Forgiveness

Is there someone in your life you cannot and/or do not want to forgive?  If so, I implore you to read the following.

Bob Merritt, Senior Pastor at EagleBrook Church, sent out an e-mail this week telling us, his congregation, that this would be one of those “don’t miss” services.  He rarely sends out an e-mail like that, so when my wife and I woke up late this morning, we knew that skipping church was not an option.  We rushed to get our family ready and arrived about ten minutes into the service, hoping the “don’t miss” part had not passed us by.

With about twenty minutes to go in the service, nothing extra special had happened.  Pastor Bob was delivering a solid message on forgiveness, which he defined as choosing to let something go.  He told us that forgiveness is a decision, and is a process that can take time.  Pastor Bob explained that forgiveness doesn’t mean you forget what someone did or said to you, and you may even need to end your relationship what that person for a time, even if you have forgiven them.  Bob further discussed how forgiving someone is never what you want to do, and it does not benefit the other person as much as it benefits you – it sets you free and allows you to release your anger and sleep at night.

Although I had heard all of this from Pastor Bob before, they were still great reminders.  Then, the “can’t miss” part of the service began.  Pastor Bob showed a recent segment from CBS Evening News.

Back in 1993, 20 year old Laramiun Byrd was gunned down by 16 year old Oshea (pronounced O-shay) Israel.  I was also 20 years old when this happened, and feel like I vaguely remember the news of this shooting and the name Laramiun Byrd.

Early on, the news segment showed Laramiun’s mother, Mary Johnson, visiting her son’s grave.  Well, so much for a “don’t miss” service, it was obvious what was coming up.  Mary would say that she forgave Oshea, the boy who murdered her son.  Impressive, but I think our pastor oversold the importance of the service a bit. 

The video took a bit of a twist when stating that Oshea was released after 17 years in prison and now lived in the same North Minneapolis neighborhood as Mary.  Whoa, that’s kind of freaky.

Then, the video described just how close they lived.  Mary and Oshea were shown standing three feet apart, each in the front door of their adjacent apartment units.  Wow. 

Next came a few comments from Mary and Oshea, the most powerful being Mary’s comment that, “Unforgiveness is like cancer, it will eat you from the inside.”

Although the message was powerful, I was not sure why it was a “don’t miss.”  Heck, our pastor could have just sent us the internet link to the video.

The video ended and when the lights in the church came back on, three chairs and a table joined Pastor Bob on stage.  “Hmmmm,” I thought, “what is this all about?”  I was pretty sure Pastor Bob was going to invite a couple people on stage and either moderate a forgiveness between them, or himself grant or ask for forgiveness from them.

So much for that.  “Please help me welcome to the stage, Mary and Oshea.”  After I got over my initial shock of watching Mary and Oshea walk onto the stage and give Pastor Bob a big group-hug, I noticed that others were giving them a standing ovation, so I joined in.

Over the next 15 minutes, Pastor Bob asked Mary and Oshea a number of tough questions.  Mary was very passionate and eloquent in her answers.  Oshea was pretty reserved, but had many great one liners, including, “I was scared to meet Mary.  Have you ever met an angry mother?  I’d rather deal with prisoners.”

They told the story of how Mary brimmed with anger for 12 years before realizing she needed to forgive Oshea.  She first met Oshea in prison, then she threw him a party when he left prison.  The 35 people she invited to the party took turns telling Oshea how they could help his transition back into society.  These connections ultimately helped Oshea rent the apartment next to Mary.  She joked that being this close to Oshea came in handy this morning as she was able to simply pound on the wall and call to Oshea that it was time to go to church.

Near the end of the interview, Oshea talked about the day he first met Mary in prison.  He was terrified of the meeting, but by the end of it, he felt he needed to do something for Mary.  So, at the end of their meeting, he asked her if he could give her a hug.

He described how she wrapped herself around him, sobbing and wailing, while giving him a most powerful embrace.  Virtually the entire congregation was quite choked up at this point (well, at least I know my wife and I were), but Oshea let us off the hook when he quipped, “Here she is hugging me and going hysterical, and I’m looking around at the prison guards thinking, ‘why don’t one of you get this crazy lady off of me?’”

The point is this.  Mary could have hated Oshea for the rest of her life and withheld forgiveness, but what good would that have done her?  If Mary can forgive Oshea, the murderer of her only child, we can certainly forgive each other for much lesser wrongs.

