Quotes & Sayings About Forgiveness And Pain

Forgiving is an affair strictly between a victim and a victimizer. Everyone else should step aside ... The worst wounds I ever felt were the ones people gave to my children. Wrong my kids, you wrong me. And my hurt qualifies me to forgive you. But only for the pain you caused me when you wounded them. My children alone are qualified to forgive you for what you did to them. — Lewis B. Smedes

Jem's knees gave out, and he sank to the trunk at the foot of his bed, still playing. He played Will breathing the name Cecily, and he played himself watching the glint of his own ring on Tessa's hand on the train from York, knowing it was all a charade, knowing, too, that he wished that it wasn't. He played the sorrow in Tessa's eyes when she had come into the music room after Will had told her she would never have children. Unforgivable, that, what a thing to do, and yet Jem had forgiven him. Love was forgiveness, he had always believed that, and the things that Will did, he did out of some bottomless well of pain. Jem did not know the source of that pain, but he knew it existed and was real, knew it as he knew of the inevitability of his own death, knew it as he knew that he had fallen in love with Tessa Gray and that there was nothing he or anyone else could do about it. — Cassandra Clare

Forgiveness is a choice you can make to free yourself from the shackles of your past, from pain, hurt and resentment. Forgiveness is your road to inner freedom. It does not mean that you need to forget, deny or condone what has transpired. You choose to forgive because forgiveness is the only way to transcend painful experiences and to attain inner peace and freedom. Transcending Abuse & Betrayal. — Sasha Samy

Sweet Evelyn, I think, I should have loved you better.
Possessing perfect knowledge I hover above him as he hacks me to bits. I see his rough childhood. I see his mother doing something horrid to him with a broomstick. I see the hate in his heart and the people he had yet to kill before pneumonia gets him at eighty-three. I see the dead kid's mom unable to sleep, pounding her fists against her face in grief at the moment I was burying her son's hand. I see the pain I've caused. I see the man I could have been, and the man I was, and then everything is bright and new and keen with love and I sweep through Sam's body, trying to change him, trying so hard, and feeling only hate and hate, solid as stone. — George Saunders

My definition of forgiveness is a sigh, very like a sigh of relief, on which the memory of evil is breathed out.
With letting go of the memory, discontinuing the incessant replaying of pain, and instead feeling the unmitigated overness of the evil, the evildoer often looks quite different: flawed, like me, a child of God, like me. Forgiven, like me. — Nevada Barr

Vengeance is having a videotape planted in your soul that cannot be turned off. It plays the painful scene over and over again inside your mind ... And each time it plays you feel the clap of pain again ... Forgiving turns off the videotape of pained memory Forgiving sets you free. — Lewis B. Smedes

Forgiving other people does not mean that they will get away with what they did to you, it means that You are set free from the pain they have caused you. Forgiveness is the hardest lesson we are here to learn to master, but it is possible with time and patience. — Jeanette Coron

Withholding forgiveness until an offender understands or acknowledges the emotional pain they have inflicted is a subtle form of revenge. Why? Because it's hoping that the offender would hurt a little too, in order to understand. But this type of revenge robs you of your freedom and allows the offender to keep control of you. Dr. Chuck Lynch, I Should Forgive, but . — Beth Moore

For you see, the face of destiny or luck or god that gives us war also gives us other kinds of pain: the loss of health and youth; the loss of loved ones or of love; the fear that we will end our days alone. Some people suffer in peace the way others suffer in war. The special gift of that suffering, I have learned, is how to be strong while we are weak, how to be brave when we are afraid, how to be wise in the midst of confusion, and how to let go of that which we can no longer hold. In this way, anger can teach us forgiveness, hate can teach us love, and war can teach us peace. — Le Ly Hayslip

The depth of heartache and love, hurt and forgiveness we had experienced since the last time we were here. And my heart filled with gratitude for all of it, even the pain, because it had brought us here, to this very moment. — Mia Sheridan

