Forgiveness does not say the harm was acceptable.
It says the harm will no longer be permitted to own every room inside you.
The hand cannot receive something new while it remains closed around the old pain.
When you explore pain, sorrow, abuse, trauma, injustice, healing and recovery—good for you literally. Let it go just like it came. Navigate through or rise above
A hearty BRAVO too.
Another person’s suffering disturbs me deeply because these are my like-kind—my fellow sojourners making their way through life the best they can.
They are no different from me.
They want safety, peace, love and happiness too.
MANKIND’S HISTORY AND ORIGINS
Human history is filled with suffering and loss.
Some are caused by fellow human beings.
Others arrive through nature, illness, accident or circumstances we never chose.
Farmers, warriors, parents, children, businesspeople and every person in between eventually cross paths with sorrow, harm, confusion and loss.
We ask:
Why was this allowed?
What purpose could possibly exist inside it?
Why me?
Why them?
Why at all?
I will not pretend that quick answers can satisfy deep wounds.
Some questions require time, faith, truth, professional help and the caring presence of other people.
Some questions remain questions for quite a while.
MY BELIEFS AS AN EXAMPLE
Everyone must search for their own peace and understanding.
Here is mine—not as a demand, but as an example of what helped me.
My journey led me to the Adam and Eve story.
I understood their disobedience as a separation from God—a separation followed by hardship, confusion, suffering and loss.
Human beings were now learning the consequences of choosing their own way apart from divine guidance.
Woe unto us.
Yet even within that separation, I saw God continuing to teach, guide and invite humanity home.
That became part of my answer.
You must seek yours.
WHAT WAS LOST
I imagined humanity like orphaned children—without the protection, closeness and guidance once available to them.
Cast adrift, we moved in every direction, attempting to discover good and evil for ourselves.
We learned through consequence.
We hurt one another.
We hurt ourselves.
We confused freedom with doing anything we wanted and then wondered why our choices sometimes returned carrying pain.
Still, the invitation to return remained.
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS—THE WRITTEN WORD
For me, the Ten Commandments represented great assistance.
They supplied boundaries for people trying to find their way back toward God and toward one another.
Do not murder.
Do not steal.
Do not bear false witness.
Honor what is worthy.
These commandments attempted to restrain the very behaviors that create suffering.
Yet knowing what is right does not automatically make doing what is right easy.
Human nature still had its struggles.
Mine certainly did.
HOPE AND LOVE—THE LIVING WORD
Christian faith promised someone who would help humanity with its journey of redemption.
For me, that person is Jesus Christ.
His central direction was simple to understand, though not always simple to practice:
Love God.
Love your neighbor.
Forgive.
Show mercy.
Serve.
Walk humbly.
The instruction was not merely spoken.
It was lived.
WORTHY NOTE: Jesus experienced rejection, humiliation, betrayal, suffering and abuse despite doing nothing to deserve them. For Christians, this means our pain is not being observed only from a safe distance. Christ entered human suffering and carried it personally.
YOU CANNOT PLAY GOD
Payback can feel powerful.
Resentment may feel justified.
The injured person may imagine that holding the anger keeps the offender on trial.
But the courtroom is now operating inside the injured person day and night.
That becomes another kind of sentence.
Jesus emphasized forgiveness and refusing personal vengeance.
That does not mean denying what happened.
It does not mean calling evil good.
It does not mean abandoning justice, protection, consequences or necessary boundaries.
It does not require returning to an unsafe person.
Forgiveness and reconciliation are not always the same thing.
Forgiveness can open the hand.
Reconciliation requires truth, responsibility, change and safety from everyone involved.
PAUSE FOR CAUSE
Forgiveness cannot be forced upon someone according to another person’s schedule.
Trauma does not leave because someone says, “Get over it.”
Healing takes whatever time it takes.
Each person is different.
Sometimes forgiveness begins as nothing more than a willingness not to remain imprisoned forever.
That willingness may be enough for today.
ANOTHER CHANCE—AND ANOTHER
One of the great comforts in my faith is the availability of another chance.
We fail.
We recognize it.
We try again.
Then we may fail differently. LOL.
Grace does not tell me that failure is good.
Grace tells me failure does not have to be final.
Humility, sacrifice, repentance and forgiveness keep the journey moving.
A person may need another chance times one thousand before the lesson settles into the soul.
I am grateful those chances exist because I have needed plenty of them myself.
FIND YOUR UNDERSTANDING—NOT MINE
Jesus Christ has been a Godsend to me.
Through Him, I found answers to the riddle of my life and existence. I also found a way to share what helped me with others.
This is my testimony.
It is not a weapon to use against someone who believes differently.
The main question remains:
What are you holding that continues to hold you?
Where will you find the truth, care and help needed to loosen its grip?
Your path may involve faith, counseling, community, time, protected distance or all of them working together.
Find the path that moves you toward truth and life.
FORGIVE AND YOU WILL BE FORGIVEN
I have needed forgiveness beyond count.
That made it reasonable for me to extend forgiveness to others.
I could not ask mercy for myself while refusing even to consider mercy for anyone else.
Christ’s example—what He said and what He did—proved itself in my life.
Yet forgiveness did not rewrite the past.
It changed my relationship with the past.
The event remained part of my history, but it no longer needed to remain the ruler of my present.
That is freedom as I came to understand it.
PEARLS INSIGHT
Forgiveness is not handing the offender a victory.
It is refusing to keep carrying the offender everywhere you go.
The wound deserves care.
The wrong deserves truth.
The offender may deserve consequences.
And you deserve the possibility of peace.
RICHIE SPEAKS
Open the hand when you are ready.
Not because the stone was never heavy.
Not because someone tells you it should no longer hurt.
Open it because your hand was designed for more than carrying pain.
It was designed to reach, build, embrace, pray, help and receive.
FINAL SAY
What happened to you matters.
Your healing matters too.
Seek truth.
Accept help.
Maintain the boundaries that protect you.
Let justice perform its proper work.
Then, when the time is right, consider whether holding on is still serving your life—or quietly stealing more of it.
You are not alone.
You are cherished.
You are wanted.
You are loved.
The hand cannot receive something new while it remains closed around the old pain.
When you are ready, open the hand.
— Richie
Pearls for the Soul
when you feed the soul, you feed everything.
https://pearlsforthesoul.com
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