Good Morning

Oh what a beautiful morning, oh what a beautiful day. Everything is going my way. --Oklahoma 

In the soft glow of the morning light my heart is filled with reflection. Why is forgiveness more for me than the people I've wronged? Asking for forgiveness is so important for me. As I ask for forgiveness and I take responsibility for my actions and the wrongs I've committed against the people I love is critically important to my salvation. I want to share a story with you of an experience I went through several years ago. 

I remember several years ago when early one morning I lay awake with the impression to write a letter to someone that I had hurt. I lay there with several excuses running through my head. I wasn't likely to ever see this person again. Even if I did, it wouldn't matter. For all intent and purposes our relationship was over. Neither of us would ever engage in a relationship again, so what did an apology letter have to do with anything. I didn't even know where they were. I couldn't get the letter to them. I lay there full of justification, in myself, and in the emptiness of this letter.

The impression to get up and write this letter, became increasingly stronger. Finally, as daylight came I reluctantly got out of bed. I sat with pen in hand staring at the blank paper. Floods of emotions, floods of regrets filled my heart. The pen began to flow, and the tears also flowed from my eyes. I don't recall what I wrote, but I still plainly remember how I felt.

I accepted responsibilities that I would have normally either passed to this person or minimized. There isn't minimization in responsibility. It is or it isn't yours. I mailed the letter that same day. I never knew wither, the letter was received or how it was received if it was. I've always been curious, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that I faced the bitter truth that I hurt this person that did everything in their power to help me. I magnified their weaknesses, and minimized my own.

It doesn't matter if they forgive me, it matters that I face the realization of the truth that I was shown by God, and that I ask my Father in Heaven through the atonement of His Son Jesus Christ for their forgiveness.

A surprising side note to this situation is that as the years have gone by since I mailed that letter I have found a new love for this person. Whenever I think back on the morning when I wrote that letter a sense of love fills my heart.