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Can You Stop Your Memory On A Dime, Put It In Reverse, And Spin It In Another Direction The Way You Can Reverse Direction On A Tape Recorder? We Cannot Forget On Command. So We Just Have To Let The Forgetting Happen As It Will; We Shouldn't Rush It, And We Certainly Should Not Doubt The Genuineness Of Our Forgiving If We Happen To Remember. The Really Important Thing Is That We Have The Power To Forgive What We Still Do Remember.

-Lewis B. Smedes

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Can You Stop Your

Lewis B. Smedes

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Can You Stop Your Memory On A Dime, Put It In Reverse, And Spin It In Another Direction The Way You Can Reverse Direction On A Tape Recorder? We Cannot Forget On Command. So We Just Have To Let The Forgetting Happen As It Will; We Shouldn't Rush It, And We Certainly Should Not Doubt The Genuineness Of Our Forgiving If We Happen To Remember. The Really Important Thing Is That We Have The Power To Forgive What We Still Do Remember.

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We Feel Properly Embarrassed When We Are Caught Doing Something That Makes Us Look Inept, Knuckleheaded, Or Inappropriate. Maybe The Difference Is This: We Feel Embarrassed Because We Look Bad, And We Feel Shame Because We Think We Are Bad. When We Are Embarrassed, We Feel Socially Foolish. When We Are Shamed, We Feel Morally Unworthy.

Gandhi Was Right: If We All Live By 'an Eye For An Eye' The Whole World Will Be Blind. The Only Way Out Is Forgiveness.

Happy People Are Not Their Own Enemies, Do Not Carry On An Endless War With Their Souls. We May Be Fiercely At Odds With The Wrongs Of The World Around Us. But Inside Ourselves, Near The Core, If We Are Happy, We Are At Peace.

I Learned That Gratitude Is The Best Feeling I Would Ever Have, The Ultimate Joy Of Living.

Spoken Forgiveness, No Matter How Heartfelt, Works Best When We Do Not Demand The Response We Want. I Mean That When We Tell People We Forgive Them, We Must Leave Them Free To Respond To Our Good News However They Are Inclined. If The Response Is Not What We Hoped For, We Can Go Home And Enjoy Our Own Healing In Private.

When You Release The Wrongdoer From The Wrong, You Cut A Malignant Tumor Out Of Your Inner Life. You Set A Prisoner Free, But You Discover That The Real Prisoner Was Yourself.

The Moments Of Grace Usually Give Us More Than One Good Thing We Can Do, And We Do Well If We Manage A Pretty Good Batting Average. ... It Is An Opportunity That God Sews Into The Fabric Of A Routine Situations - It Is A Chance To Do Something Creative, Something Helpful, Something Healing, Something That Makes One Unmarked Spot In The World Better Off For Our Having Been There.

If You Cannot Free People From Their Wrongs And See Them As The Needy People They Are, You Enslave Yourself To Your Own Painful Past And By Fastening Yourself To The Past, You Let Your Hate Become Your Future.

We Feel Guilty For What We Do. We Feel Shame For What We Are.

Shame And Guilt

You And I Were Created For Joy, And If We Miss It We Miss The Reason For Our Existence. If Our Joy Is Honest Joy, It Must Somehow Be Congruous With Human Tragedy. This Is The Test Of Joy's Integrity. It Is Compatible With Pain. Only The Heart That Hurts Has A Right To Joy.

When I Feel The Joy Of Receiving A Gift My Heart Nudges Me To Join Creation's Ballet, The Airy Dance Of Giving And Receiving, And Getting And Giving Again.

The Only Way To Heal The Pain Which Will Not Heal Itself Is To Forgive The Person Who Hurt You. Forgiveness Heals The Memory's Vision. ... You Set A Prisoner Free, But You Discover The Real Prisoner Was Yourself.

When We Forgive Evil We Do Not Excuse It, We Do Not Tolerate It, We Do Not Smother It. We Look The Evil Full In The Face, Call It What It Is, Let Its Horror Shock And Stun And Enrage Us, And Only Then Do We Forgive It.

Any Moment That Opens Us Up To The Reality That Life Is Good Is A Parable Of The Supreme End For Which We Were Made.

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.

Forgiveness Is The Key That Can Unshackle Us From A Past That Will Not Rest In The Grave Of Things Over And Done With. As Long As Our Minds Are Captive To The Memory Of Having Been Wronged, They Are Not Free To Wish For Reconciliation With The One Who Wronged Us.