You can give so much in this life, and that offers you many opportunities to release the self. For example, you can give time, helpfulness, donations, restraint, patience, noncontention, and forgiveness. Any path of service - including raising a family, caring for others, and many kinds of work - incorporates generosity. Envy - and its close cousin, jealousy - is a major impediment to generosity. So notice the suffering in envy, how it is an affliction upon you. Envy actually activates some of the same neural networks involved with physical pain (Takahashi et al. 2009). In a compassionate and kind way, remind yourself that you will be all right even if other people have fame, money, or a great partner - and you don't. To free yourself from the clutches of envy, send compassion and loving-kindness to people you envy. — Rick Hanson

Finding a way to extend forgiveness to ourselves is one of our most essential tasks. Just as others have been caught in suffering, so have we. If we look honestly at our life, we can see the sorrows and pain that have led to our own wrongdoing. In this we can finally extend forgiveness to ourselves; we can hold the pain we have caused in compassion. Without such mercy, we will live our own life in exile. — Jack Kornfield

When we harbor negative emotions toward others or toward ourselves, or when we intentionally create pain for others, we poison our own physical and spiritual systems. By far the strongest poison to the human spirit is the inability to forgive oneself or another person. It disables a person's emotional resources. The challenge ... is to refine our capacity to love others as well as ourselves and to develop the power of forgiveness. — Caroline Myss

Forgiveness enables me to walk away from that pain, the loneliness and suffering. — Sharon E. Rainey

forgiveness. It is not in denying the hopeless days that take place when others reject us or turn on us. It is not in minimizing the pain we experience at the hands of those who seem bent on ruining our lives. People turn on people. They betray one another. Crass unkindness, vicious plottings, horrible and intentional antagonisms are shown, and calling it a hopeless day hardly describes the extended season of struggle that many of us face at times. But there is a lesson at Calvary. Forgive everyone - anyone - whom you think has failed you, hurt you, offended you. If you think they've done anything to ruin your day, ruin your life, ruin your opportunities, ruin your dreams, or block your goals - forgive them. Forgiving others is the key to living in the liberty of the freeing forgiveness Jesus has given us, and it's the first step toward finding hope for a hopeless day, not to mention opening the door to new days unimagined. — Jack W. Hayford

As we embrace the mystery of love, we see that it contains not an absence of error, but the presence of grace. It contains not the absence of anger or pain, but the presence of forgiveness and healing. Not the absence of disharmony or confusion, but the presence of peace and clarity.
To make a home into a sanctuary, we must be willing to make room in our hearts for one another's limitations, as well as our gifts. For it is here in this sacred space of the home and family, so brimming with life, so full of every emotion available to our hearts, that we learn what it means to love within all the nuances of an intimate relationship. — Shea Darian

I have to cry out here that language is all we have for the delicacy and truth of telling, that words are the sole heroes and heroines of fiction. Their generosity and forgiveness make one weep. They will accept anything and stand by it, and show no sign of suffering. They will accept change, painlessly, the only pain being that experienced by those who use words, scattering them like beans in a field and hoping for morning beanstalks as high as the sky with heavenly commotion there, upstairs where the giants live. — Janet Frame

The Poor Children

Take heed of this small child of earth;
He is great; he hath in him God most high.
Children before their fleshly birth
Are lights alive in the blue sky.

In our light bitter world of wrong
They come; God gives us them awhile.
His speech is in their stammering tongue,
And his forgiveness in their smile.

Their sweet light rests upon our eyes.
Alas! their right to joy is plain.
If they are hungry Paradise
Weeps, and, if cold, Heaven thrills with pain.

The want that saps their sinless flower
Speaks judgment on sin's ministers.
Man holds an angel in his power.
Ah! deep in Heaven what thunder stirs,

When God seeks out these tender things
Whom in the shadow where we sleep
He sends us clothed about with wings,
And finds them ragged babes that weep — Victor Hugo

I only want you", she groaned. "Only you. Promise me that I can keep you. Promise me."
My heart ... shit, my heart.
It unlocked.
The padlock fell free.
Her words were a key. Her forgiveness, and love and strength and everything that made her pure stole me from my life of pain.
She changed me.
Right there.
Right then.
I became hers.
Irreversibly. — Pepper Winters

How to tell her in words, then, what he had learned himself by pain and grace? That only by forgiveness could she forget - and that forgiveness was not a single act, but a matter of constant practice. Perhaps — Diana Gabaldon

