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.