Forgiveness
Articles mainly about forgiving others, being forgiven, letting go of bitterness and resentment.
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Love as Witness
My husband is a genocide researcher. He looks back in history at the times when one people group hoped to eliminate another people group through bloodshed, famine, or other forms of harm.
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Not Overcome
Shann’s new novel, Where Blackbirds Fly , releases officially today. It was a long journey full of suffering. He would start writing at 10:00 or 11:00 pm.
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Forgiven and Forgiving
Look at this beautiful interaction Jesus has with both a Pharisee and a woman in the Book of Luke.
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Honest Guilt
My dad was an incredible father precisely because he created a home where we could point out ways he was not a great father, and he would ask forgiveness and change.
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Winning the Battle
I have been invited to speak on several podcasts lately, and the hosts are curious about my father and the practice of forgiveness in our home.
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How to be Uncommon
At a group I attended, a woman shared her story of hatred toward her stepfather. She said he verbally and emotionally abused her and made her teen years miserable.
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A Simple Choice
Near Lidice, the town razed by the Nazis, the Children of Czechia invited the children of Germany to plant a rose garden. Fifty-one counties sent roses for them to plant, over 100,000 roses.
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Collecting the Pieces
I love art museums. They are one of my favorite places on the planet. I can spend hours there. I love the stories behind the works of art just as well.
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Relational Errors
As human beings, we all make mistakes. Often, we unintentionally hurt those around us. While saying, “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” may provide some comfort, it doesn’t truly fix the situation.
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Which Side?
The word challenge originally meant to accuse. Have you ever been accused? I think about Christ standing on trial. Witnesses attempted to bring accusations against Him, but they kept contradicting their testimony.
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A Pattern of Great Parenting
Dad and I often discussed healthy relationships, especially between a father and sons or daughters. I don’t think many parents talk this way with their children.
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Terminal Anxiety
The apostle Paul encouraged us not to be anxious about anything. Unfortunately, too few people take his admonition seriously or take the time to learn the skill mastery to defeat this common enemy.
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Systemic Love
At the core of all systems of love is listening, mutual respect, serving others, repentance, gratitude, and joy. Health looks complete from top to bottom and bottom to top.
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The Things that Make for Peace
One of the recent devotional messages asked me to picture Jesus as He weeps over Jerusalem.
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Letting Go of Vengeance
God is always surprising me. Several years ago, a man trained up by us at NBC took all our training, investment, and information and tried to run camps without us.
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Beyond Crisis
I have been thinking about how crisis reveals truth. What does difficulty show about the underlying fabric of a home, marriage, business, or nation?
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Handling Evil
I have heard two sermons now on the devil. They are both wildly confusing and humbling stories. The first is about Job.
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Forgiveness Work
I have been mediating on a sentence I wrote last week. “Dad did the work of forgiving his father.” Work is a true description of the forgiveness process.
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The Sound of Freedom
One of the most misunderstood, difficult concepts on the planet is forgiveness. You can watch a YouTube video of a celebrity recommending not to forgive or forget, and another saying to forgive the unthinkable and recommending forgiveness as…
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Handling Enemies
I read a wild verse that I hadn’t noticed before. It says, “Do not rejoice and gloat when your enemy falls, And do not let your heart be glad [in self-righteousness] when he stumbles, Or the LORD will…
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Good News
Dad and I loved the story of Joseph. It is such a fascinating consideration for me. Joseph, annoying, openly, and shamelessly favored.
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Struggling to Ask Forgiveness
A friend of ours is doing his dissertation on the phenomenon of forgiveness asking. He is researching the experience of asking forgiveness of family, friends, and colleagues. He asked me about my experience.
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Will You Forgive Me?
My dad loved the concept of forgiveness. He grew up in an abusive home with a father he did not admire and in fact deeply hated.
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Hand Vac
Shann and I were speaking at a conference about forgiveness. It’s always amazing how everyone gets overwhelmed with this topic.
