Everyday Forgiveness

How do we cultivate an attitude of forgiveness? By making it part of our daily practice. When we regularly do our own work, forgiveness becomes the demonstration of a willing consciousness of God’s grace. Josh Reeves shares wisdom on forgiveness and ends his talk with an affirmative prayer.

Transcript

One of our crown jewels here at Mile High,

If not the crown jewel,

Is our incredible youth and family ministry.

I love that we are supporting hundreds of kids every month and knowing the truth of who they are.

And we all love that children can get this teaching,

Right,

At a young age.

I'm 42 and I still have people come up to me and say,

I wish I had this at your age.

But you know there are consequences to all this,

Especially when the kids call you on not practicing what you preach.

Dad,

Do you know you're being really negative right now?

Dad,

You keep talking about this may be happening,

This thing you don't want to happen,

But maybe if you keep talking about it,

It's going to happen that way.

Dad,

Don't you know that everything is going to be okay?

It's very hard to explain spiritual bypass to a four-year-old.

I had an encounter with a congregant who had five young boys.

Can you imagine that?

Five young boys and one evening,

One particularly rambunctious evening in the kitchen,

The oldest son dropped a nice piece of glassware and it broke.

Mom,

Who's only holding on a thread at this point,

Points at her son and she says,

Do you know who you're being right now?

And he replies,

A beautiful child of God?

And it touched her heart in such a way that she in that moment began to weep.

She began to cry and her oldest son wrapped his arms around her and asked what was wrong.

And all she could say is,

Yes,

That's who you are.

Yes,

That's who you are.

Now,

I can't get into her own mind to share why she cried that day.

But what I do know is that many of us growing up,

When we got in trouble,

We weren't just worried about what we did wrong.

We were worried if we were worthy.

We were worried if we were going to be accepted as worthy.

We sometimes might have not been sure if even though we were in trouble,

We were still loved,

Or if we could be rejected,

Or even that there was this God out there who might judge and reject us.

Now,

I hope her next words to her son,

Now,

Go be a beautiful child of God in your room.

But it's a powerful,

Nuanced,

But meaningful idea that as a parent,

As a spouse,

As a friend,

That you can hold someone's worthiness while helping to affirm for them that they have freedom of choice but no freedom of consequence.

You can fully,

Unconditionally love someone that you care about while pointing out that they're not embodying their best virtues in that moment.

You can challenge someone without rejecting them,

Holding their wholeness and inspiring them in love.

And I am so grateful for our children and us big kids here that get that message.

It's one of the most important ones we can get in our lives.

An essential part of everyday spirituality and everyday forgiveness,

Our topic today,

Is the recognition that every relationship you have is a reflection of your relationship with God.

Every relationship you have is a reflection of your relationship with the infinite.

Now,

I believe we are all made in the image and likeness of God,

But I also believe that we behave like the God we imagine,

Sometimes consciously,

Sometimes unconsciously.

And when we have this archaic image of God as great judge,

As someone who can offer incredible forgiveness but wants to hear how sincere you are first or wants to take your sin and apply it to a list and may reject you,

May even damn you,

When you believe in a God that doesn't honor your inherent worth,

Sees you as inherently sinful,

Something that needs to be fixed,

We can't help but show up as that with our children.

We can't help but show up like that with our loved ones.

God isn't the judge.

I'm the judge.

God isn't the one waiting to see how sincere your apology is.

God has forgiven you even before your mistake.

It's me that judges.

God isn't the one that will ever reject you.

It's me that will reject myself.

When our God evolves through our own personal practice and we begin to see God as unconditional love,

Guess what?

We get to show up that way.

When we see God as that which is always holding our wholeness and the truth of who we are,

Even when we break it,

Even when we forget about it,

Even in our worst experiences of who we are,

We can hold that presence for other people.

What a gift.

When we realize that God is not the great rejector,

But a being of total loving acceptance,

We can hold the people we love to that as well.

Fred Rogers,

The great Mr.

Rogers,

Used to refer to God as the great acceptor.

God is the great acceptor,

Always looking for the highest and best in who you are to uplift and nurture that in you.

Isn't that powerful?

I like that concept,

That recognition of my worth,

That there's always this divine acceptor,

This divine approver.

And I know that's who I want to be in my life.

And what's the opposite of that divine acceptor?

The divine accuser.

So we get to consider,

As we step into this topic of everyday forgiveness,

Am I practicing being the great acceptor and the approver in my life,

Always holding the truth of who my loved ones are?

Or am I the great accuser,

Where my loved ones are on the stand,

Where I'm always counting up the wrongs and the mistakes to prosecute at a later time?

All of it is founded in our relationship with the divine.

And as we nurture that relationship within ourselves,

It gives us all we need to practice an everyday forgiveness that helps us love our loved ones fully,

While having clear boundaries that help support a healthy and meaningful relationship.

