{"id":6365,"date":"2017-09-05T07:18:57","date_gmt":"2017-09-05T12:18:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/faithlens\/?p=6365"},"modified":"2017-08-30T10:14:55","modified_gmt":"2017-08-30T15:14:55","slug":"september-10-2017-forgiveness-hard-healing-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/faithlens\/september-10-2017-forgiveness-hard-healing-work\/","title":{"rendered":"September 10, 2017–Forgiveness: Hard Healing Work"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amy Martinell, Sioux Falls, SD<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Warm-up Question<\/strong><\/p>\n

Do you forgive easily or do you tend to hold a grudge?<\/p>\n

Forgiveness:\u00a0 Hard Healing Work<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For months Margot Van Sluytman traded emails with\u00a0Glen Flett.\u00a0 It was not your ordinary email exchange.\u00a0 In 1978 when Margot was only 16, Flett \u00a0killed her father while he attempted to rob the convivence store at which her father worked.\u00a0 After being released from prison, Flett attended an event aiming at bringing victims and perpetrators together where he received help\u00a0 connecting with Margot and they begin to email.<\/p>\n

According to Margot, \u201cThey were emails filled with humanity. His words helped to heal me, but after a while the words weren\u2019t enough and I knew I needed to look into his eyes. So, three months later I met the man who killed my father.\u201d\u00a0 When they first met, they both sobbed and hugged each other.\u00a0 Margot shared that after her father died a part of her seemed to go blank, but after this meeting she felt the color begin to return to her life.<\/p>\n

This was a long process to get to, at first Margot could not even contemplate forgiveness, it made her too angry.\u00a0 Later as she began to work through her anger with poetry, she became more open to the concept, and soon as she began to consider forgiveness, she noticed a change in her whole body, that she felt more complete and more at peace.\u00a0 Forgiveness was a healing process.\u00a0 Before Van Sluytman begin the path to forgiveness she felt a void full of nothingness, now\u00a0 that the void has begun to be filled by the friendship she has with the man who killed her father.\u00a0 This friendship has helped put meaning back into her life.<\/p>\n

Margot Van Sluytman\u2019s story is one of the many stories collected by The Forgiveness Project.\u00a0 The Forgiveness Project is an organization that collects stories of forgiveness to share the power of reconciliation, help build understanding, and empower people to tell their stories and reconcile with the pain of their past. (theforgivenessproject.com<\/a>)<\/p>\n

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Discussion Questions<\/strong><\/p>\n