Welcome to Betrayal Trauma Recovery. This is Anne. So I received a restitution letter from my ex-husband in the mail last week and I've been pondering and thinking about this. In the meantime, my church had their semi-annual conference. So I was praying to know God's will for me and to hear his voice and to know how I should talk about this.

In conference, they talked about a drunk driver who had killed a wife and a husband

and in that story of forgiveness,

they were at the courthouse and saw the mother and father of the drunk driver.

And they all broke down in tears and gave each other hugs.

And it was a beautiful moment of forgiveness.

And that is a beautiful story and I really loved that story.

And also, that doesn't happen very often in this situation because the offense is not very clear to people.

It's clear to us, it's clear to me.

I'm sure it's clear to you, but to our in-laws, it's not very clear.

They can't see the abuse for what it is, and they can't see the infidelity for what it is.

It's not very clear to clergy. It's not clear to

therapists. The idea of forgiveness is difficult in the situation because the

offense cannot be agreed upon much of the time

because the person is denying it or acting like it's our fault.

That story would be very different if the parents of the drunk driver claimed that no

your son and your daughter the ones that were killed they were drunk and it's their

fault that now our son is in jail it's their fault

that our son was drinking it's their fault that this accident happened that would be a

very difficult situation now not saying that forgiveness is not also the answer for that

situation, but that drunk driver was held accountable by the law and he was held

accountable by his own parents and by society.

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