Aruging with the child inside

I struggle and struggle and my head says "You know the answers" and my heart crosses it's arms and sticks out it's lip and says "I don't care! I don't feel like it." How do you forgive someone when you can't find closure? I have been arguing this point in circles for 3 years. I have even found christian authors who say you don't have to. They actually claim that you don't have to forgive before repentance. Reading that article, I just was over whelmed with the feeling that the author just dug around and edited until they got the verse they wanted because their inner 3 year old was having a temper tantrum.
I am tired of feeling that I am on the other side of a conspiracy. I feel like I am the only wall of defense between my little girl and a wave of people in my own family who somehow twist things around until they believe that somehow she isn't telling the truth and she and I are at fault for this whole mess of turmoil and anger.

Then somehow today, I suddenly got this wave washing over me. Who am I to build a wall around her? Why am I so terrified of life happening to her? These are both wrong of me because this is worldview, not biblical. If I keep her from experiencing life now, she will be totaly unprepared for life when she leaves home. God can protect her better than I can and it is His job, NOT mine.


I think that part of my problem has been that I have failed to recognize that I am putting all my anger and resentment on one person. Reviewing more openly, I have been really angry with other people and just lumping it on the person that I can justify being angry with. When I step back, I can see that I have been unable to forgive because I haven't been looking at it right. In heaping the whole of the problem on one peron, I have put things on him that I can't forgive him for...these things aren't his. When I put it in perspective, and connect the dots, I can see what anger is attached to whom. Then the hostility is properly assigned and I can forgive people for what they actually are responsible for.
guess at some point it comes down to remembering that
1) People are only human and part of a broken world.
2) I can't force them to see things my way.
3) Ultimately, I am not the one to ensure justice prevails.
4) Others don't have to answer to me. They have to answer to God.
5) I am limiting God when I refuse to let him heal this hurt.
6) Keeping my anger alive is refusing to let the memory die for my little girl.
7) I must live my life looking to the future and turn my back on the past.

I am not claiming that I suddenly accomplished all this in an hour of typing on a keybard. I am just saying that I gained some perspective, and I am working on it. I am a continuing project just like everyone else.