How do you find freedom from the bitterness which pollutes lives and marriages? One single word: forgiveness. Forgiveness takes place when love accepts deliberately the hurts and abrasions of life and drops all charges against the other person. Forgiveness is accepting the other when both of you know he or she has done something quite unacceptable. Forgiveness is smiling silent love for your partner when the justifications for keeping an insult or injury alive are on the tip of your tongue. You swallow the justifications, not because you have to, to keep the peace, but because you want to, to make peace. Forgiveness is not acceptance given "on the condition" that the other become acceptable. Forgiveness is given freely, from the keen awareness that the forgiver also has a need for daily forgiveness. Forgiveness exercises God's strength to love and receives the other person without any assurance of complete restitution or complete amends. Forgiveness is a relationship between equals who recognize their need for each other. Each needs the other's forgiveness. Each needs the other's acceptance. Each needs the other. Before God, each drops all charges, refutes all self-justification, and forgives, and keeps forgiving, as Jesus said, "Seventy times seven." Forgiveness is:
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