“Forgiving does not erase the bitter past. A healed memory is not a deleted memory. Instead, forgiving what we cannot forget creates a new way to remember. We change the memory of our past into a hope for our future.”
Lewis B. Smedes

Interpret the above quote in your own way and reflect on its meaning to you. Do you believe that forgiving gives you a new way to remember? Is this always the case or are their exceptions? What exceptions?

Just because you forgive something from the past does not make it really a clean slate, you cant just forget what happened. When you forgive someone you are just deciding that you are not going to hold what happened over their head or linger on it. I guess what smedes is trying to say is that when you forgive someone something must of happened to make you view the situation differently, maybe you have more understanding into why they did it which would make you change your interpretation of what happened. This is not always the place , but an example is that zits fathers leaves, which at first the reader just thinks is a lack of caring, but on further inspection he left because he didn't want to continue the pattern his father had created