A person may consort with a prostitute, then repent and receive forgiveness from all concerned (prostitute, family, church, God) but still live the the consequences of a disease.

A victim may also initiate the extension of forgiveness. You may recall the case of Robert Kleason who killed two missionaries in Texas in 1974.

http://en.wickipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Elmer_Kleason

I recall reading about one missionary’s mother visiting Kleason in prison to extend forgiveness to him (sorry – I cannot find a link to this report.) Kleason was given forgiveness but still had to pay the demands of justice. (Unfortunately, it got derailed on earth but I expect he is serving time elsewhere.)

I like the message of the last paragraph of the post, that, like the missionary mother, we must confront our problems lest we wallow in self pity. Then, we can find forgivesness.

This struck me: “They were passive main characters, letting other forces run their lives.” This can be about those sins of omission, that no one knows but us. The promptings we receive but ignore.

This part of your post resonated with me:

“if you relinquish the story of your life, your soul is bound to start fading. Life seemed to regain richness and meaning when the women actively re-entered their stories..”

I had an experience a few months ago where I realized that I’ve never fully faced some of my experiences from my teen years…so I started taking some active steps to recover the pieces of my story so I can pull a narrative together. This process of staring down the past is both cathartic and completely unsettling. And now I can’t wait till the story takes on a more cohesive form (as an example, here’s a blogpost about part of that process: http://pilgrimgirl.blogspot.com/2009/10/on-photos-and-synchronicity.html )

I don’t know if I can claim that my life is “regaining richness,” as a result of my efforts but I can say that it’s quite therapeutic to face those old hurts and comfort the little girl inside of me who’s still afraid. Additionally, much of the changing nature of my relationship with the LDS church has revolved around challenging the rather passive script for my life that I adopted for many years, and that’s been hugely enlivening for me. And one more example: in the past few years I’ve encountered many people within the disability community who are using written (or spoken) narrative to ‘talk back’ to a society that continues to devalue them–another way in which story functions to add richness to their lives. (I also just last week saw Rafael Campo speak about his work with illness narratives and was terrifically moved by his work on medical poetry: http://www.rafaelcampo.com/rc_lit_med/rc_lit_med_index.html )

A few weeks ago I sat in the audience of a panel of old-fart writer-historians and they all spoke about how their work–though not at all autobiographical–was really about making sense of their childhood demons. So now I’m beginning to wonder how much of all literary writing (even academic work) is about this desire to “actively re-enter” our personal stories. There’s certainly some sense that an author can control a narrative in ways that s/he can’t control real life, and that can be a therapeutic process.

Forgiveness allows us to move from being a victim to a survivor and a victor. It empowers us to find peace amid suffering. It makes us whole.