Forgive and be happy. — Lailah Gifty Akita

a shift in thinking' toward someone who has wronged you, 'such that your desire to harm that person has decreased and your desire to do him good (or to benefit your relationship) has increased.' Forgiveness, at a minimum, is a decision to let go of the desire for revenge and ill-will toward the person who wronged you. It may also include feelings of goodwill toward the other person. Forgiveness is also a natural resolution of
the grief process, which is the necessary acknowledgment of pain and loss. — Sonja Lyubomirsky

I forgive him and like water draining from the sand after a wave, the power he held over me disappears. A slow smile rises on my face. — Ryan Winfield

Pain can cause us to learn no end of lessons, but without resolution there can be no healing! — Stephen Richards

I get it! Something painful happens and that hate flares within and sticks around. Hate keeps the pain; forgiveness let's it go. Hate breeds poison, forgiveness breeds peace. When you chain yourself to hate, you chain yourself to pain. — Tony Curl

Forgiveness isn't for the person making the error. It's for the person wronged. It's so you can move on without the pain, anguish, resentment. You need to forgive and mean it. Only then will you be able to move on. — Leddy Harper

If there ever was someone who had a control over you, someone who could cause you the greatest pain, someone who could ignore your most necessary requirements and someone for whom forgiveness were truly difficult to render, that person is none other than YOU. — Stephen Richards

Closing her eyes for a moment against the pain and loss, Carrie asked quietly, "And what if I don't feel any forgiveness for her?" Softly, Mattie whispered, — Suzanne Woods Fisher

But I was learning forgiveness didn't have to be about granting absolution for sins but being able to find freedom from pain. — Heather Topham Wood

He was doctrinally convinced that there was a total absence of merit in himself; but that doctrinal conviction may be held without pain when the sense of demerit does not take a distinct shape in memory and revive the tingling of shame or the pang of remorse. Nay, it may be held with intense satisfaction when the depth of our sinning is but a measure for the depth of forgiveness, and a clenching proof that we are peculiar instruments of the divine intention. — George Eliot

But forgiveness is the act of not putting anyone out of your heart, even those who are acting out of deep ignorance or out of confusion and pain. — Jack Kornfield

Offer it up personally,then. Right now. I thought of how many people go to their graves unforgiven and unforgiving. I thought of how many people have had siblings or friends or children or lovers disappear from their lives before precious words of clemency or absolution could be passed along. How do the survivors of terminated relationships ever endure the pain of unfinished business? From that place of meditation, I found the answer-you can finish the business yourself, from within yourself. It's not only possible, it's essential. — Elizabeth Gilbert

I hear the word
in the hall
over and over again.
Suicide.
Suicide.
Suicide.
Did he or didn't he?
Everyone's got a guess.
Still no one knows for sure,
except Gabe,
but he's not talking.
Why does it even matter?
He's gone.
His, ours, theirs
blame needs a place.
His, ours, theirs
pain all over the place.
His, ours, theirs
forgiveness missing from this place. — Lisa Schroeder

Forgiveness is one of the most beautiful words in the human vocabulary. How much pain and unhappy consequences could be avoided if we all learned the meaning of this word! — Billy Graham

Through forgiveness you can be free of the tragedies and pain in other people's failures. — Bryant McGill

I want hard stories, I demand them from myself. Hard stories are worth the difficulty. It seems to me the only way I have forgiven anything, understood anything, is through that process of opening up to my own terror and pain and reexamining it, re-creating it in the story, and making it something different, making it meaningful - even if the meaning is only in the act of the telling. — Dorothy Allison

The supposedly intelligent are often too quick to judge
when really all that's needed is love
and understanding
but try not to judge them in return because
they will often judge themselves even more harshly
which is so sad
in a world that's already so full of pain that hugs
and forgiveness should be called for
every single day — Jay Woodman

When we forgive someone, we don't pretend that the harm didn't happen or cause us pain. We see it clearly for what it was, but we also come to see that fixating on the memory of harm generates anger and sadness. — Sharon Salzberg

