger that eats away at us/
-Resentment destroys our inner peace
-Resentment is like weeds that are deeply rooted. They grow quickly and easily and when left alone they can crowd out our other feelings.

*We must take action ourselves in order to heal resentments (and with the help of God). The power to end resentments is in the hands of the one who resents, not in the hands of the one who offended

*When we are caught up in our resentments we cannot grow emotionally or spiritually.

We then did exercises regarding all of this and got in to talking about forgiving

-Forgiving is an act of kindness to ourselves, not to the person we forgive.
-Forgiving means changing both our attitudes and our actions
-Forgiving means we must be willing to forgive not only others, but also ourselves

*Many people can begin to forgive others by praying for them. Another way is to think good thoughts about them.

*Forgiving is the way we let go of resentments

I thought these statements were very powerful and I will probably go through this booklet multiple times. Just some things for you to think on today and remember that God is the Father of forgiveness, and satan the father of resentment. Whose side do you want to be on?