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Forgiveness is kind of like Tough Mudder

Life is an adventure in forgiveness.  Norman Cousins

Today's quote makes me think of Tough Mudder.  Heard of it?  Done it?  It's a 10-12 miles obstacle course designed by British Forces that you are supposed to do as a team. It's not an individual kind of thing but yet it is individual.  Huh?  Exactly. :)
Why does today's quote make me think of Tough Mudder?  Because forgiveness is like a lifelong obstacle course and it's an individual thing yet not.  Huh?  Let me explain.  :)
Forgiveness seems a lot like an obstacle course to me.  At some points it seems pretty uneventful - flat if you will.  You are strolling along and feel energized, you feel like you are free and clear of the person or situation you had to exercise forgiveness with.  And then you come up to an obstacle.  It might be a wall straight up you have to get over or it might be that you are down on your hands and knees crawling through the muck of feelings that suddenly hit you.  This is where the team thing comes into play.  We need people in our lives to help us navigate and get through the obstacles.  We really can't do it alone, and we aren't created to do it alone! We are created for relationships and that includes getting some help when we are struggling with forgiveness.  And it's a lifelong thing.  Our whole lives we will be running this obstacle course called forgiveness because our whole lives we will encounter people and situations that require us to exercise forgiveness. We can choose to look at it as an adventure, like Tough Mudder, or like a crapshoot, which let's be honest sometimes it feels like.  But attitude matters, as it always seems to, even in the navigation of forgiveness.  Watch the Tough Mudder video.  Every person there has the attitude of adventure about them - if they didn't then getting through the course would have been a lot harder.  The same holds true for the adventure of forgiveness.
So the next time you encounter the adventure of forgiveness just think of Tough Mudder and go for it!



Here's a sampling of a Tough Mudder event - this is the one held in Beaver Creek, CO in June 2012.  
I watch this and say "NO WAY." :) 

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