“Forgiveness is the final form of love.”
- by Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr
I saw this quote today and thought to myself how true this really is. Ultimate love bears no grudges and holds nothing against you when you do wrong. No matter what happens, true love endures the very deepest of pains and suffers greatly and yet still finds the solace in forgiving the one that inflicted the pain.
You can say this is true of parents….for parents (for the most part anyway) love their children unconditionally. We grow up, make poor decisions, take risks and completely go against the very wishes of our parents….and yet in the end, they find it in their heart to forgive us and love us unconditionally.
I would like to believe this is true of loving somone as well….loving a partner. We are human beings and we do make poor decisions, choose unwisely or even take high miscalculated and unnecessary risks…and sometimes with or without the other person’s feelings in mind. In the end, I would still like to believe that there is such a love out there where the final form of love is shown…that in the end, if you do make mistakes, no matter how big or small, that forgiveness is granted on you and you’re given a chance to redeem yourself. This obviously only works if both person’s are on the same page with everything. Forgiveness granted must follow with the willingness of both persons to commit to change for the better and for a unified vision.
As much as I believe that such a love exists out there…and have believed this for the better part of my life….sometimes I, too, have human tendencies and fail to believe what I so vigorously preach. As a human, I have made my mistakes and have worked hard at making amends…but I have come to realize that sometimes forgiveness isn’t granted on me because maybe in the eye of the beholder….I am no longer worthy of being shown that final form of love….or maybe I am worthy of such a love, but not from the one I seek forgiveness from….