Only Then Will We Live in Peace

The prompt for week forty-five of our year long challenge was around peace. The woman who presented it said she needed peace because of all that is happening in our country this week, so she asked us to help her find peace. There are endless amounts of quotes, songs and sayings about peace. I didn’t want to me too cliche, so I looked in my favorite book for quotes. I found this one from Leo Tolstoy and thought it was rather appropro for this season in our country.

I thought back to the times in my own life when I have been in much turmoil, how did I recover and move forward? Forgiveness. I forgave myself, other people and those who enabled the pain without even knowing it. Forgiveness is difficult because it means we have to be both responsible and a victim of our emotions, expectations and failures in both. Forgiving may feel easy until what ever it was happens again, then you have to forgive again AND forget.

No matter how you voted, how you lean politically, how you feel about protests and the media, too much talking on television and a failure for definitive results, our best course of action is to forgive each other. We will not be able to move forward as a nation divided by anger, resentment or fear. Families cannot move forward if someone doesn’t forgive. Marriages do not survive if both parties do not learn to forgive. Businesses do not make it if bad decisions are not forgiven and utilized to move forward on a better path. No matter the situation forgiveness is the best and only answer…only then will we live in peace.