Yeah, I guess pastor was right when he said it was a “don’t miss.”

http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-18563_162-20069849.html

Note:  The views and interpretations are my own.  To see the actual message, go to http://www.eaglebrookchurch.com/, the message should be online within a couple days.

Thoughts from a Tax Guy

Last week a student asked me a question that took me by surprise.  She asked me why I prepare tax returns for individuals.  Normally I am quite nimble on my feet when facing questions, but this one threw me off.  I told her I would have to get back to her with my answer.

Back in 2004 when I left the public accounting world and entered academia, I expanded into the tax return preparation business to make money.  Before long, however, I realized I couldn’t bring myself to charge rates high enough to earn a ton of money.  Coupling that with the fact that I earn higher rates consulting with large corporations makes it easy for me to focus my CPA practice mainly on corporate consulting, with just a bit of individual tax preparation thrown in.

Today, one of my favorite clients showed up 15 minutes early, as always.  He sat in his car until exactly 9AM and then knocked on my front door.  As we worked through his simple tax return and I entered in his W-2 earnings, I realized that I once made more money in a 6 week span than he did in all of 2011.  Yet, despite his low income, he still gave away over 10% of his earnings.

He is a very unique client.  He is somewhat socially awkward and has certain physical disabilities.  It took him nearly 5 minutes to write out a $20 check to pay me for my services (believe me when I say that I battle with whether I should charge him anything - but I question whether he would be insulted if I offered to do his returns for free).

This individual does not trust many people, and before I became his CPA several years ago, he prepared his tax returns himself.  In doing so, he made errors, costing himself hundreds of dollars in refunds. 

As I bid farewell to him at the end of his appointment, I reflected a bit: if I took the advice of many friends and stopped preparing tax returns, what would happen to this individual?  Who would help him out in this very personal area?  While there are certainly some qualified, caring, and affordable tax preparers out there (H&R Block NOT included), I question whether he would trust them sufficiently.

So, I can now answer my student’s question of why I prepare tax returns for individuals.  I am blessed (some of you would say cursed) in this area, and this is just one small way I can maybe help some people out.

The Theory of Coaching Football

Along with 62 other students, I am currently enrolled in the most popular course at Saint John’s: The Theory of Coaching Football.  Today, during my most busy time of the year, I took off work almost the entire day to attend class and to spend time with the instructor of the course.  Joining me were two friends and fellow alumni of Saint John’s whom I invited to attend class with me.

What would it feel like to know that three busy people took off work for a day just to hear you speak and to talk with you?  Would it feel honoring and would it feel like you must be doing something right?

Here is the kicker: there are not just three people interested in spending time with this instructor.  Had I cast my invitation more broadly, hundreds of people would have joined me in the instructor’s classroom today.

How do you get to the point where so many people wish to spend time with you?  I would love to give you that answer in this blog entry, but it would take a couple hundred pages.  I think I will save it for the book.

Simply put, my research has been going better than expected, and I cannot wait for my sabbatical this fall.  There is a story that needs to be told, and I am honored and excited to have the opportunity to tell it.

The Popcorn Machine Debacle

Today was kind of a rough day.  I had to apologize to my department chair for being rude to her in a meeting.  I had to apologize to another professor for being rude on a discussion board.  I had to apologize to three other professors for welcoming them with a bunch of popcorn crumbs on the floor from my use of the department popcorn machine last night (truly, I believed the custodians vacuumed every night).

At times like these, I am grateful that I have a colleague who will speak candidly to me.  If he has not already seen it first hand, I tell him about the mess I have gotten into and he advises me on how to respond.  Sometimes, he tells me I am being too hard on myself, and sometimes he tells me I am being too hard on others.  Regardless, he speaks the truth to me.

One of the better decisions I made with respect to this relationship was to invite him to critique me.  He knows he is free to criticize my actions, and while I will not always agree with his assessment, I will respect it.

Do you have someone like that in your corner?  If not, do you need to extend that invitation?

Lunch with Charlie

As professors, we receive evaluations from our students at the end of each semester.  Some evaluations are glowing, some are critical, and once in awhile they sound a little bit like this, “You gave us so much work in this class that my girlfriend dumped me because I was not spending any time with her.  If I ever see you on the street, I am going to kick your a**!”