Kindness Is The Power That Moves Us To Support And Heal Someone Who Offers Nothing In Return.

Waiting Is The Hardest Work Of Hope.

It Takes One Person To Forgive, It Takes Two People To Be Reunited.

How Many Times Should You Forgive Your Household Bruiser? You Should Not Even Think About Forgiving Him. Not Yet. Not As Long As He Has His Foot On Your Neck. Your Problem At This Point Is Not Forgiving. Your Problem Is How To Get Out Of His Reach. Once You Get Away From Him, You Can Think About Forgiving Him.

My Wife Has Lived With At Least Five Different Men Since We Were Wed - And Each Of The Five Has Been Me.

Forgiving Does Not Usually Happen At Once. It Is A Process, Sometimes A Long One, Especially When It Comes To Wounds Gouged Deep. And We Must Expect Some Lapses...some People Seem To Manage To Finish Off Forgiving In One Swoop Of The Heart. But When They Do, You Can Bet They Are Forgiving Flesh Wounds. Deeper Cuts Take More Time And Can Use A Second Coat.

Our History Is An Inevitable Component Of Our Being. One Thing Only Can Release Us From The Grip Of Our History. That One Thing Is Forgiveness.

To Forgive Is To Set A Prisoner Free And Discover That The Prisoner Was You.

Self Control Is About Being In Charge Of The Direction Our Lives Are Taking. Now For The Paradox: We Get Control Of Our Lives, Ultimately, Not By Will Power But By Surrender.

I Am Personally Thankful That We Live Together In A Large Moral House Even If We Do Not Drink At The Same Fountain Of Faith. The World We Experience Together Is One World, God's World, And Our World, And The Problems We Share Are Common Human Problems. So We Can Talk Together, Try To Understand Each Other, And Help Each Other.

Hope Is To Our Spirits What Oxygen Is To Our Lungs. Lose Hope And You Die. They May Not Bury You For Awhile, But Without Hope You Are Dead Inside. The Only Way To Face The Future Is To Fly Straight Into It On The Wings Of Hope....hope Is The Energy Of The Soul. Hope Is The Power Of Tomorrow.

The Problem With Revenge Is That It Never Evens The Score. It Ties Both The Injured And The Injurer To An Escalator Of Pain. Both Are Stuck On The Escalator As Long As Parity Is Demanded, And The Escalator Never Stops.

A Wise Judge May Let Mercy Temper Justice But May Not Let Mercy Undo It.

When We Forgive Someone, We Do Not Forget The Hurtful Act, As If Forgetting Came Along With The Forgiveness Package, The Way Strings Come With A Violin. Begin With The Basics. If You Forget, You Will Not Forgive At All. You Can Never Forgive People For Things You Have Forgotten About. You Need To Forgive Precisely Because You Have Not Forgotten What Someone Did; Your Memory Keeps The Pain Alive Long After The Hurt Has Stopped. Remembering Is The Storage Of Pain. It Is Why You Need To Be Healed In The First Place.

The Problem With Revenge Is That It Never Gets What It Wants; It Never Evens The Score. Fairness Never Comes. The Chain Reaction Set Off By Every Act Of Vengeance Always Takes Its Unhindered Course. It Ties Both The Injured And The Injurer To An Escalator Of Pain...why Do Family Feuds Go On And On?...the Reason Is Simple: No Two People, No Two Families, Ever Weigh Pain On The Same Scale.

Human Sexuality Includes More Than Hormones, Organs, And Orgasms; It Runs Through The Psychic And Spiritual Ranges Of Our Lives. We Experience Our Sexuality On The Spiritual Level As A Yearning For Another Person. We Want To Reach Out And Stretch Ourselves Into The Depths Of Another. We Want To Bring The Other Person Into The Orbit Of Our Deepest Selves. We Want To Probe Into The Mystery Of The Other.

...forgiving Is Not Having To Understand. Understanding May Come Later, In Fragments, An Insight Here And A Glimpse There, After Forgiving.

The God Who Has The Whole World In His Hands Has Grace For The Whole World In His Heart.

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.

