The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The High Call of Forgiveness: It’s A Mandate by Rosemarie Downer Ph.D.

Episode Date: February 26, 2022

The High Call of Forgiveness: It's A Mandate by Rosemarie Downer Ph.D. The High Call of Forgivenes sexposes the strategy of the enemy that has caused too many of us to believe it is too difficult to forgive. Undeniably, forgiving someone who has wronged us is difficult, but we can, if Christ lives in us. In the High Call of Forgiveness, Rosemarie Downer takes you on a faith journey by sharing the context of offense, why we hurt others, why it is as difficult for most of us to forgive, how we can forgive, how we can go beyond forgiveness to reconciliation, and how we can obtain emotional healing. She also gives permission to hurt but notes carefully that hurt must be addressed in a timely manner. This is an eye-opening and honest journey of self-examination. You will ask yourself and find answers to questions like these: What got me here? How can I get past the pain? How is it that I love the Lord and know what the Word of God say about unforgiveness, yet I find it so difficult to obey? This book will change your life!

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi folks this is voss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey we're coming over the internet podcast we certainly appreciate you guys tuning in thanks for being here go to youtube.com for us as chris voss hit the bell notification button Go to goodreads.com

forward slash Chris Voss. See everything we're reading and reviewing over there. Go to all our groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, all those different places. See the LinkedIn newsletter that's just killing it over on LinkedIn and our 132,000 member LinkedIn group. Check that as well. Today, we have an amazing author on the show. She's the author of the book, The Call of Forgiveness. It's a mandate. We have Dr. Rosemary. Rosemary? Is it Rosemary or Rosemary? Rosemary, IE. Rosemary. Yes. Downer with us on the show. She's going to be talking to us about her book and some of her work in which she's done some pretty amazing things. And that is she is a nonfiction writer who focuses primarily on inspirational books based on the word of God. She's a published author of The High Call of Forgiveness, It's a Mandate, The Self-Scarred Church,

The COVID-19 Test, Church or God, Religion or Relationship, and several parenting handbooks. Additionally, she is the author of a comprehensive ministry development course, Find and Occupy Your Space, and the Continuum of Care Youth Ministry Development Handbook. Dr. Downer earned her doctorate degree in child psychology at the University of Maryland College Park. In 1997, she served at the U.S. Department of Agriculture as a social science researcher for 20 years and as an adjunct professor at Bowie State University for 24 years. She has now retired from both positions and is currently a private consultant doing research and evaluation and doing what she dreamed of doing for years, and that is to write nonfiction books to edify the body of Christ.

Welcome to the show. How are you? I'm doing good. How are you? Good, good. It's wonderful to have you on. You've got your books behind you, so those of us watching on the video can see them. Give me your plugs so we can find you on the interwebs.

My website URL is, of course, www.booksbyrosemary.com. And that's Rosemary with an I-E, booksbyrosemary.com. Facebook is Books by Rosemary. Twitter is Books Rosemary. Instagram is Books by Rosemary. And so what motivated you to write this book? This book was birthed out of an experience that I had that demanded that I forgive. I was hurt by individuals that were close to me and that I least expected it from. And I started to journal my experience, journal my pain, journal what was going on. And I was writing so much that it started to turn into chapters. And yes. And so after a while, I put it down because I was writing from, it started to turn into a book.

But I was writing from a place of pain. It was really just venting and describing what happened and how I felt. So it was put down for several years. I went back to school, career grew, et cetera, et cetera. Then I picked it back up in about 2015, 10, somewhere there and rewrote it. That's the first version. And what made you choose the topic of forgiveness? Because of the experience, because of what happened. I'm a believer. So if something wrong happens to you, you need to forgive. You don't have a choice. The word of God says, forgive those who hurt you,

