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What Forgiveness Means

Qualities of Forgiveness

Oct 23, 2006 Rhonda Langefeld

Mrs. Billy Graham once said that a marriage is made up of two good forgivers. In order to get better at forgiving, we need to know what forgiveness means.

It pays to practice being a good forgiver in marriage, because somewhere along the way you're going to need your spouse to forgive you too. Check the qualities of forgiveness below. Do they describe what you understand about forgiveness in your marriage?

Forgiveness is, first of all, a decision--a decision that we make in the middle of often turbulent feelings. And, it is a decision we may have to remake daily as our hurt feelings subside.
Forgiveness is a tool for dealing with the pain in life--and with the natural disasters that happen when two faulty human beings live together for long periods of time.
Forgiveness is aggressive--a powerful thing that keeps the incident from doing us further harm. People who will not forgive are enslaved to the incident that caused them hurt, enslaved for as long as they choose not to forgive.
Forgiveness is grace, something not deserved, but needed. If I deserved forgiveness, then I wouldn't really need it. You could just excuse my actions and be done with it. Instead, you give me grace and cancel the emotional debt I owe you.
Forgiveness is free. We don't make someone grovel for it. We don't use the incident for emotional blackmail. We don't hold the incident over our spouse's head anymore. ("Remember the last time you got distracted and wrecked the car?")
Forgiveness is honest. No pretending here. And no pretending you, the forgiver, don't hurt either. Honesty strengthens a marriage because intimacy and understanding are the foundations of love. Without honesty, those foundations are compromised, weakened. A healthy marriage is honest in its hurt and honest in its healing.
Forgiveness removes the blocks in a relationship and allows it to begin again. The giving and receiving of forgiveness is a way both spouses can say, "We believe in our relationship. We value our relationship. We want our relationship to keep on going."

If forgiveness has not taken place, certain symptoms will show up in a marriage. We'll look at those next time.

Next: Diagnosing the Need to Forgive--the ABCs.

The copyright of the article What Forgiveness Means in Marriage is owned by Rhonda Langefeld. Permission to republish What Forgiveness Means in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.