Thanks for forgiveness.

About 10 years ago, one of my classes in grad school began with the instructor handing out copies of a paper that had words typed all over it, maybe a hundred words, sort of in a word-cloud format, but all the same size. From what I remember, the words were all nouns and they were all sort of positive concepts, like: security, love, satisfaction, fairness, warmth, equality, novelty, comfort, compassion, passion, acceptance, etc. etc. 

Those weren't necessarily the words on the paper, but just to give you a general idea. They were all good things that most people would say they want in their life. Maybe there were 50 words. I don't remember. Anyway he asked us, the students, to circle the 20 words on our own paper that meant the absolute most to us personally, and cross out the rest. Once we had done that, he asked us to choose the 10 of those that were the most important to us and cross the other 10 out. When that was done he asked us to narrow it to five and cross the other five out. By now you see where this is going--finally we had to choose the single most important word on that paper and cross out the remaining four.

Many of the details escape me (why we did this in a library science class, for example) but I've never forgotten that exercise. The single word that I left on my paper was "forgiveness." I don't know that I would have chosen that word if I had to pick one out of 50 or 100 or even 20, but after narrowing it down to my five most precious concepts (I can't remember my other four), I chose forgiveness.

I don't know that I can especially explain why I chose that, but the memory has always stuck with me. Probably because I make so many mistakes. SO many. Without even stopping to think about it I'm sure I could list 10 I made today just with my kids. 

But they forgive me. Matt forgives me. My kids, my husband, my parents and brothers and sisters and friends and neighbors and coworkers and strangers in the supermarket, at some point I have managed to offend them all in some capacity--and overwhelmingly, almost all the time, I find that they forgive me. (I think so, anyway...) (And can't confirm this in road-rage situations unfortunately... on either side...) I actually have a great story of a perfect stranger forgiving me instantly--directly after I rear-ended her car--that I need to share here sometime. The memory of that encounter still brings a smile to my face and makes me want to be nicer to strangers.

It's hard sometimes. Oh it's hard. Sometimes it's practically impossible, at least for a long while. But the main thing that helps me forgive, whether quickly or after a long struggle, is really the knowledge that I have so much to be forgiven for. In my faith I believe that Jesus Christ forgives everyone for pretty much anything we do wrong, as long as we want to be forgiven. As long as we want to try again and we promise to try again and we work at it. Of course then most of the time we mess up. Again. With the same things. And He forgives us. Again.

I realize this might sound a bit preachy or rose-colored-glasses-y. There's some dark stuff out there, and people do unthinkable things. I haven't found myself in the position of having to forgive something that normal people would say was unforgivable. I hope I never will, but I don't know. I realize that forgiveness of big offenses sometimes takes time. Like years or decades. And it takes work. And tears. Or maybe it never happens. Or maybe it just doesn't feel like it's happened. I don't know.

On a smaller scale: my kids are really pretty darn forgiving of me. Of the same offenses. Over and over. I receive so much forgiveness in my life every day. I can't afford not to offer some out into the universe in return. There's no feeling quite like that happy, light, burden-lifted feeling that comes when someone truly forgives you for something you've done that you feel just awful about. It's not always easy to obtain--on either side of the offense--but it is worth it. So thankful for forgiveness.