Beyond Words

Do not judge and you will not be judged.  Do not condemn and you will not be condemned. 

Forgive and you will be forgiven.  Luke 6:37

My husband.  Sometimes he aggravates me beyond words, sometimes he impresses me beyond belief, and sometimes he actually makes me laugh.  This morning he did all of the above.

He walked in our room as I was watching “CBS Sunday Morning” and asked me, “Do you what today is?”  I solemnly answered “the day after the Sooners embarrassed themselves, me, and the entire state of Oklahoma on national TV?”  (Yes, I am still bitter!)  Instantly sensing that I was in no mood for riddles and games, he tried to make me feel better by saying something about maybe not being so angry about the Sooners losing but instead being happy about the pouring rain outside.  What????  Are you kidding me??????  I’d rather live in a drought the rest of my life than ever lose to Texas you dumb Yankee!

Oooops…let go of the anger Carla and go to your happy place.

Incredibly, what I thought was such a ridiculous attempt at making me feel better actually did because it made me laugh…out loud!  I felt like Carrie in the first “Sex and The City” movie when she asks her friends if she will ever laugh again and then finally does when proper and prissy Charlotte poops her pants.

“When God forgave me, I figured I better do it too.”  Johnny Cash

The point of this whole story is that somehow we got to talking about forgiveness.  It’s something Jesus himself taught us in “The Our Father.”  “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive others…”  There’s also a philosophy that truly happy people do certain things different than not so happy people.  One of them is learning to forgive.  It’s also been said that when you forgive someone who has wronged or hurt you, you take away their power.

Smitty loves the Peace Prayer of St. Francis, as I’ve blogged about before, and he mentioned the line in it about pardoning others.  He then asked me if I was aware of a major act of forgiveness that’s happening in sports today.  People in Norman have had an examination of conscience and aren’t going to hang their football team from the goal posts at Owen Field?  Nope.  Come to find out that Scott Norwood is carrying the flag at the opening of today’s Buffalo Bill’s game.  Scott who you ask and why should you care?

Stay with me.  I think you’ll like this.

The Buffalo Bills have a history of not winning championships, but there they were in the 1991 Super Bowl and one field goal away from beating the New York Giants as time ran out.  Scott Norwood was the Bill’s beloved and dependable field goal kicker so as he approached the 47-yarder to win it all, we, and the sports world in general, knew he would make it.  He didn’t.  The ball went wide right and the Giants walked away Super Bowl XXV champions.  (moment of silence here.)  To this day, the mere uttering of “wide right” is unthinkable in our house and amongst Bills fans everywhere.  Some things are just hard to forget.  And forgive.

But today, the city of Buffalo and all of its fans are ceremoniously forgiving Scott Norwood for a loss that really was the fault of the entire team, not just his.   Somehow he unfairly became the scapegoat.  Today he will be rightly exonerated.

Will I ever forgive my Sooners for yesterday’s tragedy?  Not sure.  Will I forget it?  Probably.   Life will go on and like all those Bills fans I will continue to support my team even when they let me down.  It’s all about forgiveness and if Jesus, who’s last words were “Forgive them Father, they know not what they do,” can do it as he lost his life not just a game, so can I and so can you.