Forgiveness

“Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.” — Paul Boese

I’ve been feeling unusually nostalgic this Christmas. I haven’t been able to articulate why.

Maybe it’s that the kids are growing so fast, or maybe I’m simply more aware of time passing, but this year the meaning of Christmas feels closer to the surface.

A couple weeks ago, I was stringing lights on the tree while listening to an old Christmas album my parents and grandparents used to play—Harry Simeone’s “Little Drummer Boy” from 1958. The scent of the fresh tree, the soft white glow of the lights, and the familiar music filled me with a deep sense of contentment and gratitude.

Yesterday, I pursued more of that spirit of the season with my family to a Christmas concert at Moody Church in Chicago. The choir was arranged in rows vertically across the front wall of the massive domed sanctuary, a full symphony below them and nearly 4,000 people filling the darkened space. As voices and instruments rose together, something powerful stirred in me.

I grew up singing in choir, but it had been decades since I’d felt that kind of resonance.

When people sing together, their breathing patterns synchronize and so do their heart rates. Standing there, surrounded by thousands of strangers singing in harmony, I felt a rare sense of unity.

In a world so divided, it was a balm.

It wasn’t the religious language that moved me. It was the invisible energy and the feeling of spiritual connection.

And I realized that what I’ve been feeling this Christmas isn’t just nostalgia.

It’s a sense of healing.

Sharing these weekly reflections has required me to name things I’ve kept hidden for a long time. These small acts of honesty have been an act of forgiveness. That I needed to offer myself.

And in doing that, I’ve found the strength to forgive others.

The Deepest Cut

That Harry Simeone album takes me all the way back to my earliest Christmas memories as a young boy. As I sit here, I can almost feel the safe and warm space of Christmas Eve in the tiny living room of the small house we lived in in Cleveland.

My dad’s presence, the short period where we were an unbroken family, is a big part of that feeling of safety. It’s probably so vivid because I don’t have many memories with him as a boy. The ones I do have are seared into me: wrestling while he played Steely Dan, taking me to get a new Star Wars figure after I got hurt sledding.

I remember the feelings more than the actual details.

And I remember him crying when he said he was leaving us, in that same tiny living room. I was in first or second grade.

The timeline is blurry, but he left the state not long after. After a few years of phone calls and a couple visits to Arizona, we stopped hearing from him entirely sometime in middle school.

We had no idea what happened to him. Jail. Dead. Another family. Anything was possible. It became a giant question mark that loomed in my psyche. I’d sometimes dream that the mystery was solved, only to wake back into not knowing.

Almost 20 years later, my brother found a small window-washing business online in Arizona with our dad’s name on it. He called the number. My dad answered.

In a moment, the mystery ended. Life is so strange like that.

Resisting

It’s been almost 20 years now since we found him. I’ve visited with him a few times and talked to somewhat regularly. I’ve gotten answers to where he was. It’s a sad story.

He lives alone. He seems content enough with his books and video games. And if you asked me, I’d tell you I’ve forgiven him.

For most of my life, I minimized the impact this had on me. I used to say, “Yeah, it sucked, but at least I learned how not to be as a dad. And I got lucky with a great step dad. And look at me, i turned out just fine.”

After we reconnected, I mostly felt bad for him. For everything he missed out on. And that’s true.

But for most of that time, I hadn’t really felt bad for myself. Or for the little boy who lost the god-like figure a father is when you’re that young.

I know why. Those are deep, dark, scary waters.. Swimming in them voluntarily is not something I’ve chosen to do

So instead, I intellectualized. I stayed on autopilot. Ego protection told me there was no need to dig any deeper. Just let it stay buried.

And by doing so it continued to have an invisible power over me I never understood.

Letting Go

My dad’s favorite way to communicate now is by sending Instagram links. Last week he sent several. On Saturday, I texted him that I was trying to spend less time on social media and that I wasn’t interested in bonding over random Instagram content.

I complained to my wife about it. Because she loves me, she told me the truth: “You seem angry about it.”

I took mild offense. I’m not angry. It’s just annoying. I’ve told him before I don’t enjoy endless random links. Just because he has time to sit around on IG, I don’t.

But when I sat with her observation, it was obvious there was emotion there. And emotion is usually a signal pointing to something deeper.

The truth was this: after not having him around my whole life, I was craving a deeper connection but didn’t want to admit it. That little boy wanted to know his dad. And random Instagram videos felt like a waste of precious time.

Then another realization landed…he doesn’t know how else to communicate. Those links are his way of saying, I’m thinking about you.

