Struggling to forgive my sister

[Ugly]

There is a boundary to be drawn here.The sister did not sin against her. She just changed her mind. Explained her reasons which the poster choose not to believe.

From an outsider point of view, I would say this could be a simple matter.

The validity of staying hurt when someone did not actually intended to hurt us does not make sense to me.
Forgive, Yes, but you have to be clear about what you are forgiving before starting to make conscious steps towards healing from the hurt.
Forgive her sister to disapointing her? may be.
Telling her she is disapointed is a good thing. Telling her, she is a bad sister for simply not choosing her; because she changed her mind without planning on hurting her sister, is to me very wrong and disproportionate. Unless she has issues or there are other issues in the family prior to this event.

Everyone's hurt is valid as long as it fulfils a clear purpose and comes from the correct cause and effect. Otherwise, we would all walk around feeling hurt over people's opinions, characters, preferences in life that has not been intentionnally directed at us and may have nothing to do with us. It is our choice to learn how to recognise correctly an offence and decide to overlook it. If offence there is.

Just because it doesn't make sense to you doesn't make it the feelings wrong. I'm sure you would be hurt by things that others wouldn't understand. Everyone is different.
And since when does something have to be purposeful or sinful to hurt someone?

 

[sunburn]

Just because it doesn't make sense to you doesn't make it the feelings wrong. I'm sure you would be hurt by things that others wouldn't understand. Everyone is different.
And since when does something have to be purposeful or sinful to hurt someone?

Everyone is different. And I know everyone can be hurt by the slightest thing other people do that don't seem like meaningful to them but hurt us deeply. I am not looking down on her feelings.
I am questioning the validity of staying hurt when someone has apologised to you and explained to you that what they did wasn't directed and purposely done to hurt us. Being hurt is one thing….holding grudges because you are being envious of someone's life and decisions, arborring "hurts" is wrong.

 

[sunburn]

Thanks. I have to address the fact that I didn't ever say that my sister was a bad sister. I love her dearly. I guess I just wanted to come on here for support and be told some truths from other Christians, even if it is not easy to hear, and a little harsh, I need to hear it because that is why I am here. I don't need sympathy.

Hi,
You have had some good advice from others on how to forgive and people being understanding. I was harsh because I normally deal with feeling of hurt by snapping out to if quickly. It's not worth tearing up your relationship with your family over this kind of hurt.
I should know.
I have 3 sisters .And there has never been jealousy or envy between us. No Glory for this, it is just the Lord's doing. Jealousy and envy destroys. I grew up in a family where our cousins were all jealous of us.since young age to this age. and thus because My mother's siblings. they thought, my mother had a better marriage than them or had a better husband or was healthier than them. and thus, they had always been strives and arguments like you mentioned in your post between them. Nothing my mother did was enough, there was always something they had to find to make her feel she can't just live in peace. I noticed these feelings stemmed on their children, our cousins. a vicious cycle.
There is great evil in this. a malignant feeling that your cousins are always implying that you have a better life than them. Jealousy, envy are snakes. they tear apart families.

It was a stupid attitude. to this day, my mother is trying to patch things up with her siblings and we have no connections whatsoever with our consigns because they have a feeling of what looks like inferiority complex. everything you say is turned over hundred times to find something to be upset about...a stupid feeling to have and entertained. When I became a christian, I realise that they were not christian so it was easy to relate to them after because we had compassion, which made them even more mad.
It wasn't our fault so we distanced ourselves.

My reaction to you is that of an angry victim of jealousy derived from siblings and trivial petty arguments. It is to wake you up to the fact that you are arborring a dangerous feeling and not be the person in the family who would nest such detestful sentiments that comes from the pit of hell. Entertaining thoughts of envy and jealousy doesn't look good on you. In fact, it sneers lack of self esteem. You are worth more than to reduce yourself to such petty feelings when they are better things around to be concerned about. Yet, with every thought of anger and jealousy you feel, you harm yourself and the quality of your own life.

My sisters and I argue but we will never go as far as being jealous of each other. We even might stop talking to each other for awhile because we 've had enough of bickering like women do but we do not give the devil a foothold in our heart. We never leave place to jealousy and our children will never suffer from such emotions themselves.
It is a vicious cycle and my take on this is to urge you to snap out of that cancerous felling. It will eat you up and not only you, but the generation after you. it is not worth carrying so much negative thoughts around you.

