I just wrote the following in an email and sent it off to my family and friends.  I will also post it here, seriously asking any of my readers to please respond if they care to share with me their own answer to this question:

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If I were a young child and I came to you with this question, how would you answer me?

“What is forgiveness?”

I ask because I realize I absolutely don’t know the answer to the question myself.  I can’t, for example, even imagine any situation that could happen where I would even think about forgiving my children.  There’s nothing they could do that I can imagine that would even make my needing them enter the picture.

Maybe because I grew up always being in trouble and never being forgiven that I did not grow up with any concept of what forgiveness might be.  I just don’t know.  So I ask this as a serious question and hope you can give me your perspective.  I feel like I’m missing something that seems so important to other people.