Forgiving those who are no longer here.

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This is great advice that will help us to leave a burden of perhaps a lifetime in order to live healthily from now on. God provides us with all the resources so that we can live a full life even when the person we have to forgive is no longer on this earth.

But I prayed to you, O Lord, in the time of your acceptable favor;
O God, in the abundance of your loving-kindness,
In the truth of your salvation, hear me.
14 Lift me out of the mire, and let me not be drowned;
Let me be delivered from those who hate me, and from the depths of the waters.
15 Let not the flood of waters overwhelm me,
Nor let the deep swallow me up,
Nor let the pit close its mouth over me.
16 Answer me, Lord, for your loving-kindness is kind;
Look upon me according to the multitude of your tender mercies.
17 Hide not your face from your servant,
For I am in distress; Make haste, hear me. 18 Come near to my soul, redeem it;
Deliver me from my enemies.
19 You know my reproach, my confusion, and my disgrace;
All my adversaries are before you.
20 My heart is broken by mockery, and I am in anguish.
I looked for someone to pity me, but there was none;
And for comforters, but I found none.
21 They gave me gall for food,
And for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.

Psalms 69:13-21

We do not dare to face that feeling that for a long time has occupied a great space in our heart and our mind, the healing we expect can happen. After facing these emotions and taking them out from the depths, it is no longer necessary to carry it, let's see how we recognize and accept it.

First of all, we must observe those emotions that are emerging little by little, let's not avoid those feelings. One of the ways we can observe how emotions manifest themselves is to identify how our body manifests itself, for example: we can pay attention when we get a knot in our stomach or perhaps when we start to shake or even worse when we get angry suddenly, all of these are indicators of situations that we need to resolve. This is the first step to be able to identify those situations that unsettle us.

The next step is to identify the feelings themselves. This undoubtedly has a powerful effect since it prevents the distancing between us and the emotion, we go from feeling helpless to understanding that we can have control over the decisions we want to make, we learn to differentiate between: "I'm always angry" and "I feel angry", when we identify those emotions that we are experiencing at that moment we understand that we can experience them but that we do not become those emotions.

For this we have to learn to name each of these emotions, we have a great example throughout Psalm 69 of how King David identifies each of the feelings he experiences at that moment.

Avoid guilt, shame of feeling a certain emotion, this is circumstantial and reveals the grace of God and his love for us that even having that sinful nature with which we struggle until the day of his coming, God loves us with an everlasting love.

The Lord is close to the brokenhearted, and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

Psalms 34:18

If it is too difficult to forgive, we can use different exercises such as making it tangible: one way is to write a letter, let's take a paper and a pen and write a letter to that person we want to ask for forgiveness for having hurt us, in that letter we can talk in detail about what has happened and how it has impacted our lives, it does not mean that this person will read it but for us this will generate a great positive impact, this allows us to recreate that moment, and recreate the whole story to be able to process our feelings much better, at the same time it is a release that we need to do. Remembering and transmitting that complex situation can be difficult but it is a liberating act in itself, after this let's pray to God and symbolically give him this letter imprinting confidence that God will restore that moment in our lives, then you can destroy or burn or bury the letter understanding that there that situation disappears and that now you are free.

44 But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you;

Matthew 5:44

After this, it is necessary that we give thanks in prayer to God for that experience that has allowed us to grow and develop, here we have to pray for this person, pray for that person who hurt or harmed you.

27 But to you who hear, I say: love your enemies, do good to those who hate you; 28 bless those who curse you, and pray for those who mistreat you. 29 To him who strikes you on the one cheek, offer the other also; and from him who takes your cloak, do not even take it away.