The Spiritual Tonic Part 1 By Richard B. Patterson, Ph.D. Perhaps, during the course of your own journey, you have crossed paths in some way with a person who seemed capable of forgiveness at a truly impressive level. For me, Terry Anderson is such a person. Terry Anderson was kidnapped by Shiite extremists in Lebanon and remained in captivity for close to seven years. His story, retold in his book Den of Lions, is one of many horrors. That resentments are harmful to our health was discussed in an earlier article.
Forgiveness is the solution to resentments.
But the process of forgiveness is no simple matter. It is more helpful to think of forgiveness as an on-going process rather than an isolated incident, particularly when what we are trying to forgive is part of a pattern rather than an isolated relationship. Many of us struggle, for example, with forgiving our parents for various omissions or even for patterns of abuse and neglect. Such a task for forgiveness will likely be an ongoing process. The first step on the forgiveness road is to decide if we even want to forgive.