A Lesson on Forgiveness
Today I relearned a lesson on forgiveness. Which is interesting timing, because today I had to teach a lesson on the topic of forgiveness in church to the teenage girls of our ward.
But anyway. A couple of days ago, I received a text from a friend. We will call her Ms. Text. She said, "I am not positive, just pretty sure--but are you pregnant?"
Now this is a question that no woman likes to hear when they are not pregnant. Now, I don't usually consider myself fat, but I am average weight, which happens to come with a bit of bellyfat. So I suppose to the suspicious eye I could appear like I might be in very very very early stages of pregnancy?
On top of the question that most women would think ("Do I really look pregnant?") there was the other added unfortunate that I happen to be infertile. A question like the one Ms. Text asked has the potential to ruin an entire week for me. Not only can I not get pregnant after a million forevers of trying, but now I look pregnant so people will think that I am pregnant and will ask me about it. And--I must be fat after all.
Anyway, all this is what was going through my head when I received this message from Ms. Text.
I wasn't happy.
It was all I could do to not reply scathingly or shut her up rudely. Instead, I managed to pull myself together for a couple seconds in order to punch in the words "No, afraid not." And then I quickly typed in something else to change the subject to another topic.
After much griping to thin air, I decided she must have had a legitimate reason for asking. Besides, Ms. Text hadn't seen me in a while, so there is no way she could be basing this explosive assumption off of my looks.
I soon found out I was quite right.
Apparently, an older lady at my church had mixed me up with someone else in the church who is pregnant. And she had posted something on my Facebook timeline about pregnancy/new mothers. I had not noticed the post, until today when she posted something else on my timeline. No wonder Ms. Text thought I was pregnant. She saw a post about it on my page! She had every excuse. I don't have to add "weight-worry" to my list of worries after all.
So here is the lesson I apparently needed to relearn: I never know 360 degrees of what is going on in other people's lives. They often have perfectly good reasons for the stupid mistakes they make, and I can never predict those reasons. I should not be so judgemental and harsh on people when they hurt me. I need to forgive them immediately and accept the fact that I might have made that same mistake had I been in their shoes.
I realize that this was a small example of forgiveness and their are much harder things to forgive, but this can sometimes apply to those big things too. I've got to keep this lesson in my head more because it will definitely lead me on my path to happiness. A forgiving person is a happier person.
