Great article by Dr Greg Popcak about self forgiveness, an issue so many get stuck on when it comes to healing from abortion! Thank you Dr Greg! A must read for all!

The Secret of Forgiving Yourself

We’re heading into Lent and, as I noted on the show today, it’s a time where lots of us will end up facing some degree of temptation to beat up on ourselves for failing in our efforts to fulfill our Lenten penances.  Beyond this, though, forgiving oneself for one’s failings and struggles is a constant struggle.  It can be hard to know what forgiving yourself means much less how to do it.

As I’ve shared before, St Augustine said that  forgiveness is what happens when we “surrender our natural desire for revenge.”  In other words, at the point we stop wanting to hurt someone for having hurt us, we have forgiven them.  (Reconciliation is a separate issue, but that’s another post). So how does this apply to forgiving oneself?

To forgive ourselves doesn’t mean letting ourselves off the hook.  It means refusing to give into the temptation to heap coals on ourselves for having failed.  St Francis de Sales, in his Introduction to the Devout Life, reveals the folly of this approach when he notes that our sins tend to be a flawed attempt to make ourselves feel better.  Therefore, the worse we make ourselves feel about our sins and failings the more likely we’ll be to sin again in that same pathetic attempt to make ourselves feel better for having sinned!  It truly is a vicious spiritual cycle. If we were to apply Augustine’s formula for forgiveness to ourselves, we’d have to say that forgiving ourselves means surrendering our natural desire to hurt ourselves… for having hurt ourselves.   Think about that a minute.  How quick are we to heap pain on ourselves for having hurt ourselves?  Does that even make sense?  How is that supposed to help?

Here is the rest!