Forgiveness - mercy and grace

[Lanolin]

Unfortunately, the legal system has a lot to do with your questions when children are involved. It's not always easy to keep a parent from their child.
I know women in abusive situations who stay with their spouse because they do not them alone with their children.

I would go to my ex-husbands funeral. We were married almost 30 years. He was mean and abusive to me almost the entire time. I do not hate him and I completely forgive him.

Sorry to hear that coffeedrinker. How did you forgive him, like what did you do or say, did you leave or he did. Would you say it was mercy or grace, or both? When its an ex, do you ever talk to them again or meet, or pass each other in the street or do you actively avoid each other. Or maybe you move far, far away.

I know of separated parents who live close by so they can be near their children because of school, they just live in separate houses, some even on the same street. Otherwise if they move too far apart and the children want to see them they have to travel to and fro all the time.

 

[Lanolin]

If its too hard to answer dont worry Coffeedrinker.

I was thinking how God has mercy on whom He has mercy. On His chosen ones, He has been merciful.
But maybe some hearts are just too hard? Remember when God got his people out of Egypt. He had Moses ask Pharoah to let my people go but the Pharoah hardened his heart (or God hardened his heart?) and so He sent the ten plagues. It was only at the last one when the firstborn sons of all the egyptians died that the Pharoah relented. The hebrews were mercifully and miraculously unaffected by the plagues. But it got them out of Egypt!

When people show no mercy, (and Pharoah was abusive and cruel) God gives judgement without mercy.