blessed are the merciful

Cedric and Trang's wedding today was beautiful. The weather, the music, the flow, the vows.. everything was perfect :) In Cedric's vows, he gave a list of Trang's good qualities and he mentioned that she was full of mercy. Everybody giggled because it was obvious that it meant she regularly overlooked his mistakes but it got me thinking about what real mercy is and what it's function in a relationship is.

mercy [mur-see] - n.
1) compassionate or kindly forbearance shown toward an offender, an enemy or other person in one's power
2) disposition to be compassionate or forbearing
3) the discretionary power of a judge to pardon someone or to mitigate punishment
4) act of kindness, compassion, favour
5) leniency and compassion shown toward offenders by a person or agency charged with administering justice

it's fair to assume that nobody on this earth is perfect and that everybody will at one point or another, do something flawed. Even people like the dalai lama will err in their ways. We will all hurt somebody's feelings, be inconsiderate, selfish, self-righteous, proud and the list goes on and on.

this can operate within two levels of relationships:
1) your relationship with God - this is a given - we can only be called children of God through God's mercy
2) your relationship with others - I experience a huge amount of mercy from the people in my life - my parents, my friends...
ex. Melody always shows me mercy when I am impatient, she just puts up with me and does not become impatient back

While being the recipient of mercy is good and fine, it is necessary for mercy to travel both ways.
Maybe when the mercy stops flowing, the relationship starts to break down (or it contributes to its demise) - this is a plausible explanation for one relationship in my life.

i guess that all i'm trying to say is that in the past year i have not been practicing mercy.
maybe the relationship was suffering and could not be restored because I was not extending the mercy that God commands of us and has given us so freely.

I think the difficulty I had was that extending mercy means that you give up the right to get what you deserve or give the offender what they deserve. That requires you to swallow your pride a little bit and it takes a dose of selflessness. I didn't want to give up the notion of retribution. That desire disguised itself as something else the entire year but in retrospect, I simply could not let that person off the hook, i wanted some sort of... I don't know, i didn't want revenge in the typical sense but sometimes you just wish that person knew how it felt or fully understood the impact of their actions. It almost felt like I would LOSE or admit defeat if I just let it slide. Regardless of what form it took, I refused to show mercy and I didn't realize that until today.

GOD teach me how to show mercy to others
is this a step towards healing and restoration?