Forgiveness

It's really quite crazy how all it takes is one single dream to be flooded with everything from one's childhood all over again. Things from when I was a little girl, and even a teenager, that I honestly try to not think about and feel like I have forgiven for.
Forgiven the people who acted out against little children, and the ones who didn't stop it.
And all morning these thoughts are flooding me and I try to stop them and not think of them, but they continue to swarm me.
Time has a way of making things mostly easier yet a little harder all at the same time. I'm no longer living in it and it has gotten easier, but now I have children of my own, and that opens up a whole new perspective.
Pregnancy has a weird way of making a woman so raw and vulnerable, experiencing so many emotions. Bringing things to current what was thought to be left in the past. (At least it does for me. I think that's partly why being pregnant can be a time of great healing.)
So as I'm thinking about it, I try and question what it really means to forgive.
What it looks like to forgive.
I know the mantra "Forgive and forget." I don't believe in that. The things that have happened to me that I have forgiven for are part of me, they are as much me as the scar I have on my leg from being bitten by a dog over 20 years ago, or my curly hair. It is what it is. I can't forget myself, who I am, or what God has brought me through.
We don't pick these sort of things, I think they pick us.
I was supposed to experience that.
I could have chosen whether to become a stronger person because of it, or whether to crumble and turn it into an excuse.
Thankfully, and thankfully to God, He brought me through that.
Maybe I'm wrong, but to me forgiveness is no longer holding a person in emotional prison because of what they did. No longer thinking that I need an apology, or even an admittance that what was done was wrong, in order to move on.
It has been done.
Not forgiving isn't hurting the other person, it only hurts me.
I was an unhealthy person, emotionally and physically. I was sick all the time, I had headaches all the time, I couldn't even have surface chit chat with certain people without having intense emotional wounds ripping back open.
And then God helped me to forgive.
And it's amazing how that changed my life. I remember feeling like ten thousand pounds were lifted off my shoulders without me even knowing they were there! I was walking through life with that burden completely unaware of it.
I don't need an apology from them, I don't even need a discussion from them. (To this day things have never been discussed.) It was a choice I made within myself, that's what forgiveness is. It has nothing to do with the other person, yet everything to do with freeing the other person and yourself all at the same time.
And making the choice to repeat that action every day, for as long as we need to.
(That doesn't mean I'm going to put myself or my children into situations with people that I do not trust, it simply means that things from the past can stay there: in the past. And I don't need to relive it, and I don't need to hold it against anyone.)
So when these thoughts flood me, I have to remind myself: I have forgiven. This is a part of me that will always be there, and while I will always have the scars, they are covered with forgiveness.
The same forgiveness that God extends to me every single day when I fall pitifully short of anything near perfect.