forgive those who wrong you. And so of course the topic had to be unforgiveness. And then the word, the high call of forgiveness, because it is a mama thing to forgive someone who has hurt you, to write off the debt, to cancel it as if it never happened. It's not something you can do of your own. So it is a huge call. You have to depend on the Lord to help you to forgive someone. So it is a high call. So I shouldn't have buried those people in the backyard. I should have forgiven them. No. Yeah. You should have really forgiven them, given them some food and shelter. Yes. My bad. Hey, can you guys dig those people up um the no forgiveness is hard for people in today's day and age isn't it yes it is and the other thing too it's a mandate it's an order it's not up for debate it's not up for discussion because when we don't forgive we're really hurting ourselves

we're not hurting the next person so it's better for us to let go of that toxin and just release it and go on with your life because the other person the person that has hurt you is gone on with their life yeah and by holding on to what happened you're just imprisoning yourself emotionally yeah there's a lot of axioms or sayings about you know when you hold hate in your heart or when you hold anger or some sort of thing against somebody you're the one who's, you're really poisoning and hurting, you know, the other person's just wandering off. So what are some of the things that you teach or what are some of the aspects in the book that, you know, help people with to forgive, I guess? Right. So I start out by telling the readers that there's a certain context in which offense takes place.

First of all, we are all flawed. So I may get hurt by someone because they are flawed, but at the same time, as hurt as I am, I also hurt someone because I'm flawed. Because of character flaws and because of emotional wounds, we hurt each other. And a lot of times when we talk about forgiveness, we talk about our own pain and not remembering that we also offend someone else. So I start with the fact that we are all flawed. I also remind the reader that offense is going to happen. If we are alive and we interact with living beings, we are going to be offended. You talked about losing your dog earlier when we were talking before the show. As long as that thing breathes, it can hurt you. Your dog can hurt your feelings. It depends on the relationship you have with that person or thing. So offense is going to come. We

must understand that at some point in our lives, we're going to get hurt. So offense is going to come. We must understand that at some point in our lives, we're going to get hurt. So I went through that. I also talked about the fact that when we are hurt, no matter how deeply it is, a young girl could be molested. It could be mother's son could be murdered. A drunk driver could hit you. Your pastor could kick you out of the church. Anything could happen to you. But we have to remember that there's always a bigger plan behind what happens in our lives. Behind every cloud is a silver lining. So there's a chapter that talks about God has a plan for your life. This thing might have happened to you to kill you, to drive you mad, but he has a bigger plan than that.

So we have to look at the fact that he has a bigger plan for our lives. I also assure the readers that hurt is okay. It's okay to hurt male or female. Being hurt doesn't mean you're weak. And so we don't need to cover up and mask or hurt. We need to go through the process of being hurt so we can be healed and make whole. I've always... Sorry, go ahead. No, go ahead. Real quick. They then talk about forgiveness, that it's a mandate, that we shouldn't believe the lies, that when we are victimized, it's our fault. Because that keeps you in that place of unforgiveness, if not forgiving yourself. Don't believe the lie that it's your fault.

When we focus on ourselves too much, we can't forgive. There's a cost to unforgiveness. I'll run through it quickly. Unforgiveness is worse. I'm sorry. Bitterness is worse than unforgiveness. So if you don't forgive and you hang on to it long enough, I'll run through it quickly. Unforgiveness is worse. I'm sorry, bitterness is worse than unforgiveness. So if you don't forgive and you hang on to it long enough, you'll become bitter. And that's worse.

There's a reward for forgiveness. And beyond forgiveness is reconciliation. And we can do this if Jesus Christ lives in you. And then I give some practical steps to emotional healing. I've always been amazed when you see a mother who's had a child killed or something, and usually in some sort of violent criminal, and you'll see them maybe in court or something, and they'll say, I forgive him. I'm like, man, you're stronger than I am. You're more powerful. Yes. And you know what that does for that mother? Oh, wow. I mean, she's freed. She's not bitter. She's not jaded. She's not, yeah, she's free. She can love again. She can laugh again. Forgiveness is a gift that you give to your offender. It's a gift that's wrapped and packaged in love. It goes beyond what a human person can do in their own flesh and in their own strength.

