OVERLOOK AN OFFENSE

Have you ever set time aside with a friend, spouse or co-worker and it ends up being a flop? I mean your looking forward to it but clearly that person shows lack of interest to your conversation, they seem distracted and to top it off they rush off short of the time allotted. Your left will a pit in your stomach, lump in your throat and a question on your mind like "What did I do to deserve that?"

We do not deserve that treatment I validate us but when we begin to stew on it to long it maybe a problem for us and that relationship.

I feel when this happens I come to a fork in a road and it becomes a choice as to which road I will take. Will I take the anger road where my mind races, why did they do that, I don't deserve this...I form arguments in my mind all the time with my finger on the button to call and confront them. Or I take the passive anxious road...I will call them, no wait I won't, how will I say it without sounding goofy, they may not even realize they just did that therefore I look crazy. 

The third road is just to overlook the whole thing and chalk it up to a bad day and chose to truly let it go. How do you do this? We pray, we wait...we pray, we wait. 

I like this scripture:

Overlook an offense and bond a friendship; fasten on to a slight and—good-bye, friend! (Proverbs 17:9 MSG)

Does reading this scripture take away our pit in the stomach, lump in the throat, loose thoughts? That scripture is wisdom but really helps is when we pray we realize God loves us he never falls short of attention for us, tell ourselves it is going to be okay, realize that we they may have been having a bad day and it is their issue. We can be forgiving by reminding ourselves that we could have done the same thing or have already done the same thing to another person. In any case we take the thoughts to higher level thinking. 

We begin to self soothe ourselves with truth. Maybe in the past other have let us down and it is a familiar feeling and we get triggered. It takes extra time to think it through but inviting higher level wisdom gives us permission to feel hurt but then helps us to move on. Of course time heals that.