Learning To Forgive [Hardcover]

Description: How do you forgive a person who has hurt your deeply? Why forgive someone who does not deserve to be forgiven? Forgiveness is not easy, and often we discover that the person who needs to be forgiven the most is ourselves. As we forgive others and ourselves, we find that we are the ones who have benefited--forgiveness brings a peace to our lives that no one can take away from us. Learning to Forgive: A Memoir of Doubt and Faith is the author's personal journey of forgiveness from a spiritual and psychological point of view. The book shows the reader how they can use their relationship with God, the resources of the Christian faith, and their psychological understanding of themselves to learn how to forgive. As readers see that pastors are not immune to the challenges of everyday life, nor are they spared from abusive backgrounds, they will be encouraged to embark on their own journeys of forgiveness or receive strength and hope for a journey already started. Endorsements: In his moving prose, Presbyterian minister Walter Smith, the spiritual, sensitive son of difficult parents, surprises the reader with his honesty as he goes full circle, from faith to doubt to faith again, in an oftentimes wrenching but ultimately triumphant memoir that reminds us all what it means to be human, and what it is to forgive and be forgiven. --Carolyn Walker, author of Every Least Sparrow and A Mother Runs Through It Every minister has a personal story to tell about the deeply human story behind the making of a minister. Walter Smith has written a compelling odyssey of the spirit, illuminating just how we all are formed from a matrix of family and community that in large measure determines who we become and what we grow to believe about God. I commend it to every person interested in the riches of reflection upon both the heartrending and the sacred meanings of a life, including one's own. --Charles Davidson, author of Bone Dead and Rising: Vincent van Gogh and lS%