It really is something beyond us. Yeah. And one of those axioms of like, you know, letting people live rent free in your head, you know, and so if you're not forgiving them, then you're constantly angry at them and you're focused on the anger part of it. In your religion, do you have to believe that you mentioned that Jesus or God has a plan? Is that one of the reasons you have to forgive is you have to accept the fact that he's going to probably settle all business later, right? Exactly. Somebody's running around being a jerk. You should forgive him because they're probably going to hell.

He's going to fight your battle anyway. Vengeance is his. It's not yours. You've got to handle it. You're going up he's he's he's got your back so it's better just to go hey man the big dude's gonna handle this later so i'm just gonna let him take over on this one yeah you gotta believe it yeah so i didn't even know that was the thing man i'm calling that one in so what do you tell people that have a hard time with forgiveness i mean mean, they just can't let it go like I did with the bodies in the backyard. I'm just kidding.

Yeah. So if I'm talking to a Christian, I will remind them that they sinned and Jesus Christ has forgiven them. He died on the cross for their salvation. And there's nothing anyone can do to them that's worse than us sinning against God, but he forgives you. And then I remind them of the consequences of unforgiveness. If the person is an unbeliever, I am going to show them that God loves them and that he's ready and willing to forgive them of their sins. But I also highlight the emotional toxin that they're carrying by not forgiving and what it does to them and the relationship that they have with others. When we don't forgive, we become pessimistic.

We become cynical. We become distrusting. We drive away people who love us. We build walls and not bridges. So people who want to reach us can't reach us. It's important to teach people that when you don't forgive, that's the state you're in and that's not good for you or the next person. Yeah. Is the principle that since Jesus forgave you of your sins, you basically need to pay it forward. I don't know if that's the- You can say it that way. You can say it that way.

You can say it that way, you know, because there are scriptures in the Bible that says, forgive as I have forgiven you. In other words, I have forgiven you. So I loved you and still love you and have forgiven you. I want you to love the same way and forgive likewise. Yeah. Yeah, you got to pay it forward.

It's like when I go to Starbucks and the people pay the coffee the coffee so if you don't forgive is it a sin then it is a sin so one scripture i can bring you to is psalm 66 verse 18 it says if iniquity it is in your heart the lord will not hear you so if you have malice if you have bitterness if you have unforgiveness in your heart and you are calling upon him and praying to him, your prayers are going to be hindered. Another scripture says if you go to the altar to make an offering and you remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift at the altar and go make peace and then come back. So he wants worship and he wants praise and he wants prayers out of clean vessels, out of clean heart. So it is wrong not to forgive. This is not godly, and it will cost you.

That makes sense. That totally makes sense. Hey, can you guys call up those hitmen on my enemies? Yeah, we're not going to do that now. Yeah. How long is your list? It's a long list. Oh, my gosh.

I'm on Facebook. Sorry for you, Chris. Anyway, we do the jokes. So, I mean, that makes sense to me. Now I kind of understand the whole principle of it and why it comes together. So, you know, I imagine people struggle with it. And, yeah, the hate in your heart, the poison you keep from it festers. And, you know, I've probably had those times in my life where like, so is there any good steps to

go through to, you know, say, okay, identify it, identify what's going on. Maybe, you know, come to the realization, Hey, you know, you're pretty angry about this person, what they did to you. And then there's steps that you go through maybe. So, so offering forgiveness matters whether the person admits that they have done you wrong. So, let's talk about the case in which the person admits that they've done you wrong. And now you need to forgive them. Because forgiveness really is as if someone took something from you that belonged to you and you decide to let them keep it. They took something from you that you want to keep. It's yours and you want to keep it, but they grab it from you against your will.

