Joanna, its taken me a week to get my thoughts straight about your letter. when i read it, my first thought was that you were playing some kind of sick joke on me. i thought that this might be something that you would look back on in a day or two and laugh at how stupid i am. and i wanted to hate you for it. i wanted to never have to see your face again. for a long time, ive wished that i had never met you, that things had never happened this way and that i could somehow be the same person i was before you came along. but as time went by, God started telling me differently. that your apology is for real and that it is genuine. God reminded me that im not much different, guilt is a horrible weakness of mine as well. at first i tried to ignore it. i thought i could just wait it out and make it disappear. but a standing apology like yours weighed down on me. the past few days i havent been able to think of much else. i thought about how much change happened in me before you were in my life and after you left my life. i realized that, despite what i had thought, God used you to change me in ways that wouldnt have been possible without our relationship going through its problems. from my vantage point, God somehow made all of this work out for the better. the more i thought about it the more i realized that i didnt want to hate you anymore. i didnt want you to have to feel guilty anymore. when you wrote your apology, it struck me in a way that not many things do. after not talking to me in over 4 months, you had the courage to write an apology to me. you had asked for forgiveness for something that had happened almost half a year ago. i found that amazing. i realized that i respect you for being able to do something like that. and with that respect came forgiveness. its obvious to see that God inspired you to write your apology. even though i hated you less than a week ago, im glad God lives in your heart. your apology is accepted. you are forgiven joanna.