Forgiveness

I’ve come to some realizations in the last couple days, through a series of unfortunate events. But I’ll tell you about the events before I tell you about the realizations.

One of my co-workers is on vacation in Europe for the next two weeks (she left on Saturday). Last Thursday, she got upset with me, and then I was upset with her too because...well, it doesn't really matter, but we'll leave it at that. Work was frustrating.

On Saturday (and again on Monday), there was an exchange (that I won’t go into) that involved my roommate and someone else, but which had a significant impact on me. My roommate was very upset with this other person and everything that happened in that exchange. It was rough on both sides.

Then there’s work. Because my co-worker is gone, and I'm covering a few of her projects, Monday was a beast, and Tuesday was just as bad. Monday I realized that there was a huge error on one of my projects that had just finished, and although it wasn’t directly my fault (it was a programming error), I could have prevented it if I had been more thorough when the study went into field, by doing a check on the data (which is supposed to be routinely done while a project is in field). So I felt horrible about that, didn’t take lunch, and was at work until 6:30 p.m.

Tuesday I was woken up by a phone call at 7 a.m. (and had 2 missed calls before that) about a project for which I was covering. There was a major issue, but since I don’t have the internet at home yet, and no one was at the office, and I live 20 minutes from work, I couldn’t get the problem fixed right away. Thus, the client got ticked off, and once again I skipped lunch and worked 10 hours. But because I was essentially working since 7 that morning, I at least managed to get off at 5.

But the point is, it’s been a pretty crappy past several days. Last night my roommate was still upset about the exchange that happened this weekend, and in the course of meeting for a BYU ecclesiastical endorsement, asked for some advice. We were hanging out with a friend last night, and my roommate was telling us about the experience he had with the stake president, and how much better he feels now.

(Now we’re getting into the realizations part of this blog – thanks for bearing with me.)

He said that the stake president told him no matter what perceived victories we stand to lose, forgiveness is worth it. To let your “enemies” have their perceived victories if they want them. Hopefully they’ll be able to forgive you too, and if not right away, perhaps in time they will see things in a different light.

My roommate said he didn’t want anyone to hold hate in their hearts for him. That he felt bad things had worked out the way they did, but that he refused to hold hate in his heart, and hoped they would feel the same. He said the process is still difficult, though. The stake president told him that maybe he needed to repent first, and then he would be able to forgive.

That’s what I’ve realized. That I’d been sheltering similar feelings in my heart for a long time, and for which I needed to repent. My roommate taught me that no matter what we feel someone has done to us or to someone we love, we cannot let it become an excuse for harboring evil feelings toward that person. They will destroy us, and we need to forgive unconditionally, without expecting anything in return.

I think I’m there now, and it feels much better.