And you say, you know what? Go ahead and keep it. Unforgiveness is where they took that thing from you. That's precious to you. You want to keep it. They took it from you against your will and you're fighting to get it back. So unforgiveness is when you hold them accountable for what they've done. Forgiveness is when you have written off the debt to you. So what step you can take is, it's a matter of the will.

I don't want to say mental, but it's a matter of the will. It's a decision that you have to make in your emotions that you know what? This thing happened. I cannot control the person's behavior. I'm going to let it go. I've got to go on with my life. I must see what it's doing to me. I got married. I got a divorce. My divorce was, my divorce was ugly. I lost everything. I cannot stay stuck for the rest of my life and never marry another man. When I can get married again, I can buy another house. I can make more money, but because I'm so bitter and so stuck at that place, I can't go on with my life. So step number one, you can't be responsible for another person's behavior.

You can only be responsible for your behavior. You can only be responsible for your emotional health. So first you've got to, okay, you took that thing from me and it's going to cost me more to get it back from you. I'm going to just write it off. My wife said she's responsible for my emotional health. Is that true? She did what? She said she's responsible for my emotional health. Is that true? She said she's responsible for my emotional health. That's just a joke. I'm just too interested. And I was getting ready to address it.

You need to check with our wife. That makes sense because you can't grow. You can't move on. Stuck. And that thing is just going over in your brain, in your head for years. And I've talked to people, Chris, who are angry and cannot forgive people who are dead. And they're dead years ago.

And when they talk to me about the pain, they're still crying. Yeah. A phrase that I came up with is unforgiveness is a prison. Yeah. And it's built by the offended. And it is the offended that's locked up behind bars. Yeah. It's like you're allowing them to keep hurting you and persecuting you.

Yeah, exactly. Like they screwed you maybe once, but then you're making it so they can just keep screwing over. Yeah. You're putting yourself in their path and you're giving them that, what's the word I'm looking for? You're giving them that control over your mental state, your emotional state, and how you move forward in life. Yeah.

Forgiveness is not a weakness. It's a strength. It's a strength. Yeah. It takes a lot of power to forgive. When I was young, my parents, they would make,

if we did something wrong as kids, they would make us call people and say that we're sorry. And boy, that sure was hard, especially as a kid. You know, I think we did something horrible. Our teacher had to call her and I don't know.

I remember one day we threw a bunch of, we had some peach trees and we threw a bunch of peach trees over the fence in my neighbor's pool. And she was a single lady. Her husband had passed away. Yeah. And, and I, you know, we're just stupid kids thinking we're having fun. We're just 10 years old, just a bunch of idiots. And, you know, and so we had to go over and knock on her door and apologize to her.

And at the time it was awful, but now I really appreciate it because it's very easy for me to say, I'm sorry and apologize. And I think forgiveness is something I'm still working on. I need to read your book. Can you hit the people with the book? At least if I forgive you, hit them in love,

hit them in love. It's kind of like a knighting. Yeah, yeah. The power of forgiveness hits you on the head. It's so freeing to forgive someone. It is. The other thing I let people know emphatically is first and foremost, forgiveness benefits the forgiver before it benefits anyone else. That's true.

Anyone else. That's true. And that person has to go, whoever wronged you, they have to go live with that, you know, and maybe own it if they own the behavior. Yeah.

If they own it. But even then, you know, there are times where, you know, I've done stupid things or I've hurt people and I haven't really recognized or thought about the time. But later when I've grown a little bit, I've gone, yeah, I really did a bad thing there. I really hurt that person by what I said or, you know, that I buried in the backyard.

That's going to be the callback joke. You know, I really hurt that person. And then I regret. And of course, I can't ever say I'm sorry, because sometimes they're either, like you say, passed away, or, you know, you don't know where the hell they are from high school or something. And yeah, and so I have to live with that now and go, whatever. But it's a really tough thing that people have to do. What are some other aspects or steps that you talk about in your book? So in working with people and most of these individuals were either victims of sexual molestation or battered wives and the perpetrator is dead. So now they are trapped because they're hearing the message of forgiveness and the question they have is, how do I do this?