Forgiving Is Tough. Excusing Is Easy. What A Mistake It Is To Confuse Forgiving With Being Mushy, Soft, Gutless, And Oh, So Understanding. Before We Forgive, We Stiffen Our Spine And We Hold A Person Accountable. And Only Then, In Tough-minded Judgment, Can We Do The Outrageously Impossible Thing: We Can Forgive.

Impossible Things

When Forgiveness Is Necessary, Don't Wait Too Long. We Must Begin To Forgive, Because Without Forgiving, We Choke Off Our Own Joy; We Kill Our Own Soul. People Carrying Hate And Resentment Can Invest Themselves So Deeply In That Resentment That They Gradually Define Themselves In Terms Of It.

We Attach Our Feelings To The Moment When We Were Hurt, Endowing It With Immortality. And We Let It Assault Us Every Time It Comes To Mind. It Travels With Us, Sleeps With Us, Hovers Over Us While We Make Love, And Broods Over Us While We Die. Our Hate Does Not Even Have The Decency To Die When Those We Hate Die-for It Is A Parasite Sucking Our Blood, Not Theirs. There Is Only One Remedy For It. [forgiveness]

The Difference Between Guilt And Shame Is Very Clear--in Theory. We Feel Guilty For What We Do. We Feel Shame For What We Are. A Person Feels Guilt Because He Did Something Wrong. A Person Feels Shame Because He Is Something Wrong. We May Feel Guilty Because We Lied To Our Mother. We May Feel Shame Because We Are Not The Person Our Mother Wanted Us To Be.

Because Arrogance Is Born In Personal Vanity, Arrogant People Are Driven Without Mercy. They Can Never Get Enough Power To Fill The Soul's Needs Or Enough Respect To Overcome The Fear That They Deserve Less Than They Are Getting.

You Can Forgive Someone Almost Anything. But You Cannot Tolerate Everything...we Don't Have To Tolerate What People Do Just Because We Forgive Them For Doing It. Forgiving Heals Us Personally. To Tolerate Everything Only Hurts Us All In The Long Run.

To Miss Out On Joy Is To Miss Out On The Reason For Your Existence.

Forgiving Is Love's Toughest Work, And Love's Biggest Risk. If You Twist It Into Something It Was Never Meant To Be, It Can Make You A Doormat Or An Insufferable Manipulator. Forgiving Seems Almost Unnatural. Our Sense Of Fairness Tells Us People Should Pay For The Wrong They Do. But Forgiving Is Love's Power To Break Nature's Rule.

Don't Do It Quickly, But Don't Wait Too Long... If We Wait Too Long To Forgive, Our Rage Settles In And Claims Squatter's Rights To Our Souls.

God Is The Original, Master Forgiver. Each Time We Grope Our Reluctant Way Through The Minor Miracle Of Forgiving, We Are Imitating His Style. I Am Not At All Sure That Any Of Us Would Have Had Imagination Enough To See The Possibilities In This Way To Heal The Wrongs Of This Life Had He Not Done It First.

Forgive A Wife-slammer If You Can. But You Don't Have To Live With Him. Forgive A Husband Who Is Abusing Your Children If You Can. But Only After You Kick Him Out Of The House. And If You Can't Get Him Out, Get Help. It's Available. In The Meantime, Don't Let Him Near The Kids, And Don't Let Anyone Tell You That If You Forgive Him It Means You Have To Stay With Him. [there's An Important Difference Between Forgiving A Person And Tolerating Their Bad Behavior.]

Forgiveness Is God's Invention For Coming To Terms With A World In Which People Are Unfair To Each Other And Hurt Each Other Deeply. He Began By Forgiving Us. And He Invites Us All To Forgive Each Other.

Forgiving Does Not Erase The Bitter Past. A Healed Memory Is Not A Deleted Memory. Instead, Forgiving What We Cannot Forget Creates A New Way To Remember. We Change The Memory Of Our Past Into A Hope For Our Future.

We Forgive Freely Or We Do Not Really Forgive At All.

You Will Know That Forgiveness Has Begun When You Recall Those Who Hurt You And Feel The Power To Wish Them Well.

The Secret Of Grace Is That It Can Be All Right At The Center Even When It Is All Wrong On The Edges.

Once We Have Forgiven, However, We Get A New Freedom To Forget. This Time Forgetting Is A Sign Of Health; It Is Not A Trick To Avoid Spiritual Surgery. We Can Forget Because We Have Been Healed. But Even If It Is Easier To Forget After We Forgive, We Should Not Make Forgetting A Test Of Our Forgiving. The Test Of Forgiving Lies With Healing The Lingering Pain Of The Past, Not With Forgetting The Past Has Ever Happened.

