Ask for forgiveness even when it isn’t obvious that you have done anything wrong.
The president of the United States had just been impeached, the economy was booming, and Greg, all 39 years of him, had only ever missed two days at work: once because he had received a court subpoena, the second time because he woke up with a medical emergency. As America braced for Y2K, Greg earned $26 an hour as an operating engineer for an asphalt paving company, a wage that, after adjusting for inflation, is the equivalent of about $40 an hour today.
A member of the International Union of Operating Engineers, Greg’s job was golden: plenty of overtime ($39 an hour) with a minimum of 60 hours a week doing work he loved and with generous health benefits. In those days, Greg never cashed his checks until the end of the month. With three side jobs—a thriving weekend DJ business, a concrete company and pressure-washing business, and flipping houses—he didn’t need to.
“Get Hamburger on the job,” his bosses would say about Greg when they had an especially tough assignment. He had a wife and three children at home, a Harley on the road, Cincinnati Bengals tickets on the weekends, and loads of dignity.
But everything changed on a job in Ohio in July 1999, when Greg stepped off his roller to redirect an angry driver who was trying to get home from work.
“Sir, this road is closed,” Greg told him, sidling up to the driver’s side door. “You’ll have to turn around and go the other way.”
The driver ignored Greg and raced ahead, his Ford F150 violently hurling Greg to the pavement and his rear tires rumbling over Greg’s legs.
The doctors released Greg from the hospital that night with no broken bones, but with plenty of pain medicine for the excruciating pain that he suffered from deep contusions. Within a couple weeks, he was allowed to return to work—they stuck him on a job handling paperwork—but it quickly became clear that his days were numbered. When Greg filed for workmen’s compensation, his employer fought him mercilessly in court—and won. (The company’s attorneys argued he wasn’t actually doing his job when he stepped off the roller and redirected the driver.)
. . .
I thought about this after Greg told me about the “journey of forgiveness” he has been traveling, a journey that began when a preacher challenged listeners to ask for forgiveness even when it wasn’t obvious that they had done anything wrong. That got Greg thinking about the angry man who barreled over his legs. So Greg set out to find him, traveling a couple of hours to his rural Ohio home to knock on his door. Greg introduced himself to the man, now 85, and asked him to forgive him for anything that he might have done to make him angry that July day. The man accepted his apology, and Greg snapped a photo of the two.
On the 20th anniversary of his injury, Greg posted that photo on Facebook, a smile on his face and a quizzical look on the other man’s. He wrote:
20 years later, over a dozen surgeries, lots of sermons, prayers, and accepting Jesus as my personal Savior, I’ve forgiven him and made friends. I’m not able to play on his senior’s volleyball team, but I told him I’d come and cheer for him.
Americans like Greg have complementary gifts to offer their fellow citizens—gifts forged by suffering and a deep awareness of their dependence upon God and others, and a surprising humility and openness born from being lost and found. To be more fully herself, the American body politic needs those men and women.