The Empty Pursuit of Forgiving Yourself

After my conversion, my pillow soaked up many tears—tears of joy at first, but then tears of sorrow.

Before I was saved, I was blinded by my own self-righteousness that told me I was fully in the right in the ways I wounded others. Though I never physically laid a hand on anyone, I knew how to leave a verbal bruise. I justified my words by convincing myself they were for my own protection. I hurt my parents, my boyfriend, and my friends under the self-proclaimed cause of “self-care.” Every morning I seemed to wake with a further self-awareness of what a horrible person I was.

I wanted to find healing for my guilt. I knew many of the Bible verses that talked about forgiveness, but that didn’t feel like enough. No matter how many people told me that was a thing of past and I was forgiven, this guilt seemed to lay heavier on me each day.

I came to the conclusion that I was simply being too hard and needed to forgive myself. But I wasn’t sure how to go about doing that.

I poured my heart out to an older friend, and she hit me with a hard truth I did not expect: You don’t need to forgive yourself.

Read the rest of this article on the True Woman Blog.

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