There are a lot of women, middle-aged women, who carry this baggage. Or even the husband is not dead, but due to a divorce and they need to address this issue. So let's talk about the perpetrators that are dead. And these two, especially the case of sexual molestation, runs very deep. It runs very deep because of the nature of the offense. And what I advise these individuals to do is they can write two letters. One is tell its story, the tell its story, what happened, just write what happened. Because in a lot of cases, these women have never talked about the issue. So just write, just tell it, just without

any corners cut, just raw, tell it. And that's cathartic for them. That gets them out, get it out. And then they want to write as well. They can write as well to tell the person how they feel, what it has done to them. They're writing about the incident. Then they're writing about how they feel over the years, what it has made them to be. And usually by the time you come to that second episode of writing, they're now at a place where they can look at the person and release that person. And I introduce an empty chair and you pretend the person is sitting in front of you and you talk to them as if they're sitting there. By the time they've done that second writing, they're usually are ready to talk to person. And, you know, the brain is an interesting thing.

When you think about stuff and envision it or you go through the actions of it, sometimes it doesn't know that it will accept the fake or the practice and stuff. And so that makes sense. You know, I saw it was Leaving Neverland show with Oprah after the show ran and she had the two boys from Leaving Neverland it. And he made a statement that was really interesting. It was along the lines of the poison inside kills you until you let it out. It's like a kind of like a snake bite. You've got to get the poison out. Otherwise it just festers and hurts you. And so once he talked about it, he was free of it and he was free of holding all that in and festering. And so I can see why writing

stuff out and, you know, writing out how you felt and stuff, even though you can't address the person helps kind of help with closure maybe. Yeah. Yeah. And in a lot of cases, these people, especially in the case of sexual molestation has never talked about it, has never, you know, really described and never really gotten in touch with their feelings. Now I'm shy. Now I'm promiscuous. Now I don't like men. Now I'm afraid of men. You know, they've never really gotten in touch with the impact of the experience. And that really brings stuff up. A lot of crying, a lot of talking, I'm processing. I go over the writings with them. And then after that, they're ready to say, you know what? I've gone through this journey.

I've paid enough price, paid enough of a price for what you've done to me. I'm done. I can look at you now and say, I'm done. I'm walking away from it. I'm done. I'm getting my life back. I'm getting my voice back. And that makes sense that you've got to go through that process, the cathartic process of unbundling and all, letting it out. Sometimes just telling another person just really helps. Because there's a lot of shame that goes with it, especially for men. There's a lot of misunderstanding. I remember watching Leaving Neverland and seeing the boys didn't understand that they were victimized. They thought that Michael Jackson would be a Michael Jackson. And they're like, well, this must be what everyone does. I don't understand what's going on. And so it was interesting, this experience. And eventually they realized that, wait, something happened to me that I didn't really like.

And so it was interesting to watch the whole experience of someone going through sexual trauma. Over the years of dating people, I've met women that have been assaulted and from all different various, I had a friend I picked up one time from the hospital who had been raped. And it's definitely tough with sexual assault and stuff. But I imagine, you know, no matter what variants of sort of ills we find, you know, we've got to find a way to back to forgiveness and let it go. Otherwise the poison will destroy us, you know, and the poison, you know, if you hold something in and you let it fester, you know, it can cause health problems, cancer, I think.

Indeed. One of the chapters in the book is don't believe the lies. So as we talk about sexual molestation in that, and even domestic violence, you will get this false belief that I caused it. I made him mad at me. Every time he hit me, I did something wrong. I wasn't a good enough wife. As a child, a nine-year-old, a seven-year-old, I can't be responsible for a 30-something-year-old raping you. There's just no way. So you believe those lies over the years. And by you unraveling the word you used, tell it. And then talk about the impact. And by you unraveling. Like the word you used. Tell it.