I worry about fast forgivers. They tend to forgive quickly in order to avoid their pain. Or they forgive fast in order to get an advantage over the people they forgive. And their instant forgiving only makes things worse ... People who have been wronged badly and wounded deeply should give themselves time and space before they forgive ... There is a right moment to forgive. We cannot predict it in advance; we can only get ourselves ready for it when it arrives ... Don't do it quickly, but don't wait too long. — Lewis B. Smedes

He bathed in icy water and scrubbed and scratched his body with a block of pumice stone, and the pain
of his scraping seemed good to him. He knew that he had to tell his guilt to his father and beg his forgiveness. And he had to humble himself to Aron, not only now but always. He could not live without that. And yet, when he was called out and stood in the room with Sheriff Quinn and his father, he was as raw and angry as a surly dog and his hatred of himself turned outward toward everyone - a vicious cur he was, unloved, unloving. — John Steinbeck

The only thing that will make us remain glued to being the victim is our failure to handle the emotions that we go through and the pain that overcomes us. — Stephen Richards

I said the Lord's Prayer hundreds of times, hoping to forgive the killers who were murdering all around me. It was no use-every time I got to the part asking God to "forgive those who trespass against us," my mouth went dry. I couldn't say the words because I didn't truly embrace the feeling behind them. My inability to forgive caused me even greater pain than the anguish I felt in being separated from my family, and it was worse than the physical torment of being constantly hunted. — Immaculee Ilibagiza

Yes. I really love you, Becky, and when you love someone that much, the pain and the pleasure is that much more intense. But forgiveness is a given. — Linda Warren

Jonathan Edwards, the dear old soul, who, if his doctrine is true, is now in heaven rubbing his holy hands with glee, as he hears the cries of the damned, preached this doctrine; and he said: 'Can the believing husband in heaven be happy with his unbelieving wife in hell? Can the believing father in heaven be happy with his unbelieving children in hell? Can the loving wife in heaven be happy with her unbelieving husband in hell?' And he replies: 'I tell you, yea. Such will be their sense of justice, that it will increase rather than diminish their bliss.' There is no wild beast in the jungles of Africa whose reputation would not be tarnished by the expression of such a doctrine.
These doctrines have been taught in the name of religion, in the name of universal forgiveness, in the name of infinite love and charity. — Robert G. Ingersoll

We didn't know how much love and forgiveness and understanding would be required to make it back on the path we were meant to be in, together. But what we did know was that we were here because we had both been willing to fight; to fight for each other, to fight for ourselves, to fight for love. And that means that despite all the pain that we had endured to be where we are, in the end, love won. ~Evie, Epilogue — Mia Sheridan

You can learn to heal yourself, learn to understand that the pain you feel today is the strength you feel tomorrow! — Stephen Richards

Forgiveness was work, Eduardo told victims' families
but so, then, was love, and deciding what was right, and defending it. Recusing yourself from judgment so you won't be tainted by the aggressor's sin is the same as turning away from empathy so you won't be touched by the victim's pain. — Jennifer DuBois

I hated myself, and the part of me that was cowardly wished for a simple solution: an exchange of pain for forgiveness. But life didn't work that way, and fucking up was forever. — Alexis Hall

Forgive the person who has caused the most pain in your life and it will make you feel better. — Suzanne Somers

Forgiveness is how we show forth love in the world. It is the balm that heals all wounds. It comes from our soul and our soul is always free. We keep ourselves stuck when we forget to recognize our freedom through forgiveness. Forgiveness is the only answer to pain because it is the only answer that puts pain in the proper perspective. - Livnam Kaur — Bryant McGill

Remember: God's grief at the unspeakable things we do to one another is beyond measuring, but so is His mercy. It might seem a terrible thing to say to people who've lost and suffered so much at the hands of hatred and violence. But true courage is not to hate our enemy, any more than to fight and kill him. To love him, to love in the teeth of his hate - that is real bravery. That ought to earn people m-m-medals. — Tony Hendra

If he can't handle you at your worst then he does not deserve you at your best. Real love means seeing beyond the words spoken out of pain, and instead seeing a person's soul. — Shannon L. Alder

