A Lifestyle of ForgivenessSample

When Someone Violates Your Expectancies

We all have expectancies, every single day. We expect people to act in a certain way. We expect things to go a certain way. We expect to be understood or appreciated. But the chances of everything happening the exact way we expect it to is – brace yourself -- ZERO.

Every single day, in a hundred different scenarios, your expectancies will be violated. We could talk about each and every way that could happen, but that’s another book. For now, I’m trusting the Holy Spirit to bring this to your remembrance when you need it – to help you realize when your expectancies have been violated, and help you forgive quickly and easily when it happens.

The list could go on and on. Someone cutting you off in traffic, or cutting in line at the store, or grabbing the last one of an item that you really wanted. Anytime you get the “rotgut” feeling, where you’re embarrassed, sad, angry, rejected, or hurt – those are the times to ask yourself, “Is there anyone I need to forgive, so I can walk away free?”

And let me just add this: sometimes you know that someone didn’t mean to hurt you, and you recognize that you’re being sort of ridiculous over something insignificant. You might think, “I don’t need to forgive them – it’s not even a big deal, I know I’m being weird about it.” Here’s my rule: if you thought about it more than twice, just go ahead and forgive them!

When that guy posts something ridiculous on social media and you’re still so bugged about it when you get to work that you want to tell everyone, just go ahead forgive him. When that lady at the store is so rude to you that you have an imaginary conversation in your head all the way home (“I should’ve said this, and when she said that, I would’ve said this…!”) just go ahead and forgive her.

I believe if we get good at forgiving in the relatively minor, everyday things, we’ll be in good practice for the truly big things. Plus, we’ll live a life of peace and be a good witness.

Was this plan helpful to you? It was adapted from my book “I Forgive You, But…..” You can read the first part here.