Everyone handles hurt differently. Both the hurt that is put upon them and the hurt that they cause. Sometimes they don’t always expect the same thing that they dish out.
As I think about my childhood, I realized that my family might have seemed rather emotionless to others. In my house, when you committed an offense (if it was minor) against someone else, the other person would be upset at you for a while, but then by the next day, there were no ill feelings. It wasn’t even like it was something hanging in the air that wasn’t taken care of, it simply was out of the mind. We didn’t hold those grudges. If it was a larger offense, then we did often apologize right away, but for the small things, it seemed like we carried on.
It wasn’t until one of my sisters got married that I realized that my family was maybe different from others. The family that my sister married into was much more intentional about this kind of thing. I remember a specific instance when my brother-in-law came up to me and gave a detailed explanation as to why he was coming to talk to me and confess something that he had done that was not good several weeks before and he was asking for forgiveness.
I didn’t know what to say because I literally had no clue what he was talking about. I told him there that he was completely forgiven because I didn’t even know what his offense was. It clearly didn’t have the same ill effect on me than it did on his own thoughts of how he handled a situation.
Both of these can be good. It can be good to not hold grudges and know that people aren’t generally out to hurt you and it’s okay to forgive them without thinking about it. But it’s also good to be aware of the hurts that you have against others and know when you need to confess and ask forgiveness.
Sometimes bringing something up again can just scratch an old scab that doesn’t need to be brought up, but sometimes confessing your sin against another and asking for forgiveness is a huge weight lifted off our shoulder. It’s so important to get in a consistent habit of confessing to others and to God so that we don’t let things build up in our life that then cause bitterness or separation from God.
A life of confession is a life of freedom. God has already forgiven us for all past and future sins, other people may not, but that doesn’t give us an excuse not to ask for forgiveness anyway.