Rich, so sorry to hear about your difficulties. I hope this finds you well on the way to a complete recovery. You give us here a very good definition of forgiveness. Jesus is grieved by hardness of heart, which is to say that Jesus is enacting Moses faced with the Pharaoh who will not “let my people go”. Yes, forgiveness is self interest, and not forgiving is a miserable place to be, but I think is also compassion for the perpetrator who is a flawed individual as we all are. But this is not always easy to see !
