As a hard working motivational speaker and mom, I quite often find myself having to blend work into moments when I’m also watching my child. The other day found me hanging out in the play place of Chic-Fil-A - the poor individual’s theme park -  talking myself out of ingesting another French fry, watching my boy play in the larger-than-life-sized hamster wheel of bacteria, and I began to search anxiously in my purse for the large sized bottle of hand sanitizer that I had recently purchased.  I gain a lot of insights from these play place petri dishes. This time I was taught a lesson about forgiveness.

All of a sudden, one of the children who has climbed into the maze of pipes begins wailing. And I wish with all my might that it is not my son, because I noted the weight rating of the apparatus when I strolled in. And in my imagination I see handsome firemen fighting to pull my bloated keister free from the plastic tubes. Just for the record - judging from the firemen in my family - I don’t think they can all qualify as hunky..

Briefly my heart sinks as I hear the unique “I’m hurt” cry. Luckily we could tell that it was not a “something’s broken” cry, but rather an “I hurt myself and I need Mommy to kiss it” cry. A swift headcount confirmed the liitle girl who had let loose with the panic causing cry, but there was no chance her mother would fit through the labyrinth to get her.

We sent one kid up to get her. He didn’t return. We enlisted another kid and sent him up, but he canceled the mission midway through after getting derailed by a petrified mcnugget. Finally we convinced a little girl to go up there and get her down. For the record, all we needed to persuade her to execute the mission was half a French fry, which tells me the boysshould love her during dating season. We all knew the girl in school who would do anything for half a French fry. The girl climbs up to the top of the playplace and convinces the injured child to come down. The small injured girl runs to her mommy to point out the boo-boo that could only be seen under microscope and all is well again. But that’s not the conclusion of the tale.  I could discern from the look in the irritated mother’s eyes that this tale was definitely not over. It started to look like an episode of CSI Miami as the child’s mother started “sweating” her for the name of the perpetrator in the incident. While the little girl anxiously wanted to go back to playing, the mother continued to grill her - pressuring her to point out the junior delinquent behind the episode. I knew this mother’s look. This woman sought “justice” for the brute that traumatised her child. The glint in this mother’s eye said “somebody is going to get it”. And this sort of look never ends well.

As a master of suburban snooping, I was able to ascertain that her daughter hadn’t uncovered a suspect. It became clear that this mother would root out the villain herself. And having no proof to go on, the mother created her own, and set her steely gaze on the dirty child without any shoes and unwashed hair who was being completely ignored by his mother who was on the phone telling her sister Doreen why she was never going to shop at Big Lots again.  Poor little grimy kid with no shoes - don’t they always get blamed for starters. I spent the remainder of our visit in the playplace watching that woman give evil looks to the kid and his mother while her child frolicked happily on the slide. (Do people still frolick?)

My initial thought was to tell that mother to let it go, give it a rest. Her child was ok, and now contentedly playing. No harm, no foul. Was it truly critical to pin the guilt on someone? Did she really need her pound of flesh? Didn’t she possess some forgiveness in her soul? That is when I realized how many times I’d fallen into the same behavior. Those times when my first thought was to find someone to blame..

Shoot, I misplace something at home, and I commence yelling “Who took it?”  A water main breaks, and I’m looking for who to take to court for not being able to catch a bath for four hours. The playplace reminded me that we’ve lost our capability to forgive, but we’ve become really good at placing blame.

I recall somebody telling me about a kid calling another kid a name on the playground at school. The principal dealt with it. End of story. But it really wasn’t the end of the story. The mother of the kid who got called a name chose to open her own “investigation” and questioned all the other mothers about their child’s experience with the name caller. She had meetings. She sent emails. She pushed them to take action against the name caller’s mother. It was a good old fashioned witch hunt. And these things don’t just transpire on playgrounds. I have been in churches, work places, community events, committee meetings - where people are quick to blame and judge and slow to forgive. And even slower to forget. Where agreeing to responsibility is no longer sufficient - we need payback - oftentimes for something that wasn’t even done to us in the first place.

Making blunders is coded into our genetic make-up. It’s part of what makes us human beings. If people were faultless, as a motivational speaker, I’d be unemployed. Let’s face it. In many instances things just happen that are outside our control. Things that don’t have to be someone’s fault. That doesn’t mean that we are not accountable for our choices and behaviors. If we make errors we should own up to them. But here’s a duty that you more than likely have not considered recently. How about the responsiblity to forgive?

For those of you who answer to God, He has some incredibly cast in stone rules on this one - and He even went so far as to say it a number of times. Yet many of us who answer to God are clinging to grudges like it’s the last thong left on the clearance rack.

But we can’t let this stuff go or it will happen again, some say. We can’t let drunk drivers get off easy - we can’t let another car be sold with poor breaks.  I agree, sometimes we have to make sure that it doesn’t happen again. This falls into making somebody accountable for their actions. This has very little related to forgiveness. Individuals will and should certainly answer for the choices they make in life. I’m telling you they must be forgiven. Forgiveness will never signify you like what they did or approve of their actions. It merely signifies that you will forgive them for having made the mistake.

But some things aren’t forgivable. Fine. I’ll give you that. Five percent of you out there are dealing with things that may be deemed unforgivable - the rest of you are not. It’s the rest of you I am speaking to.

So how do we do it? How do we live out the lost art of forgiveness?

If it didn’t have to do with you specifically, move on. Don’t take part in the actions or the conversations surrounding them. Just explain to that individual dying to get you taking part, “I’m sorry. I was not there so I will abstain from commenting. It’s actually not any of my business.”

Forgive others. In your soul. That doesn’t imply you need to go say to them you forgive them - except if they know that you are outraged with them. Simply forgive them. If you look to God, you know already that He requires us to forgive simply given that He forgave us - this is our way of repaying Him - the one who loved us without our having to earn it.  Forgiveness is not just a gift we offer to others, it is a reward we give ourselves. Carrying around that aggression affects us, not them.

Be slow to assign blame. Most of the time we are just not authorized for the position.

Don’t sentence. Discipline is not yours to determine except if you have been granted the role of sentencing. If you don’t like their actions, then don’t be their friend. Don’t buy their product or service. Don’t vote for them. Don’t watch their show.

Let gossip stop with you. It’s easy. Don’t answer the email. Don’t pass it on. Don’t get on the phone and spread the news. Don’t bring it up in passing. This is tough. Good gossip is harder to hold in than a poot. But do it nevertheless.

If you are directly engaged in the incident, work specifically with the individuals caught up and cope with the situation like an adult.

Not everyone is going to live up to your specifications. Let it go.

See life from their viewpoint.

Mean and stupid people are everywhere around us. You can’t control them, so give up trying. You’ll get far more out of forgiveness than they will. Don’t let your bitterness ruin you.

Realize that there is not always a culprit in each and every predicament. Occasionally accidents just happen.

Let love always be your inspiration. I know, it seems like a sixties t-shirt, but it’s a fact. Continually challenge your attitudes. Ask yourself, “Is my objective to demonstrate love to her?”  If your objective is to have the last word, show her that’s she’s wrong, let someone else know about it, get others mad at her too - then chances are good that your motive is not loving. Whenever I’m about to do or say something that my instinct is telling me is wrong, I will ask myself, “Are you doing this out of love?” And I always know the answer.

These aren’t easy things to do. You can’t merely declare you are planning to forgive people. You must continually work at it. But it’s worth the cost. It makes the world a better place. And in addition, some day, the mistake will be yours, and it will be you seeking forgiveness.

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