Exploring Our Children’s Potentials

My husband sent me this message this morning.

We had no idea who originally wrote it. I guess it’s one of those write-ups that get forwarded around.

I thought, it was good food for thought.

And I’d like to share it with you.

Here goes.

…

“There is no perfect family. We have no perfect parents, we are not perfect, do not get married to a perfect person, neither do we have perfect children.

We have complaints about each other. We are disappointed by one another. Therefore, there is no healthy marriage or healthy family without the exercise of forgiveness.

Forgiveness is vital to our emotional health and spiritual survival.

Without forgiveness the family becomes a theater of conflict and a bastion of grievances. Without forgiveness the family becomes sick.

Forgiveness is the sterilization of the soul, cleansing the mind and the liberation of the heart.

We have complaints about each other. We are disappointed by one another. Therefore, there is no healthy marriage or healthy family without the exercise of forgiveness.

Anyone who does not forgive has no peace of soul and communion with God. Pain is a poison that intoxicates and kills. Maintaining a wound of the heart is a self-destructive action. It is an autophagy.

He who does not forgive sickens physically, emotionally and spiritually. That is why the family must be a place of life and not of death; an enclave of cure not of disease; a stage of forgiveness and not of guilt.

Forgiveness brings joy where sorrow produced pain; and healing, where pain caused disease.”

…

As a parent, I learn that there must be no limit to forgiving my kids and what they do.

I may feel bitter by what they’ve said and by how they’ve behaved.

But, after all the talking, disciplining and rebuking (and the yelling), we must continue to love and forgive.

Okay, I should perhaps say, we must LEARN to continue to love and  forgive.

Why?

Well, because that’s what we parents should do.

Because that’s how our children will learn about what forgiveness means.

And, to people of the faith, … because most importantly God has first forgiven us of our sins, even while we’re still sinners.

…

May God help us to be more forgiving and loving towards our family, and others around us.