With time and perspective we recognize that such problems in life do come for a purpose, if only to allow the one who faces such despair to be convinced that he really does need divine strength beyond himself, that she really does need the offer of heaven's hand. Those who feel no need for mercy usually never seek it and almost never bestow it. Those who have never had a heartache or a weakness or felt lonely or forsaken never have had to cry unto heaven for relief of such personal pain. Surely it is better to find the goodness of God and the grace of Christ, even at the price of despair, than to risk living our lives in a moral or material complacency that has never felt any need for faith or forgiveness, any need for redemption or relief. — Jeffery R. Holland

This is something I think that blues music, or folk music, and all those particular genres that have a perspective about life deal with - where the difficulties of life are seen as something that are very natural and nothing to be embarrassed about, and something that we all go through; something that's part of our share of humanity. And it accepts those difficulties and pain as such. I think there's a wonderful forgiveness that can come over you, if you have that perspective on it. — Joan Osborne

Forgiveness in no way justifies the actions that caused your wounding, nor does it mean that you have to seek out those who harmed you. It is simply a movement to release and ease your heart of the pain and hatred that binds it. It is the harvested fruit of a season of darkness, followed by a season of growth and of very hard work. — Dawna Markova

Forgive means for get the hurt and give love. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Let go of all your hurt and be healed. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Once you decide to forgive, you initiate the healing process. Forgiveness gives your soul permission to move on to the higher and healthier ground of emotional recovery. Forgiveness is to your soul what antibiotics are to infection. It is the curative agent that will help to fully restore your soul. It doesn't immediately remove the pain of defense but it does start you on the road to recovery. — Will Davis Jr.

Everything you experience is a blessing and pushes you toward realizing your true self. — Vivian Amis

Whether we're forgiving our parents or someone else or ourselves, the laws of mind remain the same. As we love, we shall be released from pain and as we deny love, we shall remain in pain. Each of us have different fears and different manifestations of fear, but all of us are saved by the same technique: The call to God to save our lives by salvaging our minds. 'Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For love is the kingdom and love is the glory and love is the power, forever and forever. — Marianne Williamson

Forgiveness is a process of giving up the old for something new. Old experiences and memories that we hold on to in anger, resentment, shame, or guilt cloud our spirit mind. The truth is, everything that has happened had to happen. It was a growth experience. There was something you needed to know or learn. If you stay angry, hurt, afraid, ashamed, or guilty, you miss the lesson. You will be stuck in a cloud of pain. — Iyanla Vanzant

If you did something in 1975 that you deeply regret and that you now can recognize as having been profoundly irresponsible, for example, the only way to be lifted out of deep regret and the pain over it is through atonement - through the kind of remorse that leads to genuine atonement, the making of amends, and forgiveness of self and others. — Marianne Williamson

Their pain [the injurer's pain at having injured you] and your pain create the point and counterpoint for the rhythm of reconciliation. When the beat of their pain is a response to the beat of yours, they have become truthful in their feelings ... they have moved a step closer to a truthful reunion. — Lewis B. Smedes

I am betrayed and played but right now im feeling nothing pain but to forgive, it's because I love God too much that I can't hate. — AKA

No pain will last forever. It is not easy, but life was never meant to be either easy or fair. Repentance and the lasting hope that forgiveness brings will always be worth the effort. — Boyd K. Packer

The Aramaic word for "forgive" means literally to "untie." Hatred and anger had bound me to my pain. The fastest way to free the self from an enemy and all associated negativity is to forgive. Untie those bindings; free yourself from that person's ugliness. — Sharon E. Rainey

You know we talked about where people go when they die. I just believe you go someplace and I seen her layin there and I thought maybe she wouldn't go to heaven because, you know, I thought she wouldn't and I thought about God forgivin people and I thought about if I could ask God to forgive me for killin that son of a bitch because you and me both know I ain't sorry for it and I reckon this sounds ignorant but I didn't want to be forgiven if she wasn't. I didn't want to do or be nothin that she wasn't like going to heaven or anything like that. — Cormac McCarthy

This pain you are avoiding is a very necessary pain that will make you strong again. — Stephen Richards

Most people are only doing the best that they know how to do.Blaming and holding grudges only brings more pain. — Maggie Cox