For me,

Everyday forgiveness is about our ability to get daily to our experience of the divine.

It's then that we might say that we forgive even before it happens.

By being in a consciousness and awareness of love,

Forgiveness is the natural and organic byproduct of just what that is.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Once said,

Forgiveness is not an occasional act.

It is a permanent attitude.

What does that mean to be in that spirit,

To have discernment,

But to respond with love?

Because you know,

It takes a lot of courage to live from love.

It takes a whole lot of courage to live from love.

And there are lots of types of love.

There's warm and sweet and giving love,

But there's tough love too.

There's that kind of honest love,

Where we won't shy away from confrontation or conflict to tell someone the truth of how we're feeling or how they're behaving is making us feel.

There's a clarity of love that says,

No matter what you do,

I will always love you.

No matter what you do.

To live from this presence,

To nurture it every day,

Is not only to help us heal those nicks and scrapes that add up after a while,

Throughout the day,

All those little things,

But it also helps us to do the ongoing work that helps us heal those deep wounds that have yet to build the proper scar tissue that allows us to say,

I am not grateful for what happened to me,

But I am proud of who I am and who I've become in spite of it.

That powerful forgiveness that's not,

Again,

A one-time thing,

But the result of daily practice.

Being in that love and light of God.

We have so many incredible prayer practitioners here at Mile High Church.

One of them,

Who's going to share with you now,

Her name is Kathy Quinn.

She's written a wonderful book called Healed by a Silent Heart.

And I'm so inspired by her forgiveness story that I wanted you to hear a little bit about it today.

Thank you,

Kathy.

Thank you.

Thank you,

Josh.

I'm so grateful to be here this morning.

As a young woman in my early 20s,

I was nine months pregnant with my son,

Jason.

I was sitting outside the hallway of my doctor's office,

Thinking about all of the things that needed to be done in the nursery before his arrival.

Twenty minutes later,

I was lying on an exam table as he was finishing up with the ultrasound.

He turned to me and looked at me,

Said,

Kathy,

I am so sorry.

I cannot detect a heartbeat,

Which means your baby has died.

And then he turned and walked out of the room,

Leaving me alone with the crushing news that my baby,

My son,

My Jason,

My baby still in my belly,

Was dead.

Adrenaline shot through my system.

Run,

Fight.

All I could do was freeze.

Tears flooded my eyes and grief seized my lungs.

I could barely breathe as my heart shattered into a million pieces.

My mind,

Numb at first,

Soon erupted with questions.

How could this be?

Jason is dead.

When did this happen?

I was woefully unprepared for the questions that followed.

Kathy,

What did you do?

How could you let this happen?

What did you do?

Well,

The doctor soon returned and appointments were made.

And four days later,

Jason was born with a still,

Silent heart.

My husband went back to work.

My parents,

Sadly,

Went home.

And I was left with the relentless voice in my head shaming and blaming me for what was a terrible human event.

Six months later,

I returned for my postpartum checkup.

And I asked the nurse,

I said,

Why did this happen?

What happened to Jason?

Why did he die?

She looked at me and she said,

Kathy,

You may never know.

But you need to just go on and get over this.

That's what women do.

And that's what I did.

I buried that tsunami of devastating grief and sorrow,

Of confusion and doubt,

Of blame and shame in my body so deeply that I was able to go on and give birth to and raise two healthy children.

Well,

What we know about post-traumatic stress syndrome is that no matter how deeply we have it buried in our body,

It will find a way to influence our thoughts,

Our behaviors,

And our health.

Three decades later,

I'd been divorced twice.

My career was in shambles.

My finances were in shambles.

And I was staring at abnormal test results from my most recent pap smear.

I felt like I was falling apart on the inside and failing on the outside.

I had nothing to hold me up.

I had prayed,

Oh,

How I had prayed.

But I had prayed to the God that I knew as a child,

The one with the white beard,

That people told me always loved me,

But always seemed to be waiting for me to do something wrong.

That's when I washed up on the shores of Mile High Church.

I would sit in the chairs and cry and wonder,

How is it that that message can speak directly to me?

I embraced the idea that if I only changed my thoughts,

I could change my life.

I started taking classes.

I volunteered.

I participated in Dr.

Patty's grief and bereavement programs.

And I committed to become a practitioner.

My practitioner's journey allowed me to develop a deep and abiding love for affirmative prayer.

And my disciplined spiritual practices resulted in positive changes in my life.

It felt as if the grip of losing Jason was loosening on my being.

The one thing I could not understand is how could I,

How could that voice in my head,

My voice,

Be so cruel to me in my darkest time?

So I prayed.

I prayed not to have that voice go away,

But I prayed to understand the source of that voice.

