HEAVEN LETTER 1422 - How to Forgive When You Can’t

God said:

IF YOU CANNOT at this moment find it in your heart to forgive, don’t force it. Just let go of it. Forgiveness is not something you do.

In the case of a girlfriend or boyfriend or husband or wife who has left you and chosen another, your heart hurts on many levels, and your hurts go deep.

But even a small thing can harden your heart - even a stranger, a salesperson perhaps, is rude or indifferent to you, and you stand helplessly by.

The hurt you feel from a loved one cuts a deeper and wider swath, and yet, the hurts are the same. One you identify as big, and one you identify as small. Yet there is no difference in forgiveness except in the time you take to let go of the hurt.

In the case of a salesperson who does not treat you right, you may live it over and over again for a while, but you never thought your life was dependent upon that salesperson and soon enough you find other aggravations to take the place of this one. Perhaps another salesperson.

But in the case of a grand love, you do not think anyone can take their place. You think they are irreplaceable. You had a dream, beloved, and now your dream is defunct.

When someone you have loved no longer treats you rightly, through abandonment, through preference for another, through whatever device the human mind creates, you are convinced that your life is dependent upon the existence of your former love in it. Somewhere somehow you got the idea that your loved one had to stay your loved one, had to stay in your life, had to be there for you. You feel that he or she has been amputated from your life and heart and that you are left with an enormous wound that will not heal despite all your best efforts, all your prayers, all your will. You feel that your heart has been cut in half. You feel that love and trust and identity have been taken from you.
You would forgive if you knew how. You would forgive if you could see that this person, this individual who has left you did not leave you with a mortal wound. You would forgive if only you could see this tragedy differently.

Forgiveness is not a matter of will. It is not a result of effort. You are not going to force forgiveness anymore than you can force a lost love to return. Let go of effort. Effort can only push the wound deeper. Effort is opposed to letting go. Effort is indeed a form of holding on. You would control forgiveness if you could, but forgiveness is not something you control. Forgiveness is more like a discovery, more like something that arrives, more like something you finally allow yourself to receive.

When you are in the midst of your agony at what seems like betrayal, you feel you can never recover. It doesn’t help you to hear that you are better off. You are hurting right now. It doesn’t help you to hear that you will get over it.

What does someone else know of the depth of your devotion? In truth, beloved, despite your pain and your loyalty, your devotion is more like attachment than devotion. Love would bless your loved one along their path, wouldn’t it? Even when the path is a different one from yours. You do not want to listen, but your pulse beats: “What good would it be for me to be with one who no longer wants to be with me?”

Somehow you hold the other person responsible, but they committed no sin. They may not have desired this change either. What were they supposed to do? Pretend? And for how long? And would you really have wanted that?
What do you think it would cost you to say to your lost love - to say
silently:

“I wish you well. Be on your way. I will go on mine. I release you from any imagined obligation to me. You are obligated to follow your own heart, not mine. I would not rule you. I do not wish to take you away from your happiness, anymore than you wanted to take my happiness away from me. I only imagined for a while that you were my happiness. Forgive me for making you responsible for my happiness. I know now that you are not. You never were. It was my own dream, and now my dream of life with you is at an end. And now my new life begins. Thank you for all the joy you gave me, and thank you for moving on when that was what you had to do. I give you a good send-off to your new life, and I welcome mine.

“And if I cannot say this to you truly from my heart, then I ask God to do it for me. I ask God to bless you in my name, and I ask God to relieve me of any burdens I hold to myself or any restrictions I would put upon you. I ask God to make me as free as you. God’s love can melt my heart that hardened toward you. God’s love will.

“I wait for the miracle of His love to reach me fully and undeniably. God has said it takes only willingness, not my will. I have plenty of willingness.

“Meanwhile, I go about my life, and I give little bits of my love along the way to friends and strangers until my heart is once again open to the fullness of the love that I can give.”