Forgiveness is something that we are often asked to grant and very few of us ever have the roadmap of how to get from the pain that we have experienced to being able to forgive someone. — Desmond Tutu

But forgiveness ... I'll hold on to that fragile slice of hope and keep it close, remembering that in each of us lie good and bad, light and dark, art and pain, choice and regret, cruelty and sacrifice. — Libba Bray

A man of God has many brothers. He is a wounded soldier - he is familiar with the pain one feels in his heart, as a close and loving brother, when a brother falls victim of evil men or turns to evil desires (the latter sometimes even betrayal). Because of this, too, he is and must be well-acquainted with and trained in the strengths of hope and the gentleness of forgiveness and mercy. — Criss Jami

Pain will never lessen without forgiveness, it will only manifest as anger and harden into resentment or bitterness. — Tiffany L. Jackson

After the dead are buried, after the physical pain of grief has become a permanent wound in the soul, then comes the transcendent and common bond of human suffering, and with that comes forgiveness, and with forgiveness comes love. — Andre Dubus

The pain you have gone through will give you the strength of character to come through it all, so long as you learn from what you have suffered then it was not suffering at all. — Stephen Richards

The pain you feel is simply because you do not yet have the strength to forgive. But you will grow strong again, that is for sure. — Stephen Richards

But as you are surely aware, forgiveness doesn't mean you let the forgiven stomp all over you once again. Forgiveness means you've found a way forward that acknowledges harm done and hurt caused without letting either your anger or your pain rule your life or define your relationship with the one who did you wrong. — Cheryl Strayed

Most of us need time to work through pain and loss. We can find all manner of reasons for postponing forgiveness. One of these reasons is waiting for the wrongdoers to repent before we forgive them. Yet such a delay causes us to forfeit the peace and happiness that could be ours. — James E. Faust

Forgive for yourself and for the peace it will bring to your pain. — Bryant McGill

Don't remain in bondage to the negative energy produced by past pain and disappointment. Let forgiveness be your freedom. — Stephan Labossiere

She wanted to hurt him. Hurt him bad. But she knew that his heart would forgive. So she hurt his mind. The mind that doesn't forgive. It remembers, for a very long time. And that's what she wanted. For him to remember always. What it means to get hurt, experience pain inside the brain, all the time. This would ensure that he never ever forgets her. The heart was weak, it always had room for forgiveness. But the mind did not. — Anushka Bhartiya

I always asked for forgiveness for my sins right away but I never accepted it until I felt right that I had suffered enough to pay for it. God revealed to me what I was doing how much unnecessary pain I was causing myself. He even showed me that what I was doing was an insult to Jesus that in essence I was saying Lord the sacrifice of Your life and blood was good but not good enough. I must add my work of feeling guilty before I can be forgiven. — Joyce Meyer

Don't forget that in the midst of all your pain and heartache, you are surrounded by beauty, the wonder of creation, art, your music and culture, the sounds of laughter and love, of whispered hopes and celebrations, of new life and transformation, of reconciliation and forgiveness. — Wm. Paul Young

There are many ways that I have hurt and harmed others, have betrayed or abandoned them, caused them suffering, knowingly or unknowingly, out of my pain, fear, anger, and confusion.
Let yourself remember and visualize the ways you have hurt others. See the pain you have caused out of your own fear and confusion. Feel your own sorrow and regret. Sense that finally you can release this burden and ask for forgiveness. Take as much time as you need to picture each memory that still burdens your heart. And then as each person comes to mind, gently say:
I ask for your forgiveness, I ask for your forgiveness. — Jack Kornfield

Relationships only get to exist as long as they keep breathing in the air of mutual forgiveness, and he and I have found an uncommon grace. Grace can strike when you are in great pain and light you with the greatest hope. I — Ann Voskamp

I'll understand if you don't want me. But I will be heartbroken. You are all I ever dreamed of and hoped for. You are much, much more. Please know that I didn't think I was mean-minded. But I realize I am. I don't want you to put your arms around me and say it's all right, that you forgive me. I want you to be sure that you do, and my love for you will last as long as I live. I can see no lightness, no humour, no joke to make. I just hope that we will be able to go back to when we had laughter, and the world was coloured, not black and white and grey. I am so sorry for hurting you. I could inflict all kinds of pain on myself, but it would not take back any I gave to you. - David Power — Maeve Binchy

