"Forgiveness guides your path!" -Father Robert.

This morning at church, the homily was about forgiveness. At one point the priest said, “Let forgiveness guide your path,” and for some reason those words stayed with me. I remember thinking what a beautiful teaching that was, but almost immediately I wondered how many people can actually do it. We hear so much about forgiveness, about letting go of the people and things that have hurt us, but actually doing it is so much harder.

While I was sitting there listening, I started thinking about my own life and wondering if there was someone I still needed to forgive. I went through people in my head: friends, family, people who had disappointed me, people who had hurt me over the years. Of course there have been plenty of those moments, but strangely, I couldn’t immediately think of one person I was truly angry with. That surprised me because I knew something had been bothering me. My heart has felt heavy lately... in fact, for a little while now. I’ve noticed myself getting irritated more easily, replaying conversations in my head, and letting things stay with me much longer than they should.

At first I was focused on the forgiveness part. Who did I need to forgive? What was I still holding on to? But then I started thinking about the other part of that sentence. The path. Maybe forgiveness isn’t only about making peace with something that happened. Maybe it is also about deciding what you allow that experience to do to you afterward.

As I sat there, I slowly realized that a lot of the heaviness I’ve been feeling was connected to work. It wasn’t one person or one situation, and I don’t think work itself was the problem. It was everything I had been carrying from it without fully realizing it. A conversation that didn’t sit right with me, a decision I didn’t understand, a meeting I replayed afterward, something someone said that bothered me, or even something I wished I had handled myself differently. Each thing seemed small enough on its own, so I assumed I had moved on. Sitting there that morning, I realized maybe I hadn’t.

One of the hardest things for me has been watching people work incredibly hard and wondering whether they feel seen. I work with people who care deeply about what they do, and I see things that probably aren’t obvious to everyone else. I see people silently helping others, taking on more, solving problems, and showing up every day trying to do good work. Sometimes I watch those same people get disappointed or feel overlooked, and that is hard for me. I don’t know everything happening behind the scenes, and I know my view isn’t the whole picture, but I would be lying if I said it hasn’t bothered me. I am not a saint, but I have feelings!

The longer I sat there, the more I realized some of what I was carrying was even closer to me. I thought about our team, the times I had watched them carry more than people probably realized, and still wonder if any of it was really being seen. Sometimes it felt like we could do a hundred things well and still be remembered for the one thing that went wrong. There were also moments when I trusted people and later realized that the loyalty I thought was there didn’t always go both ways. I don’t want to make this a list of everything that has hurt or disappointed me, because that isn’t the point. What struck me was how all of those experiences had added up. I had become more protective of our team, more defensive when I felt they weren’t being seen fairly, and more careful about who I trusted. Somewhere along the way, I started carrying all of it as if it were mine to carry. That was when the words from the homily started to feel different. Maybe forgiveness wasn’t asking me to decide that none of those things mattered, or that something was okay when it didn’t feel okay. Maybe it was asking me a different question: How much of this do I want to take with me on the path ahead? I had always assumed forgiveness came first and then you moved forward. Someone hurts you, you forgive them, let it go, and continue on with your life. But maybe sometimes choosing how you move forward is part of forgiveness. I can still be disappointed. I can remember what happened and learn from it. I can have stronger boundaries because of it. But I can also decide that what happened doesn’t get to choose who I become next. That thought made me look at some of my own reactions differently. If someone broke my trust, I don’t want the next person to have to earn their way out of something they never did. If I’ve watched people I care about feel overlooked, I don’t want that disappointment to make me cynical. If I’ve felt that our mistakes were easier to see than our contributions, I don’t want that frustration to make me defensive before a conversation even begins. Those feelings are real, but they don’t have to lead me. I also have to leave room for the possibility that I don’t always know the whole story. I’m not in every room. I don’t hear every conversation, and I don’t know everything that goes into every decision. Sometimes I may be right about what I’m feeling, and sometimes I may not be. Maybe giving people that space is part of grace too. And maybe some of that grace needs to extend to myself. I can look back and wish I had handled certain things differently, trusted differently, or spoken up sooner. But I made the best decisions I could with what I knew at the time. I can learn from those moments without continuing to replay them. That part is hard for me because I’ve been through enough in my life to know what really matters. I know what real loss feels like. I know how quickly life can change and how precious an ordinary day with the people we love can be. Yet I can still give a meeting, a comment, or a decision I can’t control far more of my energy than it deserves.

And maybe that is why the word “path” stayed with me. If I know what it feels like to watch someone be overlooked, I can make sure I see the people around me. If I know how much recognition can mean, I can give it when I have the opportunity. If I know what it feels like to be let down by someone I trusted, I can make sure I am someone worth trusting. And when I don’t know the whole story, I can try to give people a little more grace.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean forgetting what happened or pretending something didn’t hurt. I can forgive and still have boundaries. I can learn from an experience without letting it make me guarded. I can be careful about who I trust without making someone new pay for what someone else did.

Maybe that is what I had been missing. Forgiveness doesn’t change what happened. It changes what I allow to happen next.

I went into church that morning trying to figure out who I needed to forgive. I left realizing that maybe the better question was what I was still carrying. There are people, moments, disappointments, and things I thought I had let go of that apparently I hadn’t. I don’t think I suddenly figured out forgiveness that morning, but I did understand those words differently.

I can’t always choose what happens. I can’t always understand it, fix it, or make it fair. But I can choose what I do with it afterward. I can choose what I learn from, what I carry forward, and what I finally decide to put down.

Maybe, for me, that’s what it means to let forgiveness guide my path. I know it won’t be easy, and I’m sure there will be days when I find myself picking up some of the same things I’m trying to put down. But maybe that’s part of the path too. I just have to keep choosing which direction I want to go.