This post was started on Thursday 6 April 2011, but I did not finish it until today 7 April 2011, but it is intended to be the post for Thursday. Confused? I am, but what else is new?

Is it just me, or are other people wondering about the "tags" you see on bogs about the "5 foods you should never eat", if you want to cut down on belly fat. There is always a picture of a big yellow banana along with it. Well I'm as curious as the next guy and heaven knows I want to cut down on belly fat, so I click on it. Now I know this is a way for the blogger to make money, it's called monetizing, so every click earns the blog it's attached to $$$ and I don't mind sending a few $$$ onto my friends but, this is so seriously aggravating because they never tell you what the 5 foods are. They don't even say you shouldn't eat bananas, the poor banana is just incriminated by having his picture on the tag, maybe the banana is actually belly fat friendly. I think if you buy something, you can get the "sacred list of 5", but I'm not that curious. I was just wondering.

What I really need to talk about today isn't belly fat or bananas. I want to talk about forgiveness and redemption. Forgiveness that elusive gift that each of us wants to receive, while we are so reluctant to give it. So often people think that if they forgive someone they are doing something for that person. Often they are just not ready to "give" to the offender. The reality is that in forgiving someone else we give our self a gift. Forgiveness is not for the offender but rather for the offended. Forgiveness frees the offended from the burden of bad feelings, thoughts of revenge and ultimately the offense.

Now I'm a firm believer that no one can really offend us unless we allow it. If we simply choose not to be offended, then there is no offense taken and no need for forgiveness, at least on our part. I can't tell you how many times I've been with a friend and we meet another person, who says something rude to me and it goes right over my head. Later my friend might remark that they can't believe the rudeness of that person saying such and such, and I'm oblivious that there was any offense. This might be just because I'm more than a little blond, or maybe I was in such a good place that I simply did not allow it to offend me. I didn't even hear anything offensive. Unfortunately, this is not always the case and sometime I find myself being overly sensitive to things others say. Possibly at these times people aren't being as rude as I would like to think. More likely I'm in such a bad place, that I am totally susceptible to evil influences.

My advise; give forgiveness freely, always and without reservation. Keep in mind the hardest person to forgive is yourself. Why on earth, are we so hard on ourselves? I have found that most times when someone can't forgive themselves for something, it turns out to be something that they did not do, think or say and could not have possibly done, thought or said. Often people want to beat themselves up over something they think they should have prevented. It just ain't so. We cannot go around preventing others from living their lives, no matter how foolishly, recklessly or deliberately they might choose to do it. The "if onlys" will make you crazy. Let them go. Clean them out of your consciousness. First and foremost forgive yourself for any real or perceived offences.

Redemption, who doesn't want to be redeemed. News flash....it's already happened. The Savior in his great atoning sacrifice has redeemed you. He has already paid the price of all of your sins. As a matter of fact he did this long before you were ever born. So...give it up already, turn from your sins, forgive yourself and get on with living the life you were meant to live and live it to the fullest. You will only get one chance at this life, so don't blow it. That last comment might sound a little ominous, but I really think the only way we would "blow it", is to not live up to our full potential, no matter what.