“Forgiveness is love in action.”

I’m writing this quote on my bathroom mirror, rereading it from the dog-eared page of the book I’m currently reading, James Van Praagh‘s Healing Grief, and doing my damndest to commit it to memory.

Forgiveness. Love. In action. How can something so simple be so difficult to practice, maintain, sustain?

As a grieving mother who reminds herself daily, hourly, that her sweet angel is safe and at peace in Heaven, I struggle with forgiveness as often, if not more, than I struggle with grief itself.

I find it difficult, nearly impossible, to forgive this world, for taking my only child, my beautiful, perfect, innocent, wonderful, three-year-old child, away from me and everyone else who loves and treasured him. Though I am coming to terms with his fate and immortality, and know that our souls were meant to merge and will be reunited, I still hate every minute I spend on this planet without him.

And with those feelings, and those thoughts, I struggle to forgive myself, for feeling so selfish, and so suffocated by my own loss and suffering. When I know, I KNOW, that he is ok. I am ok. And we are somehow better for this. Still, I cannot forgive myself.

I had so much love, nothing but love, for that precious child. And that love is a gift I cherish and will always be a part of me and who I am. So why can’t I convert that love into forgiveness? Shouldn’t it just be that simple? After these months, years, of everything being so, so hard, can’t this one thing just be easy? If forgiveness truly is love in action, and I have an over abundance of love emanating and reaching beyond this Earth all the way to Heaven and back, why can’t I just forgive?

I will have faith that the answer will find me. That all this love, if I continue to feel it, practice it, remind others of it, and give it fully, and without expectation, that eventually, forgiveness will follow.