And then talk about the impact. You come to see that I'm not responsible. Simply not responsible. So going back to the festering. And the holding back. In holding this thing in you. The implications are. Emotional.

Social. Spiritual. And physical. There are physical implications of unforgiveness. I've seen people with, I'll give you an example. One girl that I was working with several years ago, after a couple of sessions with her, she wrote me a little note and she said, thank you, Rosemarie, for talking to me.. Now I feel my chest feel light and I can sleep better at night. So she was carrying a lack of physical pressure, heaviness in her chest and couldn't sleep peacefully at night. I believe you have things like high blood pressure, joint pains, heart palpitation, eczema, migraine, because of this emotional toxin that caused us to go chemically imbalanced and that manifest

themselves in these physiological conditions. Yeah. In fact, one thing that's interesting is people that have, I was really surprised. I started watching, I think it was, I forget the doctor. He had an MTV show with the guy who does the podcasting. The doctor was right there too. But he had a rehab center in La Cunada or Pasadena, I think it was. And he had a rehab show and you could tune in and watch it. And they'd have all these celebrities that, you know, had, had, uh, were having problems. And it was amazing how many of

them, and this is true of overweight people. There's a lot of overweight people that are most of his children. And one of the reasons they were, they're overweight now is they're trying to protect themselves from being sexually attractive to anybody else who might want to abuse them. And a lot of the people in the rehab, their drug addictions, all they were doing was medicating some sort of sex abuse from being a child. Yeah. It was extraordinary to me, the high amount of it.

I was like, holy shit. And look at the path. Look at the path that offensive act against these people. Look at the path that took them down. So, yeah. So if they don't step back

and look at the trajectory my life has taken because of this, they may never process it and put the dots together. Some people are going down this path and don't even know why. But when you take the time to look at it, you now see, oh, that, oh that oh and then you know you can

unravel that you can redirect that and move towards your healing yeah it's it's really interesting when i was watching the show i was like wow there's a lot of these people what they're doing is they're medicating so they're trying to instead of talking about it or writing it out like you you talk about they're they're they're basically medicating to try and make it go away and that's worse because you know you don't want to do that but what are some other things we haven't touched on in the book that we should tease out we want people to go buy the book of course so can't cover everything folks so I want to go back to hurt is okay. And I probably want to go back to that because a lot of us are in environments where we are sent this nonverbal message that we have to be strong. We can't show that we're falling apart.

We can't show that this thing has deeply hurt us. And so, especially you find that among men, and you do find that in the Christian community, if you show that you are hurt, you may be looked upon as spiritually weak. Being hurt is not weakness. If I bump my head, I'm going to hurt. If my head is gashed open and it's bleeding, I'm going to hurt and I'm going to look for it to get taken care of. In a community where you're sent the message, in a family, in some families, you're not allowed to hurt. You're not allowed to talk about your pain. And I'm not talking about the physical pain, I'm talking about the emotional pain. If you are in an environment where you're sent the message,

it's not okay to hurt emotionally. That hurt will go uncared for, which then would make it a chronic condition. Again, if I gash my head open and I have blood running down my face, I'm not going to put my clothes on and go in the office like that. I'm going to get myself taken care of. But in this kind of environment, we were told hurt is not okay. We have these open, festering, bleeding, gushing, smelly, emotional wounds that we don't take care of. And we go through life limping through life and not addressing those emotional hurts. So something was done to you and you're emotionally hurt. It's okay to hurt. After the infraction comes hurt.

But the hurt, like a physical hurt, must be addressed. Because if it's not addressed, you're going to get to a state where you are in a state of unforgiveness. Unforgiveness doesn't come right after the infraction. It's hurt that comes right after the infraction. Then unforgiveness, because you hold onto the hurt so long or too long. Hold onto the unforgiveness too long, now you become bitter.