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Forgiveness Revolution
At the conference Shann and I spoke at, we invited people to practice asking forgiveness. I role played with a woman who had been a Princeton professor for many years. Her eyes were incredibly empathetic.
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Remember Me
I read an evocative post about the thief hanging on the cross. He did not get baptized. He didn’t do anything most churches classify as salvation.
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Navigating Resentment
I have been pondering a message Brene Brown gave on resentment. She explains that resentment stems from envy rather than anger. This would have been an incredible conversation with Dad. I imagine our dialogue.
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Miracle of Grace
My husband Shann and I watched a modern-day movie fable attempting to show the calamity of friendships and families that lead to war.
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Banquet Table
My dad deeply loved Psalm 23. He meditated on it often. As I read C.S. Lewis’s Reflections on the Psalms , he brings attention to something I haven’t considered.
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What Goes Around Comes Around
In C.S. Lewis’s Reflections on the Psalms he addresses a topic I have struggled with. What do we do with the Psalms that pray down wrath on enemies?
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Accused and Accuser
Jesus always touches me. I am reading about His interaction with the Pharisees and the woman caught in adultery. He takes a woman who had done wrong. She was morally guilty, and He showed her forgiveness.
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Never Outwitted
I have been mulling over a scripture verse for the last two weeks. It says, “I have forgiven in the sight of Christ for your sake, in order that Satan might not outwit us.
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Bitterness Considered
I was rereading Dad’s Words of Hope on anxiety he wrote on April 21, 2021. He discusses lessons learned from nurse Laurie who served with Hospice for many years.
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Anxiety Healed
Shann is a forgiveness researcher. I was listening to a lecture in which he enumerated the physical benefits of forgiveness— a more robust immune system, lower heart disease, lower cancer, lower autoimmune diseases, and lower anxiety, to name…
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Repair
Dad and I had many conversations about the attraction to cut-off relationships by not speaking to someone or vilifying others, a tendency to build up resentment. A situation recently arose between a few people I know.
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The Gift of a Good Father
My friend told me, “I didn’t have a dad like yours. He left our family through an affair and wanted to reconcile later in life.
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Confident and Compassionate Disagreement
Shann and I recently discussed how family issues become more difficult because many fear disagreements and conflicts. We have very few examples of people navigating disputes with health and compassion.
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Condemning the Guiltless
I love listening to the Pray as You Go app. The other day one of the scriptures asked us to ponder the story of Jesus talking with the Pharisees.
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Proof is in the Pudding
When we ask forgiveness without change, we commit further harm. Teresa was an angry parent.
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An Elegant Question
Dad taught our family that we cheat the forgiveness asking process when we fail to resolve our conflicts or disagreements using language that does not address adequate resolution.
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Forgiveness Overload
Dad believed we nullify forgiveness and cause pain rather than healing when we ask the other to forgive too much at one time. “I cheated on you for the last twenty years.
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Learning to Forgive
Dad and I often talked about bitterness and the drive to live in fracture with others. It’s incredible how generational resentment perpetuates—mother cut off from daughter, father from son. Forgiveness is a challenging and noble task.
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Power Tool
Forgiveness requires discernment and wisdom for it to bring healing. Forgiveness can happen through the power of the written word, a glance, a touch, a look.
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Daily Relational Clean-up
Dad had the gift of reading the Bible and making the words immediately practical and healing. He believed Christianity should make us more like Christ–more loving, forgiving, generous, and full of joy.
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The First to Apologize is the Bravest
The ancient parable entitled “ The Wager” by some is an old tale of selfishness and refusal to change with counterparts of the same theme told worldwide. It reveals our demand to be correct.
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The Generational Journey
When I first met Shann’s father Tom, he seemed very distant. We would enter the house after having traveled far to get there, and Tom would remain on the couch and give us a two-finger greeting while continuing…
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The Forgiveness Journey- Part 2
One of my Dad’s and my favorite writers, Henri Nouwen writes, “Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all people love poorly.
