Forgiveness

"I'm sorry."  These words seem so simple when we read them.  They even are pretty easy to say.  But to mean them takes some thought and follow up.  It wasn't so long ago that I said something that really hurt another person's feelings.  I didn't set out to do this, but as soon as the words left my mouth, I knew the damage was done.  My immidiate reaction was to apologize... which I did.. but forgiveness hasn't so easily been given to me.  I'm not use to being the center of conflict, so as you can imagine this has weighed heavily on my mind.  So heavily in fact that I spent up to two full weeks continuing to be angry at myself for making this "huge" mistake in the first place.  To say the least I felt crummy.  Now I know that I deserved to feel crummy.  I did a bad thing and it had to come with consequences. However, after about 3 weeks I have finally decided to forgive myself and to realize that this one incident is not what defines me as a person.  How I have lived my life, each and every minute of it, is what defines me.  The good and the bad.  Now I just pray that one day those that I hurt will be able to see that my apoogy was genuine and forgive me too. 

I will use this as a couple of good lessons for myself.  First, I need to be more careful of what I say and how I say it.  Secondly, I need to remember this the next time someone hurts my feelings.   I need to be more forgiving of others mistakes, remember that they are human, and that their one mistake doesn't define them.