The Healing Power of Forgivenes

My thought from President Faust's talk "The Healing Power of Forgiveness"

As many of you know, I’m a week behind because of my sister’s death and funeral. I’m not caught up yet, but I did give this talk as a FHE lesson this past Monday. Our family has a habit of remembering past wrongs and I wanted to express to my children the healing power of forgiveness. I wanted them to tell them about what my brother-in-law said at my sister’s funeral, but I couldn’t because I haven’t forgiven my father.

My father was not the best father in fact I would put him on the other side of medium, but not horrible. Because my sister was much older than I was (she was 13 when I was born), she had a different father than I did. But she found it in her to forgive him. I haven’t. I don’t know what it will take, but I still haven’t forgiven my father. Maybe it is because I still have to interact with him (he lives closer to me) or maybe his treatment towards me was someone “harder”. I don’t know and I probably doesn’t matter.

This is truly something that will hold me from the Celestial Kingdom and I think of it often. For the most part I have forgiven him, but when I have to be with him, all those feelings and behaviors that I didn’t like and that hurt me so much, come boiling to the surface again.
I also have a hard time forgiving him for the emotional abuse he caused my mother. It was extensive and I assume grew harder to bare as eventually my mother divorced him.
Melinda, I ask the same question you do here, “why do I not forgive?” I do not know and I need to explore it more, but I guess the feelings are still very raw and hurtful.
I guess I need to follow Pres. Faust’s guidelines:

1. Recognize and acknowledge angry feelings (well, I think I’ve done that—and more than once.)
2. Pray and ask Heavenly Father for a feeling of forgiveness (see below)
3. Forgive

I think I’m scared of asking for a feeling of forgiveness. I guess I don’t want to forget the pain my father has caused me. I guess I don’t want to allow my children to be near him so they can treat them like he treated me. And if I forgive then I feel that I must allow my children to visit with him and he can come into my home. I know my husband does not want him in any priesthood circle when the object is one of his children. And I don’t either.

My father never did anything physical to me as his treatment towards me was all emotional. He was a very distant father until there was a crowd to play to. I’m not sure where forgetting plays in forgiveness, and if it does play a part in it then I don’t know I if I will ever forgive because it is hard to forget the words and actions of my father. He truly has affected my life for good and ill. I know I wouldn’t have picked the man I married if it wasn’t for his example. I know be the type of parent I am if it wasn’t for him.

But eventually I have to forgive him—the hardest thing I will ever do and I don’t know how my sister did it as we could NEVER talk about this. But she did.