I thought I had my PhD

Twelve children that transition to young adulthood without fully developed brains (the brain isn't done growing until a person hits age 25) means a lot of mistakes.   It also means that parents have a lot of forgiving to do.   I used to tell people that Bart and I had PhDs in forgiveness, and that we were well beyond the 490 mark for some of our kids (you know, 70 x 7?).

In fact, we have one son who, in the last 5 months has hit a deer driving Bart's car and gotten into an accident in a mall parking lot with my car that caused 8900 worth of damages and a 36 day old insurance battle which is still ongoing.  I still don't have my car.    He has also been put on hold at work twice as two different vehicles he drives have stopped running...(they were "his" vehicles, but he doesn't have any money.   He also left his stuff too close to the heater and started his room on fire.  Fortunately, our daughter was home or the parsonage would have gone up in flames.

This has been a great opportunity for us to practice forgiveness and we have always prided ourselves in offering grace and forgiveness and doing it well.

But I ran across this on Facebook the other day and it smacked me right in the face.   It said:

Forgiveness may be described as a decision to make four promises:

1)  I will not dwell on this incident.

2)  I will not bring up this incident again and use it against you.

3)  I will not talk to others about this incident.

4.  I will not let this incident send between us or hinder our personal relationship.

Ouch.   I may have not forgiven as easily or as well as I had thought.

I took a screen shot of the four questions.  I think I need to read them often.   I guess I don't have my PhD after all, but I need to work on getting it.