I was furious with Leif last week.
We were driving home from the airport when the car in front of us started cruising 20 miles per hour below the speed limit in the fast lane. The vehicle refused to move into the slow lane.
Leif flashed his lights.
The driver slowed even more. In frustration, Leif drove around him in the slow lane.
Understandable.
Except the driver responded by slamming his foot on the gas and tailgating us. For miles.
Leif moved faster. Slower. Moved to the other lanes.
Wherever we moved, the car followed a few feet behind our bumper.
Twenty miles later he was still on our bumper.
Images of a road-rager with a gun—which isn’t unreasonable here in Colorado—flashed through my mind.
Anger overcame me. How did Leif allow this to happen after a long, brutal day of travel?
“Let’s drive to the police station,” I suggested.
“Let me see if I can shake him,” Leif suggested.
Leif swerved from the fast lane to the slowest placing a semi-truck between us and the other driver, then jetted off an exit ramp. Leif lost the other car. But he didn’t lose my anger.
I’m usually quick to forgive Leif. Not this time. I couldn’t let go. The sun set and rose on my anger.
By mid-morning the next day, I knew I needed to forgive. Not because Leif had done the unspeakable. But because I had.
I had refused to forgive.
Unforgiveness casts dark shadows on the soul.
One of my heroes, Frederick Buechner, captures this eloquently when he writes in Wishful Thinking:
“To forgive somebody is to say one way or another, ‘You have done something unspeakable, and by all rights I should call it quits between us. Both my pride and my principles demand no less. However, although I make no guarantees that I will be able to forget what you’ve done, and though we may both carry the scars for life, I refuse to let it stand between us. I still want you for my friend.’”
Buechner explains that accepting forgiveness means admitting you’ve done something “unspeakable.” You need to be forgiven. Both parties must swallow their pride.
“When somebody you’ve wronged forgives you, you’re spared the dull and self-diminishing throb of a guilty conscience,” he writes. “When you forgive somebody who has wronged you, you’re spared the dismal corrosion of bitterness and wounded pride.”
The road to forgiveness isn’t easy. Yet it leads to freedom, peace, and gratitude for each other’s presence.
Forgiveness is one of the most powerful ways we fight back with joy.
In Fight Back With Joy book and Bible study, I share how some of the most powerful words that I ever spoke were:
I forgive.
Forgive me.
Thank you.
These words look small, but they’re mighty. Chains break. Heaviness lifts. Levity returns. Joy bubbles.
Today, you can fight back with joy. Who do you need to forgive? Where do you need to swallow your pride? And regain a friendship?
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