Forgive.

Action, Balance, forgiveness, Peace 1 Minute

I’m not going to lie. When I started thinking about F words and verbs for this month’s A-Z challenge, I struggled with my habitual G and PG ratings. I considered skipping F. Instead, I decided to confess my dirty mind and ask for your forgiveness.

Through teaching school for twenty years, I refined a philosophy. I get along with 99% of everyone I know, and the other 1% is not my problem. More often than not, those who fall in the 1% are dealing with something that has nothing to do with me. However, I later realized that sometimes the people crawling under my skin were the people closest to me. Did they fall into my 1%? Did I have a bigger problem getting along with people than I wanted to admit?

I came up with another philosophy through fifty-one years of life experience. Expectations in other people lead to disappointments. People will fail you. People, especially those closest to you, will say and do things you don’t like. What’s a person to do? Say, “I’m right and you’re wrong”? Fight about it? Hold grudges forever? Delete family and friends out of your life one-by-one? Forgive and move on?

Forgiveness is hard, and I’m no expert. But I do know life is too short to resent people for being human. If you struggle like me (and have an extra 38 minutes), you might want to watch this. This guy helped me.

I appreciate you for reading my 2021 A-Z Challenge post today. This April, I’m sticking to a theme of action: mental, physical, and spiritual, things I might already do or haven’t attempted in years or maybe never. You know what else I’m trying for some balance? Answers found in these links: Abstain, Ballet, Cartwheel, Devote, Encourage.

Published by Crystal Byers

When I was young, my dad would always say, "Crystal, you can choose your attitude." One day I chose to believe him.

Published

47 thoughts on “Forgive.”

  1. Pingback: F—Forgive — Faith + Gratitude = Peace + Hope – GLOBALYNC – Humanity

  2. Hello Crystal, Norman Vincent Peale, author of “The Power of Positive Thinking” was the head pastor at The Marble Colligate Church in New York City. When they sold tapes of his sermons, the tapes about forgiveness were always the one with the lowest sales. A tough subject for just about everyone. Thanks for your essay and have a super doodle day and remember to forgive the dirty bird that cut you off in traffic. Jerry

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  3. Forgiveness can be tough, until you realize forgiveness helps you, even if it does not help anyone in the 1%. Life is too short to harbour grudges. I saw a good camper van ad in NZ years back that read “Revenge is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” I am sure Anger and Hate are similar. Stay well. Allan

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  4. Forgiveness is always tough. But it helped me when I realised that it is between God and me when I forgive someone else and it frees me from waiting on the other person acknowledging that they accept that they hurt me. It is letting go and allowing God to heal us and move on.

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  7. Great post. I try to stay aware of how easy my expectations create a reality that lives in fantasy. I know in Zen the encouragement is to see expectations and realize they are another story, not an actuality. Yikes, the stories we tell! Be well my friend.

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  12. Helpful entry, Crystal. Definitely a great use of your F-Powers.

    I like your “life is too short to resent people” observation. Quite true and, much as we’d like to hope otherwise, inevitably we ourselves make up somebody else’s 1%. Let it eat away at our humanity, or move on? It’s not an easy decision, but the choice is ours to make.

    Thank goodness you avoided that obviously dirty F-word, thus preserving your PG rating. Definitely, fudge-making is a messy endeavor, and if not managed properly, it can lead to many other non-PG F-words. Fudge-eating can be far-from-neat too. Thanks much for sparing us the temptation.

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  13. I gotta say I really like what you’re doing with this A-Z challenge. Though I’m in the middle of a self-imposed blogging sabbatical, you’re really inspiring me lady. Thanks for that.

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    1. Rhonda, I have to admit, there are some letters that have me seriously stumped. I’m trying to take it a week at a time and happy I’m taking Sundays off. This week the letter “i” is throwing me for a loop, not to mention “j” and “k,” but those posts are next week.

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  15. Pingback: G—Google – Faith + Gratitude = Peace + Hope

  17. I appreciate your choice Crystal. Forgiveness is relieve our pain and sorrow. It make us more stronger.💪✍️🆒

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  19. I have struggles with forgiveness, too. Bitterness is a toxin that destroys, so I’ve been learning more about the (good) ‘F’ word. Thanks for sharing, Crystal.

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  20. Forgiveness is a big one… Took me many tears and years in therapy to understand the act of forgiveness and doing it for your own mental health more than anything else!l Love the inspo!

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  21. The F word comes first. And i F-eel nice! Excuse my language, dear.

    I do not forget and i do not forgive. Some people and actions do not deserve our forgiveness, if i may say so.

    And i’m a noble man!

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  22. Pingback: U—Update – Faith + Gratitude = Peace + Hope

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