It will eat at you.

It will make you continuously gossip.

It has the ability to isolate you.

It will take over your heart.

It will even control your desire to be happy.

If you don't have forgiveness, you will be a miserable person.

The power it has over the human mind and our overall interactions is mind blowing. Harboring bitterness is a habit for me—I am a HUGE grudge holder. We've all had something done to us that we just want to hold on to because for some reason, it makes us feel powerful.

For some reason, we just want to keep talking about it to others and wallowing in self pity. It becomes the topic of all of our conversations—we do everything we can to bring it up to make ourselves feel better. This is the most self destructive thing we can do to ourselves without even realizing it. It will do so much damage in the long run.

Eventually months, maybe even years go by, and before we know it we are buried under bitterness and it prevents us from letting others in. We don't want to forgive this person because if we do, we think we will no longer have something against them.

But I have news for you—holding on to bitterness doesn't make you powerful, in fact, it makes you weaker than the person who has done wrong to you.If we really think about it, not forgiving someone is more dangerous than just plain forgiving someone. This is something that I am still learning to let sink in.

Set yourself free.

Forgive that person that makes your blood boil every time they walk into the room. Forgive that family member that doesn't realize how much damage they've done to the people around them. Forgive that old friend who broke your trust. Forgive that ex that was awful towards you.

Don't let them have that control over you. If you identify as a Christian, we are actually called to forgive every single time someone has done wrong against us. And that really hard—people suck.

In fact, by forgiving, you gain even more control. Don't wait for an apology. Because 9 times out of 10, it's not going to happen.

True forgiveness happens when you accept an apology that was never even spoken to you.