Forgiveness

My topic today is a hard one about forgiveness, and I think it’s so important friends that you stop carrying the anger and hurt and frustration that we have in your life because it only hurts you. Most of the people you were angry with have moved on, they don’t even think about what they’ve done, and I think it’s important that we walk through the feelings we have because they are genuine, you were hurt, it is a scar, but a scar can be healed.

So, I’m going to talk about letting go of old hurts and memories of people in the past and the present so you can live your amazing life. When I was younger, I had to work at my dad’s plant we had a recycling company in our town. We would recycle newspapers, cardboard, and sometimes glass and rags. We were one of the few recycling plants in the area, we were green before green became cool. I’ll admit it was not a pretty business, in fact with all the with all the dust and paper scraps it was downright dirty. And honestly, I did not enjoy having to work in the office in the summer time. My brothers had what I thought was a whole lot more fun of a job picking up bales of paper in their truck, in their free time, and made a boatload of spending money. Me? I was an hourly worker, and I hated it. Their situation was the more they worked the more money they made, and I liked that option better. But because I was a girl, and I am the youngest of five my Dad was not going to put me in a truck and send me on my way to pick up bales of paper on the backsides of old buildings. So, I got stuck in my boring office job now here was my job my job was to weigh the trucks on the scale when they were full of paper, and then I weighed them when they were empty, and then we paid the difference.

Now you wouldn’t think that would be a big deal, I mean come in loaded, unload, and get paid. But of course, nothing in life is easy. I’m a pretty quick study and it didn’t take me long to learn the signs from the guys in the plant. The guys would give me a high sign that something in the truckload wasn’t right, so I’d have to go outside in the sweltering southern heat and the funky smells (and I’m not good with smells) and talk to the folks who were trying to cheat the system. I could never figure out how people had the energy to cheat at a recycling plant. What they did was that they took their cardboard and newspaper, and it would soak it in water for a few hours before they came to the plant so the paper would weigh much heavier, and then they covered up the wet paper with dry so from my nice, air-conditioned office it looked like everything was dry paper. But then I’d go outside, and I would watch them unload and you can pretty easily tell what they’ve done on purpose.

The oddest thing I remember from all those years of working at the plant was how it was always the same people who tried to cheat. I would think okay folks I know what you look like, I know your truck, I know your kids, come on stop with the steal. These folks made it a daily or weekly habit and then I had to make the habit of calling them out and adjusting their check. In hindsight more important than cheating was my learning how to josh with those who got caught without putting myself in harm’s way. I was a young person who saw what happened in real life and real color in real-time when people chose to lie, steal, and cheat. Every day a decision was made to fill that truck and water down the papers and cover it up and what I have found in life as I speak and listen to my clients, many times people purposefully fill the truck, water it down, and act like they’ve done nothing wrong. Those are the people who caused such hurt, harm, and I’m going to say damage in life. And yet here’s the most amazing thing, they lie to themselves, and others and they continue down the path without respect for the damage that they’ve done.

Now you and I know that people do wrong and seem to never pay a price. I got to tell you when I first started in business and not working at the plant, I had an ad agency and there were a couple of guys who worked with us as print brokers, and it just seemed to me that they were always cheating the system, and they never got caught and that would frustrate me to no end. I liked these guys they were friendly, good-looking, and very rich, cheating does that to you for a time and I can remember expressing frustration and a little bit of anger to my parents about how it was so unfair that we were working so hard to produce quality products and yet they were not on time, they had excuses daily until our product would finally arrive and then go to the client.

My parents would remind me that I don’t know what their life is like or how they’re going to end up. Unfortunately, I now know how they ended up and for a number of the folks who were in that business, they didn’t end up nearly as well as they started out, in a lot of ways. I don’t know about you but for years as a young person, I struggled with the verse in the Bible that says it rains on the just and unjust alike… really… how do those awful, rotten, people get the blessing of rain in their life. I don’t think that’s fair, I’m pretty sure none of the Bible scholars care what Deb thinks. I know it’s not my position to worry and I’m not in charge of this world. And frankly, I have decided not to waste emotional, physical, or mental energy on others because when all is said and done, I am just responsible for myself and the same is true for you.

I could have ripped those people to shreds who kept trying to cheat us at the plant, but ultimately, they were the ones who paid the price in ways I’ll never know. I know it hurts; I hear it all the time from my audience, my clients, and many of you, my listeners. But let me encourage you today that you and I need to make it a daily habit to forgive and forget and move on.

I know a lot of people forgive but they won’t forget, they love hanging on to their exquisite pain so those people are halfway there, hopefully they will mature and grow enough to let go and live. If you heard my show from last week, they just need to leave it at the river and let the tide wash it all away. I speak often on the circuit about you deserve a second chance because I do believe you deserve a second chance. You don’t need to live in hurt, you need to find some options to move past the hurt and into freedom… freedom you deserve to go and do and be your best self and the reason I say freedom is because I want to remind you yet again for the 100th time the people you’re angry at do not care. I tell you if that right there doesn’t make you want to haul off and hit somebody, I don’t know what does, but the fact is, they don’t, they are so used to cheating, lying, stealing, and then acting like it’s okay. You and I can’t live that way, but they seem to be able to until one day when it will all come tumbling down. Now we’re not here for vengeance that’s not really our place; our place is to live big and to live well and to do good and be kind. Remember, when all is said and done, they’re coming to your funeral and they’re coming to see either you’re really dead – thank goodness or maybe you’re not and they still need to be afraid.

I want you to pay attention to how you think about others how you treat yourself how you ruminate over your old hurts and stop picking at that scar. Friends you deserve a second chance Benjamin Franklin once said, that the best thing to give your enemy is forgiveness to an opponent tolerance to a friend your heart to your child a good example to a father’s deference to your mother conduct that’ll make her proud of you to yourself respect to all men and all add women charity. That’s what we give our enemies and those who are in opposition to us. Desmond Tutu once said forgiveness is the grace by which you enable the other person to get up and get up with dignity and begin anew because forgiveness is tough and sometimes it hurts us but it’s the right thing to do for us and certainly for others.

Remember your forgiveness doesn’t change what happened, it changes how you react to what happened. Gandi is very famous for this quote, the weak can never forgive forgiveness is an attribute of the strong. Friend, be strong, be strong enough to forgive, be strong enough to overlook, be strong enough to move past. Why? because your whole world is just waiting for you to step into the light and be the person, we know you can be. Why? because you were made for a purpose and that purpose is not to live small but to live large and to shine a light so much so that others can follow you into the brightness of a brand-new day. I believe that with my heart and soul and mind and body and yes, I struggle with forgiveness too, we all do, but it’s the right thing to do. And you know that, we’re good people and people of goodwill.

My theme for today was forgiveness because you’re better than the hurt you hold. You can do it and I’ll be here to help.