It costs you nothing to say this. The universe will hear it. And I have heard it. I heard it long ago before you spoke it, My beloved.

 

HEAVEN LETTER #1467 A Coconut Fell

God said:

MUST YOU GO from one extreme to another? Must you go from high excitement to low despair? Must you? It is like you let yourself be whipped from side to side by the winds of change. But you are not a ball to be batted back and forth. You are a Child of God, and I am your ballast.

You are not tossed from hand to hand. Why then are you so perturbed and disturbed by what someone says or what occurs? Why must every gust of wind or wave of the ocean shake you so? They must not. You are not so vulnerable as you make out.

Consider yourself a great Buddha who sits still. What rocks the Buddha? He sits and he smiles. He is his own peace. Mountains may erupt, and the Buddha sits and the Buddha smiles. What does he know that you do not? He knows he does not have to run from side to side. Do you really think you must?

Established in peace, the Buddha is not disrupted. Buddha is magnificent in his peace. His mind is calm. What can shatter his calmness of mind? What is he attuned to that you are not? What does he possess that you do not besides calm and deep awareness of his connectedness to Me? Why, you can have peace and love any time you decide. Decide once and for all.

You are not what happens around you. You are not what seems to happen to you. You are not your thoughts. You are not your actions. You are not your reactions. You are Child of God.

You are not a whim of the world.

You are not an interloper.

If life is a tent, you are one of the posts that hold it together. The canvas may blow in the breeze, but you are a stalwart post who keeps the tent together.
Know who you are and your position in the universe.

You are not a flutter mill.

You are My eyes on the world.

You look and you see on My behalf.

You are a witness to the world. You are like an objective reporter. You are present at events, and yet you know that events are independent of you. A reporter is not derailed. He observes. He notes down. He does not bear arms. What occurs occurs. Whatever may happen, it does not happen to him. He is there as an objective observer, and he writes it down. Even in the middle of the fray, he is not in it.

He watches the stream of life. He may be in the stream, but he knows he is an observer of the stream. He may get wet, but he knows he is not wetness. He knows he is the same observer in or out of the water or on a branch of a tree.

What is the merit of getting upset at what befalls? It is not your assignment nor instruction to get upset. It is your instruction to be settled whatever your circumstances are. You are not to get red-faced. In the midst, you are yet on the periphery. You are a neutral observer. You are like the United Nations. You observe and you report. You care but you are cool.

You are apart from agitation. A coconut can fall from a tree onto your head. You recognize that a coconut fell and it landed on your head. You rub your head. You do not take the event personally. You are not upset with the coconut. You do not rail against the coconut. You do not hold a grudge against coconuts.

Life occurs. All you know is that you were under a tree, and a coconut fell.

© Gloria Wendroff, 2004

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gloria Wendroff always loved reading, writing, and inspiration, but she never gave much thought to God - let alone dreamed that a time would come when she would hang on to every word of the Best Storyteller of All. Not until after forty-two years of wandering did she become conscious of a desire for God. Then it was another twenty more before she began to hear a whisper. Now, looking back, she can see a tiny hint here or there but nothing to prepare her for what was to come. After teaching creative writing, English, ESL, and business communications, writing boundary-breaking resumes and a monthly job advice column for many years, she learned and taught meditation, traveled Europe, studied in Thailand and India, and discovered God back in America. Of all the messengers along the way, two were movies! One was a photograph. At least one was a book. And, of course, many, many were people. There was no one great epiphany. There were many great ones and some little ones. But, suddenly - ah, there was God. Ever since Gloria discovered God, she has been receiving and sending out God’s words every day via email, giving free readings of God’s words across the country, getting God’s personal answers for people who want them, helping others dare to do their own Godwriting™ in workshops, making CD’s, and getting Heavenletters, Love Letters from God, Book One, published - all with an ear to the Still Small Voice and bringing earth closer to Heaven. To find out more about Heaven Letters, visit www.heavenletters.org.