We all agree that forgiveness is a beautiful idea until we have to practice it. ~ C. S. Lewis
Once, a long time ago, I hated someone. She did me wrong and I despised her for it, simple as that. After the event, every day, I woke up and went to bed with ugly thoughts – if I’m being honest – during the day I was pretty preoccupied with them as well.
After 8 months of this pattern, I was weary of thinking about her (and the incident), so I went to a pastor to learn how you go about forgiving someone. Unfortunately, the answer was pretty vague – something along the lines of: “it’s very important to forgive, we forgive as Christ forgave us, etc.” That’s all true, and (at that point) I even wanted to forgive, but I still had no idea how to actually do it. I went to the Bible – surely it gave a prescription for something as important as forgiveness. But again, while I found a lot of verses about forgiveness (it’s mentioned ~150 times), I still didn’t get much clarification. Nowadays, I could probably look up a wikiHow on the topic, but the Internet wasn’t that evolved then 
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.So, I did the best I could. I made the choice, every morning and every evening, to pray this honest prayer “God, I really hate so-and-so – but I don’t want to; I want to forgive her, please help me.” This routine lasted for approximately a year – one day I woke up and (true story) the nasty thoughts were gone. What a relief – I felt like I had my mind back.
From this experience I learned that forgiveness is:
• both a choice as well as a process (that can take a long time and should not be forced)
• intrapersonal – it did not involve anyone (but God and I)
• not reconciliation (which does involve the other person), as I read the Bible forgiveness seems to be uber important while reconciliation is great if it happens, but not always possible or necessary
• not forgetting – of course I remember the wrong done to me – the wound is just no longer infected.
Letters from a Birmingham Jail (MLK, Jr), Tramp for the Lord (Corrie Ten Boom) along with movies like Unbroken and Philomena are all autobiographical accounts of ordinary people who worked through the process of forgiveness and got to the other side. Other scholars on the topic include Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, Lewis Smedes (Forgive and Forget?) and Everett Worthington (REACH model of forgiveness) – I might recommend the last two unless you are ready to take a really deep dive.
If you are in a place where you’re deciding whether this arduous process is worth the effort, numerous & substantial experiments confirm the following… forgiveness brings with it: less anxiety, stress, hostility, depression, and lowered blood pressure; those who forgive also exhibit increased heart health, self-esteem, empowerment, and immunity along with stronger relationships and deeper connections.
PS – something else to ponder… forgiving yourself is a pretty important process to work through too.