3 - 6 - 18 Two Stories about Forgiveness (4 minutes)

Forgiveness is not something I’ve struggled with greatly. Well that’s a lie. Just as I was thinking of that sentence I thought of a grudge I held for months. Well, I’ll talk about that first but what I want to get to is a story that illustrates how difficult I find it to seek forgiveness.

For the longest time I still harbored hate in my heart for one of the strength coaches on the Michigan Football team. He was so rude, disrespectful, and unreasonable that the thought of him still makes me bristle. For months after I quit whenever he would randomly come into my mind I couldn’t help but feel nearly rageful. I couldn’t help thinking that I was hoping he was doing poorly, that he was unhappy, that he was somehow getting his comeuppance for treating people so unfairly.

Well, he did get fired a couple months ago, along with the rest of the strength training staff, but that doesn’t make me feel any better. (Side note: real leaders take the blame for failures instead of placing the blame on their team, and summarily firing them?) Why would it make me feel better? It doesn’t change that he hurt my feelings, made some two-hour stretches of my life nearly miserable. Even as I’m writing I’m saying to myself, was it really that bad?

In retrospect surely not, but I can’t expect myself eight months past an experience to appreciate the emotional weight it carried in the moment. Especially considering I cared about football deeply then and couldn’t care less now.

The only thing I’ve found that worked for bringing stillness to my heart was to pray that God gave me the desire to pray for him. Eventually that happened, and once you’re able to pray for someone, it’s incredibly hard to hold a grudge.

So here’s a story of a faux pas that’s a little bit more than a faux pas. Usually I just feel dumb when I stick my foot in my mouth, in this situation I felt terrible.

On the way back from Nica in the Houston Airport I was talking to Michelle about how we were going to share our experience with others when we got back. We were discussing how we didn’t desire to explain things like itineraries or activities but also didn’t always feel comfortable sharing the actually important parts of the trip, and how it changed us.

I brought up how I hate, and how I do, when people find out I played football and just give me the “what was that like?” They want funny stories, which I have, they want specifics of what we did, which I remember, they want to know about Jim Harbaugh, ooh Coach what’s he like is he crazy did you ever talk to him????

I don’t want to talk about any of that! It’s inconsequential. But as I was expressing this sentiment our friend Morgan lobbed over a “Hey Travis, I heard you played football what was that like?”

I didn’t find it irritating at all, I thought it was pretty good comedic timing. So my comeback was something I’ve often heard used lightheartedly in such situations to rebut someone, “kill yourself.”

Looks pretty bad in writing doesn’t it? Looks worse when I remembered I had just had a one-on-one with Michelle for over an hour a couple days ago discussing, among many other things, her sister’s attempted suicide a little over a year ago.

How ridiculously insensitive is that? Isn’t that just an absurd thing to say? Especially because I’d been walking behind her through the terminal, constantly having her blue “World Without Suicide” backpack pin within my line of sight.

I was blocking it out Sunday, but by Monday afternoon I was feeling absolutely sick. So I sent her a text that felt more than little unusual.

“Hey I just wanted to let you know that I feel really terrible about what I said about suicide in the airport the other day. I’m still not where I want to be in terms of controlling what I say. I’m sorry if that bothered and I hope you don’t hold it against me.”

“If it bothered you” even as I acknowledge my guilt, hoping for a way out, hoping it wasn’t a big deal. But would it have mattered if she hadn’t cared? It was still ridiculous to say.

Turns out, it had really bothered her, it had been tearing her up inside too. And she was gracious enough to forgive me for what I said.

This is the aspect of forgiveness I still struggle with. Those 54 words were harder to type than a thousand. Admitting I was wrong, putting myself at the mercy of someone else’s clemency, and acknowledging that I can do nothing to right the wrong but hope for the forgiveness of the ones who I’ve wronged (including God), that is a difficult chore for someone as prideful and competent as myself.

Children don’t have trouble asking for forgiveness because they know they’re expected to mess up. I’m going to try to remember that I’m expected to mess up, if not by my peers then by God at the least. God fully acknowledges I will fail, and only holds me all the tighter in his embrace of love and forgiveness. He knows I’ll need it.