And you know when you're at a place of hurt too long, when you cannot stop thinking about the thing. Or you're ready to tell the story at the drop of a hat. Or you hate everybody that looked like the person who did you wrong. There's signs and indicators that tell us that we are hovering around in that place of hurt. We're hopping on one leg for too long. And if you don't get it taken care of, you'll have a lifelong deformity. So hurt is okay, but it must be addressed in a timely manner. Definitely. I like how you say it's okay

to feel that pain. Like a lot of people, they don't like pain. They're like, I don't like this, doesn't feel well. But pain is really a part of life, really. What does pain do for us if if i have a condition where i can't tell if i broke my toe that's danger right pain sends a signal to your brain that something went wrong that need to be corrected so pain is not all bad it tells you that you need to solve a problem correct correct it's like that rattling in your car if your car doesn't rattle you won't know you need to solve a problem. Correct. Correct. It's like that rattling in your car. If your car doesn't rattle, you won't know you need to take it to the mechanic. Well, that makes sense. I never really thought of it that way.

It's a lot more healthier. The nod, I mean, that just makes sense, really, when it comes down to it. You know, it's so many people, you know, we go through life and, God, I wish they would give us a manual. That sure would be nice if they would ever give us a manual. Here's a manual for what's going on in your thing. So this has been really insightful. Anything more you want to touch on before you go? Let's see.

I just want to add, I'm sorry, I'm so on this. So think of the household, the family where the parents silences the child every time the child express pain. There's so many families like that. We don't talk about that. We don't address that. Parents want to pretend that it never happened. So that's an unhealthy environment, and that youngster is going to grow in an unhealthy manner. So final statement on that is pain is okay. All right. We talk about the consequences of unforgiveness. We talk about some benefits of forgiveness.

Freeze, not F-R-E-E-Z-E, F-R-E-E-S. Forgiveness is liberating. It's a gift to you first. I also want us to understand that we offend others as well. We also need to understand that when things happen in our lives, and it's hard for us to conceive this. A lot of us, it's hard for us to conceive this. That honestly, no matter what happens in your life, it can turn around for good. I know that's hard for some people to hear because you have no idea what I

went through. You have no clue, but it's what we make of it. That's true. All right. So where the other place I want to go is we understand that no matter how bad the situation is, you can turn it, it can turn around for your good. My mother would say you can take lemons and make lemonade. Lemons are sour, but you can make some good tasting lemonade from the lemon. So if you handle the situation in a healthy manner, that bad thing that happened to you can turn around and be a blessing for someone else. You know, it's funny.

I wrote my first book in October and published it in October. And I didn't write it one month. That sounds weird, doesn't it? We wrote it during 2021. And it was filled with stories of my life and my business partners and some of my business adventures. But there's a few stories in there that are about people, including my business partner, my best friend of 22 years, my business partner of 12 years, who decided to sabotage our business, stab me in the back and try and destroy our whole little empire we had and walk away from it. And it's funny as I wrote the stories out and, and published the book, I realized that I think I wrote this in the beginning of the book.

It says something like, thank you to all the people who tried to screw me, destroy me because you gave me a great book. You gave me great stories of survival, of how I survived. And I'm better for it. And I'm here today. And thank you for screwing me up because I got a great book out of it. I don't know if you know T.D. Jakes.

He preached a sermon once titled, Thank God for My Enemies. And I truly thank him for my enemies. And I truly thank him for my enemies. My enemies make me stronger and better because I fight through those situations. I don't lay down and play dead and let them walk all over me. So again, if we shift our perspective, oh yeah, I went through that marriage and I got divorced and I lost everything, but I got back up. I dusted myself off. I got back up. I know I can speak to women who are going through the same thing. Yeah. Or I can tell some girls to tell them what to look out for. I'm sorry. Go ahead.

