Living Proof

Some people believe that forgiveness is just a verbal confirmation of "we're okay"---"we're good," until later down the road, the offense has been brought up again by the person who was hurt. Most likely, the person who holds all the resentment and bitterness will usually regurgitate the offense over and over throughout the relationship. They truly believe they have forgiven that person, yet they keep reminding them about what they've done in the past. That's not forgiveness. Remember the saying, "forgive and forget?" The forgetting part is hard, I know---but the concept of "forgetting" is about never bringing up the one thing that hurt you to the person who begged for forgiveness. See, when we bring up the offense, that's bitterness coming out. Imagine eating something bitter. That's the face you'll make when you bring up a past offense. Think about it. Truth is, you'll probably never forget that 'offens...

As some of you probably already know, I suffer from panic attacks. I’ve been experiencing these attacks since I was 16 years old. I have a lot of people in my life who make assumptions about why my anxiety disorder developed, but I still have a vague idea “why”, yet I know some things make sense. I’m going to talk about why I “think” I got this disorder, and what I do today to relieve them. At the age of 16, I witnessed a very traumatic event in my life . I didn’t think it affected me all that much, because I handled it so well during the time it happened. What I didn’t know, is how it would affect me later as an adult. Being at that young age, I was still going to high school and trying to be a kid. I was influenced by my peers and found out that my stress levels were higher than the average teen going through trivial stuff. A lot people assume kids that age don’t have any stress. They do …very much so. And, when something traumatic takes place, it’s amazing what the body can do whe...