Can You Stop Your Memory On A Dime, Put It In Reverse, And Spin It In Another Direction The Way You Can Reverse Direction On A Tape Recorder? We Cannot Forget On Command. So We Just Have To Let The Forgetting Happen As It Will; We Shouldn't Rush It, And We Certainly Should Not Doubt The Genuineness Of Our Forgiving If We Happen To Remember. The Really Important Thing Is That We Have The Power To Forgive What We Still Do Remember.

Forgiving Does Not Erase The Bitter Past. A Healed Memory Is Not A Deleted Memory.

Not Even God Can Make Something Fair Out Of What Is Intrinsically Unfair. Only One Thing Can Be Done. Something Must Break Through The Crust Of Unfairness And Create A Chance For A New Fairness. Only Forgiveness Can Make The Breakthrough.

When You Give Up Vengeance, Make Sure You Are Not Giving Up On Justice. The Line Between The Two Is Faint, Unsteady, And Fine...vengeance Is Our Own Pleasure Of Seeing Someone Who Hurt Us Getting It Back And Then Some. Justice, On The Other Hand, Is Secure When Someone Pays A Fair Penalty For Wronging Another Even If The Injured Person Takes No Pleasure In The Transaction. Vengeance Is Personal Satisfaction. Justice Is Moral Accounting...human Forgiveness Does Not Do Away With Human Justice.

I Have Discovered That Most People Who Tell Me That They Cannot Forgive A Person Who Wronged Them Are Handicapped By A Mistaken Understanding Of What Forgiving Is.

Some People Ask Who They Are And Expect Their Feelings To Tell Them. But Feelings Are Flickering Flames That Fade After Every Fitful Stimulus. Some People Ask Who They Are And Expect Their Achievements To Tell Them. But The Things We Accomplish Always Leave A Core Of Character Unrevealed. Some People Ask Who They Are And Expect Visions Of Their Ideal Self To Tell Them. But Our Visions Can Only Tell Us What We Want To Be, Not What We Are

I Am Certain That People Never Forgive Because They Believe They Have An Obligation To Do It Or Because Someone Told Them To Do It. Forgiveness Has To Come From Inside As A Desire Of The Heart. Wanting To Is The Steam That Pushes The Forgiving Engine.

The Longer We Hate, The Harder It Is To Heal Us.

The Rule Is: We Cannot Really Forgive Ourselves Unless We Look At The Failure In Our Past And Call It By Its Right Name.

God Invented Forgiving As A Remedy For A Past That Not Even He Could Change And Not Even He Could Forget. His Way Of Forgiving Is The Model For Our Forgiving.

If We Say That Monsters [people Who Do Terrible Evil] Are Beyond Forgiving, We Give Them A Power They Should Never Have...they Are Given The Power To Keep Their Evil Alive In The Hearts Of Those Who Suffered Most. We Give Them Power To Condemn Their Victims To Live Forever With The Hurting Memory Of Their Painful Pasts. We Give The Monsters The Last Word.

With A Little Time, And A Little More Insight, We Begin To See Both Ourselves And Our Enemies In Humbler Profiles. We Are Not Really As Innocent As We Felt When We Were First Hurt. And We Do Not Usually Have A Gigantic Monster To Forgive; We Have A Weak, Needy, And Somewhat Stupid Human Being. When You See Your Enemy And Yourself In The Weakness And Silliness Of The Humanity You Share, You Will Make The Miracle Of Forgiving A Little Easier.

None Of Us Wants To Admit That We Hate Someone... When We Deny Our Hate We Detour Around The Crisis Of Forgiveness. We Suppress Our Spite, Make Adjustments, And Make Believe We Are Too Good To Be Hateful. But The Truth Is That We Do Not Dare To Risk Admitting The Hate We Feel Because We Do Not Dare To Risk Forgiving The Person We Hate.

Forgiving Is, First Of All, A Way Of Helping Yourself To Get Free Of The Unfair Pain Somebody Caused You.

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.

The First And Often Only Person To Be Healed By Forgiveness Is The Person Who Does The Forgiveness... When We Genuinely Forgive, We Set A Prisoner Free And Then Discover That The Prisoner We Set Free Was Us.

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.

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