I rest my case now and sorry if I was harsh.

 

[Sirk]

Just because it doesn't make sense to you doesn't make it the feelings wrong. I'm sure you would be hurt by things that others wouldn't understand. Everyone is different.
And since when does something have to be purposeful or sinful to hurt someone?

When someone feels pain it is always real. The one thing you really should't argue is someones emotions. Processing your pain in a healthy way is key to living relationships. When that process stops it is really like cutting off the blood supply to an arm.

 

[mikeuk]

Hi all. A few years back my sister and her husband were preparing to go on a cruise. They started to think about how they would be leaving their 5 kids and be gone for over a week...anyways, in the process of preparing for their trip, they figured it would be a good thing to set up guardianship for their kids (just in case something were to happen to them while they traveled, as well as security for the future.) So prior to the trip, I get a call from my sister who is about 3 yrs younger than me, asking me if my husband and I would be their kids guardians. Needless to say, I was so honored to be asked this, and to think that my sister and brother in law would in trust us with their precious gifts from God. My heart was happy. Even though I prayed it would never ever have to come to that, I still felt so special, and told her we would want them to be our kid's guardians as well although we hadn't officially set that up, it was just a given in my mind. We are family and that's how families should be. I know sum it up, right...
Well about a week before they took off for their trip and out of the blue via fb message, I got the news that would be the wedge that has been between my sister and me and our once close relationship. She stated that instead of custody going to my husband and I, they decided to give custody to some "really good friends" (known about 2 yrs at that time,) or or my brother in laws cousin's daughter and her husband. Reason being because she wouldn't want us to have to move and a few other wishy washy type excuses. We only live aprox 40 minutes apart...anyways, I was broken over this. My heart was so hurt I couldn't understand her choices and we went back and fourth over it. I thought I had forgiven her, but I take it back. When she posts pics of her family with the close friendsi just push hide cause it hurts...our kids (cousins) have barely seen each other in the time since. I have watch sermons on forgiveness, read the Bible on it, and I know it's not right to harbor bad feelings, but I just can't seem to get over it, nor do I feel close to her/them anymore. Thanks for reading this long post. I would love feedback.

I can sympathise not with the precise details of your situation, but with a relationship that broke down,
Whilst it was not a good relationship beforehand, when my father died, my sister wanted control of his estate. Not I think because of inherent wish to do anyone down, but because of the feeling of control over others. To that end she took that battle of control as far as telling untruths to a court judge, presenting me as a liar and cheat, in order to get an expartite ruling against me. Whilst I had assumed I could trust her on a shake hands basis so there was little documentation of what we agreed, there was at least a letter that showed there was an agreement in some part, when she had stated categorically there was not.

I could I suspect have sent that letter to the judge and no doubt the consequences of contempt of court/ Lying in legal process is criminal and probably severe. Something inside me stopped me doing it. WHilst I wanted nothing more to do with her, escalating the conflict to possible criminal proceeding against your own family felt wrong. In the end "won" the battle by simple persistence, but our relationship was lost in the process and we then fell out for a decade.

Some years on, I started to take christianity much more seriously: and that forced me to attempt to repair the bridges, but whilst attempts at a rapprochement were attempted they never really worked. Deep down I wanted an apology from her, I wanted justification in essence that I was right. And That was why it failed.

What healed our relationship in the end was a number of life scrapes meant she was in trouble, and the only one she could turn to was me.

I started to help her in a few small ways (increasingly less grudginglY):
and finally one massive gift. She was in a position where she had nowhere to live, the campervan she then had was failing, and the only way to solve the problem was a gift to buy her somewhere to live that I knew could never be repaid. Half of me said "why on earth should I after what she has done" the other half said, treat as you want to be treated. And I did it, and wrote it off in my mind then and there.

From that very dayI felt at peace with her. And she with me. I would trust her now.
I discovered it was not what I wanted her to do that solved the problem, but what I could do for her.

It is the essence of the second half of St Francis' prayer, which I love...

O Divine Master, Grant that I may not so much seekTo be consoled as to console;To be understood as to understand;To be loved as to love.For it is in giving that we receive;It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
So forget the past sleight is my advice, ask now what can you do for her, and do it without reservation
All I can say is the reversal of thinking worked for me..