Yeah. You know, life is, I learned this way too late in life, but life is a collection of stories and lessons. And we have to really look at some of the things that happen to us in life as lessons that we need to learn and not really like, well, that was really horrible. I mean, yeah, it feels horrible at the time, but like you say, the pain is part of the process and accepting pain. But lessons I've learned sometimes, and of course the book, you know, the lessons I've learned sometimes almost were worth it in the end. There's an old, what's that old adage that sometimes when you're going through something bad, it seems like, you know, the end of the world.

And then you look back on it years later and go, that was nothing. Or you look back and say, you know, I'm glad I went through that. Because of that, I'm here. And that's when you know you've handled that thing right. You can now be thankful for a painful experience. That's when you know you've done it right. In fact, we still need to find all the people in the book that I wrote the stories about that screwed me over and

send them a copy. I'm not sure if I'm going to have to do it or not. Oh, you did? No, but I need to. I don't know. I don't know where they're at. I don't even know if I want to bother finding them, but I would love to send them a book and they can read the front part that says, thank you for trying to screw me and give me such great stories.

So there you go. I think I forgave them. I don't know. I didn't say it. I didn't say it in the book, but I just, I don't know. Can you forgive if you just don't really care about it anymore? You're not carrying around going, that person's hurt me. When you forgive,

you wipe the slates clean. Do you have to say the words, I forgive you? If the person is reachable, it's best. Let me back up because if they're going to deny doing what they did, it is not worth you talking to them because it's going to go south.

You want to use wisdom. Again, remember we said that if the person admits and if the person does not admit if the person does not admit to their wrong you have to take care of you and move on the other side yeah if they're willing to say yeah chris man i i don't know what i was thinking i got greedy blah blah then you can have that conversation with them and then forgiveness can take place and not only forgiveness reconciliation, which is a repairing of relationship. It's a meeting of the two sides where you're closing the breach that was created by the offense.

There you go. Well, I've learned a lot today. Yeah. Reconciliation is not always possible because you need two people to reconcile. You only need one person to forgive, but you need two people to reconcile. Yeah. So if I accidentally piss somebody off or offend somebody, can I just buy like a bunch of copies of your book and throw at them and say, hey, I'm sorry I screwed you, but here's a book on forgiveness so you can get over it. It's a horrible joke. Bad, Chris.

Bad. So, yeah. Hopefully you'll forgive me for that. So it's been wonderful to have you on the show. Thank you for coming on and sharing this. I learned a lot. And this is really important. I'm going to give more thought to it.

And I'm going to quit burying people in the backyard. And I'm going to cancel the hit men that are out looking for the rest of them. Which will probably be good. Well, the parole agent, the judge says I can't do that anymore. So, you know, it's caught up to me. You got to give it up, Chris. You got to give it up. Yeah.

So, I don't know. We got to work that one through the court. All right. So, give us your plugs one more one more time so if you can find you on the internet www.booksbyrosemary that's my website my email address is there as well facebook is books by rosemary ie at the end instagram is books by rosemary and twitter is books rosemary the book is available on Amazon and on Barnes & Noble, as well as my website.

You can get it directly from me as well. That's Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and my website. There you go. Grow as a person, people. Become a better person. Don't be like me. And find forgiveness in your heart.

Order the book. The book is where refined books are sold. You can take and order it. The High Call of forgiveness. It's a mandate out on paperback on August 27th, 2021. You can also get on the Kindle version that's there. And it's got a lot of, it's got a lot of five-star ratings. In fact, I think that's all it has is five-star ratings.

So a lot of people really love the book, which is awesome sauce. Uh, thank you Rosemary for coming on the show. We certainly appreciate it. Thank you so much, Chris. Thanks for having me. Thank you. Great discussion coming on the show We certainly appreciate it Thank you so much Chris, thanks for having me Thank you, great discussion Thanks to my audience for tuning in Go to youtube.com forward slash Chris Voss

Hit the bell notification button Go to goodreads.com forward slash Chris Voss See everything we're reading and reviewing over there All of our groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram And all those different places And be sure to forgive each other, darn it Be good to each other Stay safe and we'll see you guys next time

Signing off