If the thought of forgiveness causes you yet more pain, set that step aside until you have more experience with the Savior’s healing power in your own life.

I am going to repeat that!!! ...

"If the thought of forgiveness causes you yet more pain -set that step aside for now until you have more experience with the Savior's healing power in your life!" (Richard G. Scott, To Heal the Shattering Consequences of Abuse, Ensign April 2008)

Healing and forgiveness is a process. Elder Faust said,  

"Forgiveness is not always instantaneous... When innocent children have been molested or killed, most of us do not think first about forgiveness. Our natural response is anger....Most of us need time to work through pain and loss." (The Healing Power of Forgiveness, Ensign May 2007)

I have not been ready to tackle this topic as I don't feel very forgiving of my client's abusers. But I thought I would atleast start a discussion about it.

What Forgiveness is?  

“Forgiveness is freeing up and putting to better use the energy once consumed by holding grudges, harboring resentments, and nursing unhealed wounds. It is rediscovering the strengths we always had and relocating our limitless capacity to understand and accept other people and ourselves.” (Dr. Sidney  Simon and Suzanne Simon, Forgiveness: How to Make Pease with your past and Get on with Your Life)

What forgiveness is not.

Forgiveness does not require condoning a wrong, nor does it require allowing a harmful behavior, such as an abusive relationship, to continue. Also, forgiveness is not forgetting—if the offense wounded you enough to require forgiveness, you will likely have a memory of it. As author Lewis B. Smedes explained, “Forgiving what we cannot forget creates a new way to remember. We change the memory of our past into a hope for our future.”

I liked Vicki's definition.

"First of all, we need to understand exactly what is involved in forgiveness; what it is and what it is not. So many times we think of forgiving someone as letting them off the hook and allowing an abuser to go free without any responsibility for the cruel acts that have been committed. Nothing could be further from the truth. Whenever possible, anyone who has abused another person in any form, should be held accountable and should pay the penalty that is meted out in a court of law. However, so many times in cases of childhood sexual abuse, the statute of limitations has run out long before survivors can pursue the penalties within the courts. This does not mean that the abuser gets away with anything. There will be a day of reckoning for every abuser as he stands before God, Who is always just and righteous. Forgiveness is really more about the survivor than it is about the abuser. Forgiveness is a way to release the hold that the abuser has on our life. As long as we remain in a state of unforgiveness, we are joined to our abuser. We hold on to our anger in an attempt to make the abuser pay for his deeds, and in so doing, we remain bound to our abuser. Remaining in a state of unforgiveness prevents us from moving forward in life.- Vicki D. Messer, Yahoo Contributor Network Jan 31, 2012

I really like the book The Hiding Place. In it, we hear of Corrie ten Boom and her family's experiences in the nazi contentration camps. After the war she continued to speak publically of her experiences, of her healing and of forgiveness.

On one occasion a former Nazi guard who had been part of Corrie’s own confinement in Ravensbrück, Germany, approached her, rejoicing at her message of Christ’s forgiveness and love.

"'How grateful I am for your message, Fraulein,’ he said. ‘To think that, as you say, He has washed my sins away!’

“His hand was thrust out to shake mine,” Corrie recalled. “And I, who had preached so often … the need to forgive, kept my hand at my side.

“Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. … Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him.

“I tried to smile, [and] I struggled to raise my hand. I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity. And so again I breathed a silent prayer. Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me Your forgiveness.

“As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me.

“And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.”

It is not our forgiveness -It is his. When he gives a command he provides the ability to do it -in his timing and in his way. Please do not berate yourself if you are not ready for this step.  Instead focus on getting more experience with the Savior's healing power in your life.