What we teach our children is that earth is your mother that provides; she's a giver. So, please first ask forgiveness from the mother earth before you step on to it and cause it pain. — Narendra Modi

Abruptly. "That's the way it always is. People hurt you and walk all over you. They lie to you and betray you, and then with those two little words, they expect it should all somehow be wiped from the slate. As if I'm sorry had some sort of magical powers to take away the pain." ... I know your faith says you're supposed to forgive people when they ask for it, but I think that's malarkey. Why give absolution to someone when they're only seeking forgiveness to ease their own conscience ? They don't care that what they've done has permanently scarred you. They don't care that they've robbed you of all security." ... When pressed for a reason for their actions or when facing the consequences, people are suddenly ever so sorry and apologetic ." She looked at Jana, but Jana was sure she didn't see her. Her mother was a million miles away. "Consequences don't just go away. They aren't suddenly dissolved just because forgiveness has been desired or given. — Tracie Peterson

I didn't have a catharsis for my childhood pain, most of us don't, and until I learned how to forgive those people and let it go, I was unhappy. — Tyler Perry

Keep in mind, hurting people often hurt other people as a result of their own pain. If somebody is rude and inconsiderate, you can almost be certain that they have some unresolved issues inside. They have some major problems, anger, resentment, or some heartache they are trying to cope with or overcome. The last thing they need is for you to make matters worse by responding angrily. — Joel Osteen

I believe in the pursuit of happiness. Not its attainment, nor its final definition, but its pursuit. I believe in the journey, not the arrival; in conversation, not monologues; in multiple questions rather than any single answer. I believe in the struggle to remake ourselves and challenge each other in the spirit of eternal forgiveness, in the awareness that none of us knows for sure what happiness truly is, but each of us knows the imperative to keep searching. I believe in the possibility of surprising joy, of serenity through pain, of homecoming through exile. — Andrew Sullivan

Let go of your pain and heal your wounds. — Lailah Gifty Akita

If her past were your past, her pain your pain, her level of consciousness your level of consciousness, you would think and act exactly as she does. With this realization comes forgiveness, compassion and peace. — Eckhart Tolle

Her face crumpled and he felt her pain as if it was his own. He wanted to take it back, but just like that memory, it was always going to be there.
She worked to get control over her features, then said, "I'm sorry I didn't defend you. I'm sorry I didn't tell them you were my guest."
Jem hadn't thought he cared anymore, not really, but her words were tugging loose the hard, painful knot in his chest. "It's okay."
She shook her head. "It's not. It wasn't."
He reached out and cupped her cheek in his hand. He didn't know what else to say and all he wanted was to touch her skin, let her know that he wasn't that boy anymore and that she wasn't that girl. — Mary Jane Hathaway

Forgiveness has nothing to do with absolving a criminal of his crime. It has everything to do with relieving oneself of the burden of being a victim
letting go of the pain and transforming oneself from victim to survivor. — C.R. Strahan

We invent what we need to get us by, but in doing so we are really continuing to hold on to the pain of yesterday. — Stephen Richards

So in practicing blanket forgiveness you first assume that in any current condition of pain or discomfort there is some anger involved, even if you don't know what it's about. Then you touch the area of your body that is in pain or discomfort with the fingers of either hand and say, "Whatever this is related to, I forgive it completely and it doesn't matter anymore. — Serge Kahili King

But what? But it was just so much easier to deal with the old pain by ignoring it? Forgetting it? Andy's presence meant having to actively work at forgiving him, and that was hard. Forgetting was much easier than forgiving
forgiving was an on-going process that had to continue past the dramatic declarations of apology and absolution. — Diana Killian

The incentive to peacemaking is love, but it degenerates into appeasement whenever justice is ignored. To forgive and to ask for forgiveness are both costly exercises. All authentic Christian peacemaking exhibits the love and justice-and so the pain-of the cross. — John Stott

I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded; not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night. — Khaled Hosseini