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The Forgiveness Journey- Part One
Forgiveness is the willingness to start a journey by faith with the hope what currently feels impossible will become possible. We often drove to Edmonton, Alberta, from Spokane when Shann and I were newly married.
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Dad’s Great Gift
Of all the things my dad taught, one of my favorite and the most powerful has been forgiveness. Because of Dad’s influence, Shann became a researcher on forgiveness.
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The Choice
Getting ready for the Celebration of Life was difficult and joyful. As our family gathered together to sing, we could feel the tensions and emotions rising.
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Forgiveness is Divine
I heard a woman share the gospel, and it was truly an inspired gift. She connected the oil spill image off the Gulf of Mexico in Texas, where hundreds of thousands of birds were carefully washed and cleaned…
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Hurting people hurt others
We traveled to NYC recently, and our family watched the MJ musical highlighting the life of Michael Jackson. It has been met with controversy, and some people have decided to boycott the show in protestation.
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Kintsugi
One of the reasons to travel to Mumbai was the opportunity to work with amazing artists to bring Kintsugi experience to social service workers, pastors, and counselors.
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Bitterness to Healing
We often drove to Edmonton, Alberta, from Spokane when Shann and I were newly married. This long road trip afforded us hours of meaningful conversation.
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Freedom
Our family traveled to India last week to work with those in severe poverty. I wore my Dad’s t-shirt – Relentless Pursuit of Excellence (one of his favorite phrases), a shirt my brother created in his honor.
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Disagreement without Discord
One skill I am incredibly grateful for in my Dad is the peace he had to navigate difficult topics with wisdom and care. My Dad welcomed any topic in the home for Jay and me.
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MLK
A woman named Luska is one of NBC’s bright stars. She is brilliant and has an incredibly powerful mind.
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Daily Forgiveness
I met with some very lovely friends who want to create a language of forgiveness. I love this idea because forgiveness is such a misunderstood topic.
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The Third Option
Dad loved Jesus’s response to the Pharisees. They often tried to trap Jesus. He frequently faced either/or no-win decisions by them but Jesus offers the third option. Consider, for instance, the woman caught in adultery.
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Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood
My Dad loved the movie about Mr. Rogers, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. He watched it many times.
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Love is Patient
My Dad had an abusive father, and so did my Mom. My Mom was born in November of 1941. A few weeks after she was born, Pearl Harbor was attacked.
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Worthy of Imitation
My good friend was in town on a recruiting trip, and he stayed with Shann and me. He loved Dad and considered Dad in many ways a second father.
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Forgiveness as a Healing Force
Dad loved servant leadership. One beautiful definition Dad would have loved from Dr.
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Live in Forgiveness
The keyword I wanted to focus on for today is, forgive. I know that as Dad crossed over into eternity, any memories of bitterness, resentment, or unforgiveness simply cannot accompany him into the presence of the Lord.
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Privilege
Webster writes PRIVILEGE is “a special benefit, advantage, or favor; a right or immunity granted only to a particular person or group.” There was a time in our culture when the average person could not spell or give…
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The Law of Did You Know
There are three profound Laws of Life that impacts all of us, whether we are aware of them or not.
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Let There Be Light
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. In basketball language, an excellent metaphor for shooting a basketball is an automobile, where the legs are the engine of the shot.
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Will and What?
Two extremely important, yet uncommon questions that bring relational healing. Will you forgive me for; now call the offense by name.
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Story Collisions
The tendency is to believe the first story told and forget there are two sides to every story. The late Dr.
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Solution to Poor Character
Do you desire freedom from quick temper, anger, and personal conflicts? The Apostle Paul is truly a remarkable writer. I marvel as I read his many books. Around 57 AD he made a difficult decision.
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Hope, an Antidote for Depression
“Hope is the anchor to our souls.” In my former career as a marriage and family counselor, I faced a monumental counseling challenge. A young, deeply depressed, divorced mother came to me.
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Two Choices – We Get Bitter or We Get Better
God’s mercy is for everyone. “And so dear brothers and sisters, ‘I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all He has done for you.
