Bitterness (and emotional health and forgiveness)

Time for this post. 

I meant to add something in when talking about forgiveness. My thoughts on forgiveness came from a very insightful e-course offered by Soulation. One month focused on forgiveness, and the video that was most helpful to me was when my friend said something like, "When you wake up in the morning and you're in a lot of pain, and you begin to pray over and over 'God I choose to forgive; help me forgive. I forgive. I forgive. I forgive." what you are actually doing is stuffing your feelings." Forgiveness does not mean I no longer feel. That Soulation e-course (and community! which I love!) can be found here http://soulation.org/freedombuilders/.

Edit: A friend privately just told me that he disagrees that, after forgiveness, a natural consequence for stealing is paying back what you owe, since forgiveness is for the benefit of the perpetrator. Aha! Yes, thank you Dale Fincher, for that correction. Candlesticks in Les Miserables came to mind. 

PS
My lovely rescue cat's name is Cecelia. She was a stray. Later in the video, she was being so loud pounding on the back entry/basement door that I thought, for a moment, there was a home intruder. If you ever came over to visit, she would probably find some boisterous way to get you to notice her, too.