Help with Forgiveness
I previously posted this in the r/TrueChristian sub but I also wanted to bring it here.
I am struggling with forgiveness and what it truly means. If I forgive someone do I have to say it to them? Do I still have to keep them in my life? Or can I just work on forgiving them in my heart? I am new to this is and I will try to be brief with context but it is a long story. Basically, last year my husband and I went through the worst season in our entire 7 year relationship. During that time I had to move home with my mother, pregnant and with our toddler. I won’t go into too much detail on my husband for privacy reasons but he is ok now and we are back together. But during that time my father, who is divorced from my mother, tried rekindling more of a relationship with me. He and I had barely talked in probably 10 years because I had distanced myself from him. He can be very angry, aggressive and very disrespectful not just to me but everyone in our family and I had gone basically no contact with him. I shared what had been going on with my husband and he was initially very supportive and wanted to help. There wasn’t much to help with honestly I was just waiting to hear from my husband and for him to come back so we could decide what we were doing moving forward. I ended up having our second child and that was the first time I saw my husband in 3 months. I sent pictures to him and the rest of the family. But apparently that was not good enough for my father. He had his friend post on social media that he had never seen pictures of the baby basically begging someone to send my dad a picture since it’s his grandchild. I asked her to remove the post and I asked him to also ask her to. It was embarrassing and I was already having to raise my children with out my husband and all the other things that came along with it. By the end of the conversation my dad basically said no and there was nothing he could do because that friend was there for him when I wasn’t. And how can I want to forgive my husband for what he had done but not him. So I blocked him because at the time I was 1 week post partum and dealing with a lot. So my previous questions at the top I guess? How do I forgive? And do I have to tell him? There’s obviously 27 more years of context when it comes to my dad but I think it’s self explanatory that he is not kind nor has he been a good father.