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The Law of Restitution – Reconciliation
“You can never do too much for Him who has done so much for us.” -The late Coach T.
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Thy Kingdom Come
A basketball coaches analysis of the Lord’s Prayer. Based on the prayer instruction of Jesus, how is it possible to have His Kingdom come and His Will be done here on earth?
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The Law of Forgiveness
The universe is governed by laws. Obedience to the law preserves life. Disobedience to these laws may lead to destruction. Three things you need to know about the laws of the universe.
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FORGIVENESS FRIDAY – Our Get Out of Jail Card
The Crowell Game Changer program dedicated each Friday to conscious level living forgiveness. Forgiveness is or get out of jail free card.
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Valid Identification, Part 2
Recently one of my remarkable sisters asked me this profound question: “What made you become a Christian?” If you remember, dear sis, we both grew up with the assumed ID of not being intelligent and an outcast family.…
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Forgiveness Reality
Forgiveness asking is one of the world’s most important, yet least understood and practiced success principles. What makes it so difficult to ask forgiveness?
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Get Out of Jail Free
Unforgiveness is the number one way to be imprisoned in the Emotional Intelligence Jail. It is holding a grudge against someone who has offended us, leading to unkind and merciless thoughts.
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Intent vs. Impact
A well-developed EQ is evident when one knows and understands that intent must ultimately be measured by its impact.
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Five Life Giving Syllables
1. Will 2. You 3. For 4. Give 5. Me 75 years of life experience confirm to me that “will you forgive me” are the four most difficult words for people to say to those that have done…
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Analytical – THE LORD’S PRAYER
KEY STATEMENT: What did the Lord mean when He said, “Thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”? Many of us memorized this prayer as children.
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Resentment- Palms up Palms Down
Resentment is a signal light telling us to stop or go! Resentment is a gut feeling, telling us something is quite wrong. Resentment ignored turns to bitterness like grapes turn to wine.
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Catharsis Is Pure
Have you heard the word catharsis? Catharsis is the Greek word for purification . It is a cleansing from unnecessary elements. Emotional catharsis is important for a person’s well-being. A cathartic moment can be a wake-up call.
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SELF-LOVE, Part 2
Self-love is a journey . How wonderful to be able to love ourselves by loving what God loves and forgives.
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The Smart Start
Is it possible that 2019 could be the best year ever in your entire life? Even if it were remotely possible why not go for it? What do we have to lose? CROWELL’S 2019 GAME PLAN!
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Therefore Implies Act Logic, Part 2
At Thanksgiving, we can be grateful for new hearts with new garments to put on. As St.
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9-11 and the EAR to HEAR
9-11-18 The Day written upon our hearts that marks the greatest tragedy known to our Nation! So many have forgotten or have never known because they were young!
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Forgiveness Friday
Forgiveness is a get-out-of-jail-free card or 50-million-dollar lottery ticket winner. Who wouldn’t want that? Nevertheless, to effectively fathom the principles of forgiveness, it is necessary to understand unforgiveness and its brutal consequences .
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Being Made Right
In Romans chapter four, Apostle Paul rhetorically presents a dynamic question. WHAT DID HE (Abraham), discover about being made right with God? This question popped off the pages.
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Crowell EQ 101 Crash Course – Part 2
Welcome to part 2 of this 7 part series on Emotional Intelligence. My life experience message has been centered on EQ (emotional intelligence), my relentless goal is to carefully teach what I know about EQ and basketball to…
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New York City – WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO SIN?
For a boy who grew up in a small Washington state town, the Big Apple can be overwhelming.
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Put Away Your Sword
A lesson from Matthew 26 Imitation is the FATHER OF LEARNING At a crucial moment, when Jesus was being arrested, he told Peter to put away his sword. Sports camps can be challenging businesses. Competition is tough.
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Never So Happy to See Rain
“The skies miracle windex” MATTHEW 16 “When it is evening.. It will be fair weather: for the sky is red….in the morning the weather will be foul…” For days on end Spokane skies were filled with smoke and…
