Amen!!! I always say that forgiveness is more for the forgiver than the forgiven. First of all, you are right, Jesus did say forgive 70 X 7 times because the Jews, so afraid of being seen as week actually had laws as to how many times they should forgive in a lifetime. I am sure this blew their minds…“What! 70 X 7 times, you must be nuts, our last rabbi said 6 times in our lifetime! What are you thinking???” This was totally unheard of for them. Next, if you consider that we are called to live a “Christ-like” life, we must be forgiving. Our beloved Christ gave his life for us, shouldn’t we be willing to do the same? I used to struggle with the concept of forgiving people that hurt my children…I could forgive anything but that it seemed. Then I realized that my anger and yes, even hatred was eating me alive. I still remember going to confession after that revelation. It was incredible!!! I was so hurt and so angry when I went in. I actually scared a nun…now that is bad! During the Penance service it occured to me…you know the one I am mad at has no clue and is going on with their life. And here I was so eaten up by anger I couldn’t forgive them…and worse, it was interfering with my relationship with God…Why am I doing this to myself? It obviously wasn’t hurting the other person…as far as I could see, just hurting me and my relationship with God…hmmmmm. So, I trek into the confessional and just looked at the priest and whispered…I am soo angry and burst into tears. Wow, I am so not like that! The priest was so totally awesome! I told him about how I was sitting there and it occured to me that my anger and my unforgiveness was what was causing a separation between me and God in my life. It was like a miracle…as soon as I asked for help to get over my anger and forgiveness for it…this incredible calm just came over me. I was happy for the first time in years. Afterwards, that nun I had scared was waiting for me. Oh no… I looked at her and said, “How amazing, as soon as I went to reconcilliation, all my anger just went away.” She looked at me and laughed, probably because she knew it would and I was stupid enough not to know, then she hugged me…I so needed that! Did my forgiveness of the person that hurt my children help them?..No idea, but it sure made a world of difference in my life!!!