And that's when she came to me,

Mother Mary.

She came to me with a voice of love that helped me understand that my ego voice,

My voice of shame,

Sought to keep me captive to the human events of Jason's death.

And her voice of love guided me down a path of unconditional love and acceptance for who I was as a woman back then and who I am as the woman I continue to be.

But Mary knew that love and acceptance are not sustainable without forgiveness.

So with Mary by my side,

I called into my mind's eye,

My doctor,

And I looked right into his face,

Right into his eyes.

And I said,

I see you,

And I love you,

And I forgive you.

And then one by one,

All of the people that I held angry and hard energy towards,

I would call before me in my mind's eye and say,

I see you,

I love you,

And I forgive you.

Mary's powerful gift of love,

Acceptance,

And forgiveness became the foundation of my life,

One that I leaned upon later.

When I learned that my husband at the time had been diagnosed with advanced stage throat cancer,

Shortly after that,

My beloved daughter Amanda was diagnosed with stage four metastasized breast cancer.

And my son was struggling with a terrible addiction.

During that time in my life,

I was like a ball in a pinball machine.

I would go from one medical event in one hospital to another,

Often twice in one day.

People ask me,

How is it that you were able to get through that time?

And I tell them that two reasons.

I had unshakable faith in knowing that the practitioners and the ministers here at Mile High Church were praying for me and my family.

And I have an unbelievable,

Or I have an unshakable faith in the infinite nature of love and life.

I was able to watch as my husband and my son started their path towards recovery.

And I held my beautiful,

Bold,

Beloved,

Brilliant Amanda in my arms as her spirit leapt out of her body into the arms of Mary.

And even now,

Even now,

That voice will come forward in my head sometimes and say,

Kathy,

Why didn't you?

Kathy,

You should have.

Kathy,

You could have.

And I just close my eyes and I say,

Oh,

I see you and I love you and I forgive you.

And so it is.

Thank you,

Kathy.

And if you're in the sanctuary,

You can get her book and meet Kathy after at a table or you can go on Amazon and get it too.

And I just want to acknowledge,

You know,

Whenever I hear you and your courage and sharing your story,

It's a reminder to me that that we're all practitioners,

Each and every one of us.

And being a spiritual practitioner is not about utilizing spiritual tools to live a carefree existence.

It's about cultivating a consciousness of wholeness,

Of love and forgiveness and bringing that into every area of our lives.

Our greatest celebrations and the greatest tragedies that break our heart and maintaining with that.

And you are an exemplary practitioner.

Thank you so much.

Just to wrap up today,

This topic of everyday forgiveness,

I want to share some things to do with everyday forgiveness that forgiveness is not and that it is.

And for me,

Everyday forgiveness is not so much about an action.

It's it's a way of being forgiveness as a way of being.

It's going to that remembrance of spirits,

Divine love,

And then it's applying it to the everyday circumstances in our relationships,

In our life.

It's allowing God to bring a point of view that's wider than our more limited or even fractured one.

It applies to our relationships,

But it also applies to ourself.

I love something Mr.

Rogers said.

He said,

It's hard to realize,

But it's true.

Feeling good about ourselves is an essential thing in our being able to love others.

Feeling good about yourself is an essential piece of being able to love others.

Forgiveness is a consciousness.

Also,

Forgiveness is not an occasional event.

It's an everyday spiritual practice.

I can't tell you how many times in my office or in a class,

Someone will come in and say,

Josh,

I swear I forgave that SOB 10 years ago.

But here it is again.

And my response is always the same.

And it's that you did forgive that SOB.

You did.

But we're not fixed people.

We're fluid.

As Carl Rogers said,

We're not products,

But we're processes.

And there are times in the spiral of our lives that as we grow,

Our need to forgive again and to keep forgiving grows.

I like to say,

We need to forgive every time we remember.

And you may have people in your life that you have to forgive every day for the rest of your life so that you can live in the present and in wholeness.

And that's okay.

And that's okay.

Because forgiveness is an everyday practice.

It's not a one-time event.

Forgiveness is not about making ourselves vulnerable to future hurts and betrayals.

Everyday forgiveness strengthens us to renew our relationship with greater foundation.

Basic forgiveness,

Those big things that we have to forgive,

Part of forgiveness is recognizing that things will never be like they were before.

And that that's for the better.

That includes going back to a way of behavior that is allowing ourselves to be victimized by someone,

Mistreated by someone,

Hurt by someone.

Forgiveness isn't just saying,

I wish love for you.

It's saying,

If we're renewing this relationship,

We're doing so on a foundation of clear guidelines about how we treat each other,

How we communicate,

How we respect each other's boundaries,

And so on.

Forgiveness is not complete without that renewal that involves love,

But also tenacious,

Honest guidelines and boundaries.

