Begrudging

My dad always includes a short little message (words of advice) at the end of his weekly letter.  This week it was a reference to D&C 64:8-11.

For those of you who attended seminary you’ll recognize “I, the Lord, will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men.”

I’m really having a hard time with this lately. 

I remember years ago traveling to visit my grandmother in Dallas and sitting in Relief Society.  The lesson was on forgiveness and one of the sisters shared that she couldn’t forgive her father for his abuse and wouldn’t be able to until she stopped hurting from it.  At the time I thought “that’s backwards.  You forgive first and then it will stop hurting.”

H-er’s betrayals and behaviors and patterns hurt.   Whenever I am confronted with a memory or a trigger or a reminder I feel that pain again.  And I get angry.   Because anger protects me from pain. 

So where DOES forgiveness fit in all this?   Because I don’t think feeling pain is a symptom of not forgiving. 

However, in the back of my mind when he asks for another chance and says that if I can hang in there it will be worth it (eternal perspective and all that), I have thoughts like:  “why should you get me in the end as if I’m some reward? How is that fair?”.  And that smacks of discounting the atonement.  It doesn’t sound very forgiving. 

It’s the prodigal son kind of thing.   He’s run through his inheritance and ended up eating and sleeping with the pigs and now wants to come home to the feast.  And I’m sitting there thinking how unfair it is that he gets to sleep with a bunch of other women and now that his “libido has slowed down” and he’s “grown up a lot and learned from the past” so he’s done sowing his wild oats and ready to settle down, he can still have his cake and eat it too.  Quotes are his words. 

(Do I get points for throwing in lots of idioms?)

In other words: I use the word “gets” (in he gets to sleep with other women) as if he’s either getting away with something or the rest of us are getting gypped.   He points this out and says it’s not a better thing.  It’s not even a good thing.  One of his friends said that to him as well.  That it’s not fair that he gets to do all this but if he repents he gets the Celestial Kingdom just as his friend does who was faithful to his wife the whole time.   The “gets” implies the rest of us are missing out on something.  And I don’t want to go sleep with a bunch of men.  Really.  So I see the flaw in the “gets” but I don’t know how to stop feeling it. 

So this has to go on my inventory.  I just don’t know how to define it really.

Envy?

Resentful?
Begrudging?