I am getting right to business this month, because I have something so important to cover, it can’t wait. This is already the seventh month, so half of the year has passed, and I recently was reminded how often the past colors our lives.
My first reminder was an especially good Daily Word on Forgiveness, which was followed soon after by a wonderful email from my friend, Audrey, about a dog, found near death in a locked shed in the U.K. Taken to a Wildlife Sanctuary, the precious greyhound was not only restored to health, but she slowly learned to trust. Naming her Jasmine, they planned to find a good home for her, but she fooled them finding it herself by creating a job at the refuge, for this once timid, abused and deserted waif gathered each new pup, rabbit, barn owl, chick, guinea pig or badger cub to her heart, even becoming a mum to a tiny fawn, who follows her everywhere.
The accompanying pictures to this story not only showed me how beautiful she is, but they showed how she has learned to totally forgive as she freely practices the unconditional love she learned from her human friends, and she is passing it on. Can you think of a better example of true and complete forgiveness?
The important thing to remember in all this is how emotions over things that have happened in the past will raise their determined heads, though we think we have hidden them, out of sight—out of mind, but we haven’t. So in spite of the fact that spring cleaning time is over this year for the house, or garage, or even the desk, it is never over for forgiveness. I know I keep digging at past events I think are gone, when I find they aren’t, and I know they won’t be until I have truly healed them in my heart, mind and body.
Every time I renew my forgiveness schedule, I feel myself go deeper and more unconditionally, whether I am forgiving someone else or myself. and I can hardly believe how wonderful it feels to know that one more negative emotion is no longer a part of my life. Even as an adult, I still remember things that happened as a small child, when I look at pictures of that time, or see a familiar object that reminds me, and I feel an invigorating freedom fill me when I am able to give my forgiveness another good healthy nudge, even if it is not possible to tell the one involved how I feel, I know that he or she is being healed by my thoughts as well. And I need to add here, often, I am forgiving myself.
TIP: So this month I am asking you to dig deep inside to find anything or anyone you might have tried to hide, refusing to forgive, then find that place in your heart always ready to forgive with pure, unconditional love, and send it forth, not forgetting yourself in the process. For when you do, I promise, you will feel things change for the better, a sense of feeling richer and freer some way, as if a cloud has been lifted, and a space—a loving space opens for you to be the one you really are. And don’t forget those things you might hear about or see on TV or in the newspaper, though they may have nothing to do with you, and though they will never know, you will feel better. And you may find that forgiving will become a daily thing to do.
~ Lucele Coutts