No other way

How difficult it is to forgive those who have injured us.  When we have been wounded, anger, silence, or bitter words can be the weapons that keep quarrels alive.  But there is no peace in the nursing of a grudge.

The French writer, Guy de Maupassant, told a story about a grudge that led to disaster.  A French countryman came to his village on market day.  He saw a piece of string lying in the public square, picked it up, and put it in his pocket.  The village harness maker, a man with whom the countryman had previously quarreled, saw him pick up the string.  Later in the day, when a purse was reported missing, the countryman was arrested on a false charge brought by the harness maker that he was seen picking up the purse and putting it in his pocket.  The countryman protested his innocence, pulling the string from his pocket, but he was not believed and was humiliated by the townspeople and laughed at.  The purse was later found and the countryman released.  But he would not let the matter die.  Brooding over his injury, he neglected his farm, his work, and his health.  Finally, obsessed by the grievance, he became very ill.  Murmuring over and over in a delirious state, "A piece of string!  A piece of string!" he died.  He had nursed his bitterness until the end and never found the peace of forgiveness.

In the same way that rubbing two objects together creates friction, people living and working together can grate against each other's feelings, creating friction.  This can erupt in anger and contention.  

Only forgiveness can restore harmony and peace.

Couples who find themselves traveling a course leading to separation or divorce may be  at a point where they are unwilling to forgive each other's mistakes—unwilling to forget them.  Their love has been smothered in the misery of misunderstandings, and they have taken up cudgels of recrimination.  There is no peace in brooding over old wrongs.

Abraham Lincoln, speaking to the nation in the aftermath of the Civil War, spoke these words:  "With malice toward none, with charity for all, . . . let us . . . bind up the wounds."

There is no peace in nursing old grudges.  There is no peace in keeping conflict alive.  There is peace only in forgiveness.

Somehow forgiveness with love and tolerance accomplishes miracles that can happen in no other way.  
Gordon B. Hinckley