How can I forgive someone who doesn't ask for forgiveness?

Forgiveness is something that everyone needs yet it is so hard to give. When we think of forgiving someone we often think that it is after they ask for the forgiveness and not as something to give freely. We are commanded to forgive those who have wronged us but admittedly it is difficult to do. In our hearts we can hold something against others and stay mad at them and those around them for something in the past. For me giving forgiveness is something that I used to think wouldn't be a hard thing to do. But as these past years have gone by forgiveness has been a reoccurring lesson to be learned. I have had to learn to forgive for the things that were asked for, not asked for, and that could never be asked for. And I'm still learning and growing in my life to be someone who easily forgives. I have struggled to wrap my head around something that seemed so hard to do. But keeping bitterness towards someone can hold me back from all that God has for  me and all that I am meant to do.


The Bible says that when we love we will learn to be forgiving. Because you can't love someone without forgiveness. Even though my dad cannot ask for me to forgive him for what he did I know that I need to forgive him for what happened to me in order to fully love. But the looming question of how to forgive someone who can't ask kept coming in my head. I kept praying that God give me the strength to forgive him, and that I would be able to move past the hurt of abuse and all the wrong I felt. I wrote letters of what I felt just to get the words out of my mind, and I cried as I would give it to God. So often my eyes were opened to areas I hadn't noticed before in my life, ways that in my dad's own way he knew what he had done was wrong. I saw that in the end my dad loved me and even though the abuse I went through wasn't correct or what should have happened. It's not like the years of feeling like I was never good enough just went away but slowly the feelings of unworthiness were replaced with love, forgiveness, and a joy. I still have times of hurt and reminders of what was, but I learned to not to keep my focus on those moments but instead find the happiness in those times. There are others in my past that I know that I will probably never ask for me to forgive them of what they did to my family and me. But in the same way that I had to forgive my dad I have learned that even more I need to forgive them. Forgiving them gives God a chance to change my heart and work in the lives of the people I'm forgiving whether or not they have asked for it. I learned that He was waiting for me to give Him the hurt and wrong of what happened. And when I gave it to Him and let go of the bitterness I had towards them, that I gained a freedom from the control that had in my life.

living without fear

Fear, something we all have and all don't know what to do with. It can be fear of anything from heights to people and everything in between. Our fears can either cripple us or make it so we want to conquer them. In my life fear was holding me back, the thoughts would run through my head of what people would think or what they would say about me. I was worried about not being liked and not fitting in, and I often found myself believing the lie that if someone really knew where I came from and who I had to be they wouldn't want to be around me anymore. This fear is still so real to me that even now doing something that I absolutely love doing (aka writing) is scary. I mean I write more than some people know and keep it all locked away on my computer. My dreams, what I'm overcoming, who I was, who my family was, words that I wish every girl could hear and know to be true, even letters all of this written and never seen.

 The thing about fear is we can work through that. God will give us the strength to look straight at the fear and start overcoming it. He will be there beside us giving us the peace and being the rock to hold on to. For me I allowed the fear of rejection and my past to shake my confidence and life. I found myself having a list of things I didn't want to be defined by, like preacher's kid, a girl with "daddy issues", someone who had lost their parent, a victim, or depressed. I knew that I just wanted to be able to be me and not have to fear. I have been through things I would never wish on my worst enemy for awhile I focused on what I had lost. I would run when I felt like maybe people were getting to close or that I started feeling like I couldn't be myself anymore. But I realized that I couldn't always run, and that I had to choose happiness. I mean my name is Joy.... yet I wasn't happy with what I had seen my life become. I was just so used to people in and out of my life that I could keep them at a distance. God started putting people in my life that I would feel completely comfortable around. Several broke through and I finally realized I could be me. It's not always easy I still find myself feeling that am going to be rejected, or a fear of what people will think. But I found that although I have fears I have a faith that my fears can't hold me back from who I am. A faith that God will be right there with me giving me the strength I need to be me. For when I stop letting the fear of what others think determine my actions I find the happiness and the joy throughout my life.