At a recent tennis tournament, I lost a match I had my heart set on winning. It was the oddest experience for me, because typically I take match losses very well. But not this one! I internally fussed and fumed about what had gone wrong all night afterward.
Wanting the disappointment to cease, it occurred to me that I needed to forgive myself.
I had been condemning my performance, listing out all I had failed to do correctly, and wondering how I could do so poorly when I expected to do so much better.
“Forgive yourself!,” a voice of comfort counseled inside. “Let it go. The match was a temporal event. You have eternity to perfect your tennis game.” LOL
Yes, I needed to forgive myself.
To forgive is to not hold a grudge, complaint or resentment toward, and to love instead.
I remembered that my goal in playing tennis was not to beat competitors, but to improve my performance. It didn’t matter if I won or lost a match. The Big Question was “What did I learn that would make me a better tennis player next time?”
And that was my goal. To improve!
I listed out all the lessons I had learned. There were many.
I expressed gratitude that I saw those lessons and was ready to benefit from them and remembered that there is always another match to play.
Then I forgave myself. I quit condemning myself for mistakes made. I quit complaining about my inadequate performance. I quit resenting the experience. And I looked forward to playing better next time.
And that was enough. A feeling of love and joy came back and the disappointment dissolved.
I realized later there were larger spiritual lessons to learn.
For instance, have you ever lost something important to you because of poor performance, and then condemned yourself unrelentingly for days, months, even years to come?
It could be something simple, like a sports competition, or something big like a job, a promotion, a date, a wife or a husband, or the trust of a child.
Whatever the loss, there comes a point when we need to forgive ourselves. Maybe we did make a mistake, but God does not hold it against us. Eternity does not store it in memory. It is temporal, and its effect is temporal.
We have eternal life to live, and that includes unlimited opportunities to experience all of God’s goodness, without exception. Any good we thought we lost in the past, we will still gain in the future as we grow spiritually and understand that real substance is never lost. It is spiritual, and always with us.
So, maybe there’s something you need to forgive yourself over today. Go ahead and do it. Forgive yourself. Let it go. God loves you and is sending everything your way necessary for you to move on and leave the past behind. This can be a new day.
You have made light of one of the wonderful things in Christianity. To be able to say “Father, forgive…” unto others and yourself is one of the most profound healing things in Christianity, far beyond a tennis game.
Thank you so much for sharing. It’s always nice to have a reminder to forgive. It’s something that I’ve been working on doing for a while now. What a wonderful way to begin my day!
I would never have thought of forgiveness in terms of a tennis game, but what a wonderful reminder of the infinite power of God’s love.
Not only doesn’t God hold it against us, He doesn’t even know about it! Because He doesn’t know about the human experience — how could Mind, Spirit, be conscious of matter? One of the Big Mistakes we make — and it’s a subtle one — is to personify God consciously or unconsciously. Without really thinking about it, we hold the view that He’s a white-bearded gent sitting up on some cloud watching our every move. Not so! Thankfully, MBE revealed God as divine Principle, Love — a universal law that happens to be gentle, tender — that does NOT “Watch” us. I tell Sunday School students to think of God like the traffic laws — they don’t know if you’ve broken the law — but by complying with them we’re protected, blessed and our experience on the road is harmonized. Same with God. This also eliminates guilt!
Evan, I love how you weave spiritual lessons into everyday life. Have to admit that reading that you were fussing over a tennis match made me smile…but that you dove into the experience and gained the spiritual essence and of your experience and HEALED it, well, that just put another smile on my face. This idea of forgiving yourself because a slip is temporal and the effect is temporal is VERY helpful. Thank you for sharing your insights with the world, Evan, deeply appreciated.
Evan, thank you for the excellence you exhibit in your thought, expressed as watching every moment what you are taking in and knowing that your actions, whether on the tennis court or not, are in keeping with a high degree of excellence. I played competitive tennis and completely understand where you are going with this post. Thank you so much for sharing the metaphysical premise here and helping all of us.
What if a loss was not your mistake or poor performance but the results of someone’s subjective judgement or dishonesty? Or you lose a job opportunity because the position was already headed for someone else and you were the “cover” to make it look like an open hiring?
I suppose then you have to forgive the others.
Just mulling it over.
This is wonderful, and such a lesson for life! Thank you so much, Evan!