Forgiveness

I have a friend who told me about an atrocity that happened to their family. It resulted in a death, and now the perpetrator is on death row. Much of his family is still in shambles. The interesting thing that he almost said in passing was that he would never be able to forgive the person. This made me think of some studying I had done on the word forgive. Forgive actually comes from for meaning "away, far off" and give which has the same meaning we all know, the final result being the idea of giving away (see http://www.takeourword.com/TOW179/page2.html for a more in depth explanation and my quotes). So if the meaning of the word really is to give, or to give away, how do you give to someone on death row? You may pray for them, or hope the best for them, or hope that they repent in some form so that they will have some sort of salvation. And the interesting thing is that then the bad feelings go away.
I think one of the reasons we believe we cannot forgive is that we often associate forgiveness with pardoning someone and taking away their punishments. I feel that this is the farthest away from the truth that we can get. There are times we need to punish people. Imagine if children were never punished. The children would be unruly and out of control. And all of us face natural consequences. So whether or not I believe the prison system is the best system out there, I do believe that we need some type of consequences that lovingly help people improve.
I know forgiveness is hard. I am married and have three girls, I have to admit that giving is a hard thing to always do. I can be selfish, and then nothing good gets accomplished. But it is possible to forgive people, or at least do our best to give to people even if they are our enemies. I do my best in this area, even though I know I fall very short of my goal. Even though no one in my family is on death row, I know that forgiveness works when I use it the right way.