The Healing Journey

May 25, 2025

There are so many opportunities to love in life and so many missed opportunities. When someone close to us dies, we often find ourselves looking back with regret or even guilt for not expressing love more often. We might also find ourselves distraught over our failure to love and for not being loved enough by the person we lost.

It’s a reality that most of us fail to love as we should, and we are also on the receiving end of not being loved as much as we deserve. This can lead to bitterness and hurt.

The failure to love and inability to love, of course, are at the root of all the world’s problems. In the popular mentality, love is associated with feelings of happiness and appreciation, and well-being, when more often it involves hurt. When someone doesn’t love us the way we deserve to be loved, that can cause resentment, but it also exposes another side of love. The need to forgive and the recognition that none of us loves perfectly.

Mother Teresa once said, “If we really want to love, we must learn how to forgive.” And that is the hardest lesson of all. Sometimes, often times, it seems impossible, but with God, all things are possible.

And all these conflicting emotions come to a head after someone we were supposed to love and who was supposed to love us dies. Even then, it is never to late for forgiveness, especially if that forgiveness is self-forgiveness. These, too, are wounds that surely need healing. Otherwise, they’ll haunt us for the rest of our lives.

The first step is accepting the fact that our relationship was less than perfect, and the second step is forgiveness. However, there’s no forgiveness without God’s assistance, and if we pray for help, he’ll lead us through the steps we have to take. We can’t do it alone. If you need to forgive someone, say this very simple prayer often: “Lord, help me find a way to forgive since I don’t want to spend my life with this anger.”
©J Pisani

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