For people who've been in long-term relationships,

I invite you to ask yourself how you measure the success of your relationship.

There's a lot of great answers to that.

It could be adventures that you had together and shared experiences.

It could be the family chosen or created by you.

But just maybe,

Just maybe consider it's the times that you've forgiven one another.

That the real success of your relationship is how fast you can get back to love from conflict.

It's important to recognize that we get back to love through love,

But sometimes we can't get back to love unless we acknowledge the hurt,

The pain,

The experience.

That even these negative emotions,

When we see what they really are,

Is calling us to heal,

To get back to love.

Forgiveness happens sooner,

And we get to reap the rewards of not wasting our time in a way of being that isn't the truth of who we are.

Lastly,

Forgiveness is not something you have to do alone.

It's something you get to do with God.

Forgiveness is not something you ever do alone.

It's something you do with God.

I'm going to invite you this morning to think about what are your forgiveness rituals?

Kathy just shared a beautiful and precious one.

Because forgiveness for me,

Last week we talked about everyday ritual,

And forgiveness for me is ritualistic.

I share that in the morning time,

It's all about meditation and prayer for me,

And the night time is the time for forgiveness.

And where meditation involves silence,

And where prayer,

Especially in our tradition,

Is a verbal practice,

Whether it's out loud or in our own consciousness,

Forgiveness is ritualistic.

That's why there's no one set way to forgive.

So I invite you to think about what your everyday forgiveness rituals might be.

Just a few that I have,

One here in Colorado I've developed.

It's just a walk around the lake.

I'll go down the street here to Kipling in Florida,

And I'll get a chai latte from Starbucks,

And I'll just walk around that lake.

I won't even think about what I want to forgive,

But I'll declare,

When you finish the circle,

You will have forgiven.

And what do I do if I get to the end and I still haven't experienced forgiveness?

It's time to walk around the circle again.

Another tool for me is music.

As a growing teenager,

I'm in the era of making constant mixtapes for all of my crushes,

And it took me a few years to realize I was really making the mixes for me.

There's something about music that doesn't just help me celebrate,

It helps me remember times,

And it helps me to grieve,

To mourn in a healthy way.

Sometimes it's one song,

Sometimes it's a particular mixture of songs about a particular relationship or a particular time,

And I don't even have to think about it.

I just listen,

And I experience that grief,

And forgiveness takes care of itself.

However you choose to forgive,

The opportunity is always there to allow God to make a greater demonstration in your life.

One last way I like to forgive is to write a letter.

The lost art of letter writing.

I don't think I've ever sent one,

But still,

There's something about having something you write that doesn't have autocorrect attached to it.

It's more powerful than an email or a text message because we have to be clear and transparent,

Not only about what we think about the person we're writing the letter to,

But to be open and honest in communicating to them how they may have made us feel as well.

What are your rituals of everyday forgiveness?

And if you keep those strong,

Your capacity to forgive will become so strong that you will have forgiven even before it happens,

Even before so-and-so opens their mouth.

There will be that presence and that knowledge of love that can uplift and move you forward.

I open this series on everyday forgiveness with what I wish for you,

And I've transformed that into an affirmation as we close that perhaps we can all say together,

Nice and slow.

Here's the first line.

I embrace forgiveness as a daily way of life.

Nothing stands in the way of my loving fully in this very moment.

I practice daily rituals that ground me in my own spirit,

Inspiring me to live my true life.

I have a ready awe and capacity for wonder.

Even in the mundane,

I see the divine.

And just taking that into prayer,

I invite any of our prayer practitioners who'd like to stand and join me to do so.

I just invite us to open our hearts this morning to this concept of our true life.

Am I living my true life?

And what I know is when parts of my spirit seem to be being held hostage in past experiences,

That I am not living my true life,

That these aspects of my spirit must be called back into my being right here and right now so I can live with the best of myself again.

Even if there's an inability to erase the reminder of past negative experiences,

What I know to be the truth of who I am is that I am loved by a caring God,

That my relationships are blessings that are the result of a deep and profound yes to being my best self,

To growing,

To caring,

To nurturing.

And I know as we continue to open our heart to the true life within us,

It begins to sing and to show up all around us as grace,

As healing,

As love,

As inspiration.

When I go to the divine,

Forgiveness takes care of itself.

It is the fruit of moving inward to that holy embrace of a divine spirit that speaks through the language of unconditional love and acceptance.

That love is here.

It's right now.

If we could truly be aware of it,

We would realize that it surrounds us in such a way that we could never step outside of it.

May we allow ourselves the gift,

That gift of love to be known in our heart,

To be known in every cell of our being and to make itself revealed through each and every relationship we keep.

And so it is.

Reviews

Wonderful. Thank you. Came to me just as and when needed and ready to receive.