That was not an evaluation I received, rather it was received by my favorite professor of all time, Charlie.

Back in the spring of 2001, I was working on my Master’s in Business Taxation degree (sexy, I know) from the University of Minnesota.  I enrolled in Charlie’s course and two weeks before it began, I received a thick packet in the mail from him.  It contained a bunch of pre-reading, a couple lengthy case study assignments, and a letter.  In the letter, Charlie told his prospective students that the course would be a tremendous amount of work, and if we didn’t have time to invest in the course now, we should take it later.  Facing a busy time at work, I promptly dropped the course.

Unfortunately (or so I thought at the time), this was a required course, so I enrolled again in the spring of 2003 and received the same darn packet and warning letter.  I put a half-hearted effort into the pre-reading and case studies.

I met Charlie at 9:02 on a Saturday morning.  Class started at 9, but I couldn’t be bothered to show up on time, especially as I did not sign up for a Saturday morning course.  It was supposed to meet on Wednesday evenings, but we had to switch the first day to Saturday morning to accommodate Charlie’s schedule (I later learned the conflict arose as the University asked him as a top professor to fly to Austria to teach a course at a partner-university there).

The open seats were on the far side of the room, so I sauntered through the front to claim my spot.  Charlie was going through the first day monotony of reviewing the syllabus, so I joined many other students in daydreaming.  I quickly woke up when Charlie said, “I’ll start class promptly at 5:30 every day, and I understand that sometimes you may be late.  If that is the case please just be respectful and walk through the back of the room to avoid disrupting the class.”  Message delivered, point taken.

As class progressed that first day, my attitude toward Charlie warmed as I noticed his intelligence, passion, quick-wit, and engaging teaching style.  Then I was quickly humbled when it came time to review our case studies, and I found out I hadn’t even made a half-hearted attempt at the case studies, I quarter-hearted it at best.  He was very quick to tell students when their logic was incomplete but praised students who had really prepared for class.

At the start of the next class (which I showed up to on time, sitting front and center), Charlie gave his 50 students back detailed grades on our day one case studies and my scores were weak.  I had put forth a much stronger effort on day two’s case studies but again found that I needed to do even more, as reflected in my errors during class discussion and in the grades I received.  I began to realize that I was not thinking critically enough.

As the class periods ticked by, I found my performance, critical thinking, and learning greatly increasing in the course.  It reached the point where I was putting forth a very strong effort, receiving A’s on all my work, but still never nailing the assignments.  I absolutely loved being able to earn high marks and make strong contributions to discussion, while still learning an immense amount during class.  It kind of became a game for me, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to achieve the correct answer, but testing myself to see how close I could come.

In my eight years of teaching, I have taught about 1,700 individual class periods.  In that time, I feel I have had one perfect class period, back in the fall of 2008.  In advance of that class, I had students work very hard on a case study which would be graded.  We then spent the entire class period discussing the solution to the case study.  The students who worked the hardest and who thought the most critically were able to make strong contributions to class discussion and received A’s.  However, the case study was so complex that they were not able to achieve the correct answer and they still learned a considerable amount during the class.

I also recall a class period when Charlie introduced us to a difficult problem and very quickly (much too quickly it seemed at the time) showed us how to reach the solution.  At the end of class, he handed us the final solution, but not the steps on how to reach it.  Figuring out the steps would be critical in performing well on our final project.  I remember working for several hours over the following days trying to figure out how to reach Charlie’s solution.  When I finally nailed it, I was elated, and he praised the way I incorporated those steps into the final project.

These steps are probably the most important technical skills I use to this day in my consulting practice.  But, here is the kicker.  Had Charlie simply given us the steps to the solution, it would have saved me a few hours at the time.  However, I would not have learned that skill in the same way and would not be able to differentiate my consulting practice the way that I do.

In short, Charlie made me work harder and think more critically than I ever thought I could, and when I did , he rewarded me.  No, the “A” I received in his class was not my reward, the skills I learned and confidence I gained were.

Yesterday, I met Charlie for a long lunch (it was probably the longest lunch I have ever had that did not involve frosty beverages).  I had not seen him in nine years and it was the first time I really chatted with him.  It took a little bit to get over the awe of being in the presence of my favorite professor, but once I did, it was fantastic to connect as peers. 

Thanks, Charlie.