By Kari Shea, Dickinson UMC

As a professional, I am required to take a bunch of continuing education classes to keep up with current trends in my profession, to keep my skills sharp and to keep my professional certification so I can keep my job. This usually means going to conferences or meetings some place and enduring hours of speakers, some good, some not so good, some painfully horrible. The idea is that you come away with a fresh commitment to your profession and you will have a few new ideas to apply to the next unsuspecting client who happens to come in.

Some of the speakers I have heard are wonderfully inspirational. I listen intently to each word they say, take a bunch of notes and resolve that I am going to incorporate their wisdom into my daily work. Then I leave the session and promptly forget half of what I heard. By the time I get up to my hotel room, I might remember 25% of what I heard. By the time I get in my car, travel down the interstate to get home, go through a weekend and return to work on Monday, I can barely remember that I went to a meeting at all. I don’t know if I just have a lousy memory or if that is the way things go with seminars and conferences. By Monday morning, all the inspiration has floated away. I seriously should take a memory class. Maybe I will, if I don’t forget to sign up for one.

About 25 years ago, I went to one of those seminars. It was in Omaha, Nebraska, a place to which I was anxious to return as I had spent my graduate school years there. There was a speaker there who left me with inspiration that I carry to this day. He told us a story about his desire for a Snickers candy bar. He rarely ate candy but thought this might taste good for a change. His wife was headed out to the store so he asked her to bring him a Snickers bar. She returned with one of those packages of 6 Snickers bars. The guy said he enjoyed his Snickers bar and then threw the rest of the package away. WHAT??? Wait a minute… HE THREW THEM AWAY?? What kind of idiot throws away perfectly good Snickers bars? He explained to us that he had his fill, didn’t want the kids to get into them, so he threw them away. He also went on to say “they were mine, given to me to do with as I pleased.” That was the only thing I can remember about that speaker. I don’t have any idea what his seminar topic was about. But 25 years later, I remember the story of the Snickers bars.

How often are you given a choice about something and the choice is truly up to you? Now the more difficult question. Do you know that you have a choice?
Guilt. Hurt. Condemnation. Disappointments. Frustrations. Sometimes someone attempts to give us these things. More often, we give them to ourselves. We take them on willingly and hang on to them for dear life. We refuse to let go of the very things that will destroy us. Gotta hang on to them, so I can get even. Gotta hang on so I remind myself how hurt I really am. Gotta hang on, so people around me see how I suffer under the cross I have been given to bear. Forgive that person? Forget it. He doesn’t deserve it. That lets him off too easy. No way. I am hanging on to that hurt till the day I die. People tell me he will have to pay some day. I’m not so sure. Better take it into my own hands to make him pay now. That’ll fix him.

Throw it away before it hurts you. Throw it away before it kills you. He doesn’t deserve to be forgiven any more than I do. But hanging on to that hurt, that guilt, that condemnation will surely destroy me. I have a choice, I can throw it away.

Grace. It is mine to do with as I choose. It is a gift, with no strings attached. I can grab on to it, but if I do I have to let go of everything else. If I choose grace, I choose the freedom of a life without guilt, worry and condemnation. If I choose grace, I can throw away the things that hurt me.