So I called him after publishing my column on shame last Sunday. I followed my own advice and took responsibility for what I was feeling. If I wanted connection, complaining that he wasn’t giving it to me wasn’t going to work.

This is why I say I write for myself. I need to hear and follow my own damn advice.

Chess

I apologized for what probably felt like a cold, harsh text. He then spent several minutes describing one of the videos he’d sent me. I quietly laughed to myself as he did. The harshness gone.

Then I told him that Silas and I had started playing chess together. How meaningful it’s been to spend time that way. How, when Silas was a baby having seizures, I worried we might never get to do things like that. Now at age 13, he’s swiping my pieces off the board and surprising me as we learn together.

I vaguely remembered my dad knew how to play. He said it had been a long time, but yes, he did. And as Silas and I ate eggs, we listened to the story of how he learned to play on speaker phone.

His mom remarried when he was young, and after getting into trouble, his stepfather put him in some type of orphanage or group foster home. Unbelievably, his own mother allowed her new husband to kick her ten-year-old son out of the house.

He told it matter-of-factly: “I just had too much energy. They didn’t know what to do with me.” I quietly recognized his surface level acknowledgment of the facts without also naming the pain he experienced.

He said one year, they were allowed to choose one Christmas present, and he chose a chessboard. Some time later after having practiced, a local chess champion came through and played twenty kids at once, moving from board to board.

Of those twenty kids, my dad was the only one who beat him. The man made a mistake, and my young dad caught it.

My heart broke a little listening. I knew he had been put in this facility. But I’d never heard this story.

An abandoned boy, who must have been struggling with self-worth, has this shining moment. He beat an adult at an adult’s game.

I learned more about my dad in that story than I ever had before. i’d heard a long list of stories of how he messed up royally as a man, but never the story of the boy who briefly felt capable. Seen.

How much potential was there that never had a chance to develop?

And in that moment, I understood something about myself too. A connection I never made about my own life and pursuit of potential.

When we hung up, I told him I loved him. Something I’ve only offered once or twice before since reconnecting. Something I missed so desperately saying for all those years growing up.

And I cried and I healed a little more.

The Power of Forgiveness

I share this because of what it revealed to me: underneath an anger I wasn’t fully aware of was fear and sadness I still hadn’t touched after all these years.

Anger carries energy. It can harden into resentment, or be harnessed into courage. The ego’s instinct to protect us isn’t wrong, but it often keeps us stuck in exactly the opposite place we need to grow.

David Hawkins writes, “Letting go of the resistance to have something positive happen in the relationship is all that is required… We are not interested in whether the other person gets it—only if we do. We are only interested in moving our position in the matter and then seeing what happens. A very rewarding experience usually ensues.”

That’s exactly what happened last week.

So many times, we freeze in the face of emotional work because it feels overwhelming. When often, all it takes is a single step, without attachment to the outcome, just to put the right energy in motion.

Simple isn’t easy. And that first step is often the bravest one.

Gary Zukav writes in The Seat of the Soul, “Forgiveness means you do not hold others responsible for your experiences. Complaining is exactly the dynamic of wanting someone to be responsible for what you experience and to fix things for you. When you hold someone responsible for what you experience, you lose power"”

He’s not talking about power over others. He’s talking about our inner power and agency. He calls it our authentic power.

My dad was never going to give that to me. Only I could.

Like shame, many of us carry quiet resentments or deep relationship wounds that leak pain into our lives in ways we barely notice. And often unknowingly keep reopening ourselves.

We think of forgiveness in terns of absolutes, either you do or you don’t. But I’ve experienced a long, slow process of letting go the pain I was holding on to.

The balance seems to have shifted for good now. A combination of self awareness and willingness to keep choosing discomfort has gradually, and now more suddenly, helped me heal. It’s hard to describe.

But It’s what brought tears to my eyes as I sang with a choir and a couple thousand strangers yesterday.

It’s what’s making this Christmas feel different than any I can remember since those earliest memories.

The difference now is that I understand where that feeling comes from. My own authentic power that I have total agency in creating for myself and for my family.

So if this season stirs something unresolved in you, maybe that’s not something to push away. Maybe it’s an invitation. A small step. A simple act, taken without attachment to the outcome. A gift to give yourself.

You never know how something as ordinary as a phone call might quietly begin to change everything.

-Coach Kris

P.S. Our newest father and son activity. Maybe one I’ll start doing virtually to make up for lost time with my dad.