I Forgive, Therefore I Am
What story do you want to live in?
In one hand I held my calling to be an evangelist.
In the other, my professional plan to become a police officer.
And before me was a former police-officer-turned-evangelist speaking at a Christian youth festival.
I asked him how he had balanced the calling with the profession. His response: forget the profession and explore the call. He made it irresistible, asking me to join the gap year programme of the charity he represented, after which I’d become his apprentice and we would travel and preach together.
The prophecy was being fulfilled. Of course I accepted.
Six months into that year, the charity asked me to rise again. They called me and said: Dan, we need an evangelist. The mission was to serve at a major theme park to help lead a sort of interactive Christian art space. Honestly, I’m not going to waste any words trying to make sense of how weird this project was.
What I do want to share are the living conditions. The charity rented a small house for me and a small team. Every room was filthy, full of damp and mould. The owner threatened us with violence if we ever opened the dining room door. It was a putrid hovel, next to a drug trafficking hotspot with a queue of users waiting at the door.
Bear in mind that I was paying to participate in this gap year, and someone from the charity had viewed the house and deemed it appropriate for three young men. As you can imagine, I had things to say. Their response: we live by faith, and this is sometimes what it looks like. You’re a man of faith, aren’t you, Dan?
Of course I was. So I remained on the frontline. After all, I would soon take my place as a travelling evangelist.
But that didn’t happen. The policeman turned preacher decided to leave the organisation, and my opportunity left with him.
That summer I returned to the same festival. The charity had appointed a new leader who wanted to meet me. Looking back, I realise he was only a few years older than me, but he was a giant of faith in my eyes. He expressed regret about how I’d been left in limbo and apologised that I’d been convinced to participate in what was now widely regarded as a failed experiment.
He knew my story, he knew my calling, he knew what I had endured, and he made me an offer. I was to join him as his apprentice so we could travel and preach together. There was one condition: serve on the gap year programme for another year. I’ll never forget what he said: you need to earn your stripes, Dan.
After six months, all communication ceased. After another five, I finally got a call. He told me I had earned my stripes. He also told me he was too busy to take on an apprentice. I needed a new plan and I had four weeks to find one.
Man of faith.
Earn your stripes.
We need an Evangelist.
These are the words of the Isolation Economy wearing a crucifix. They had stories to craft, money to raise, and a bottom line to satisfy, so they used God-shaped language to guide my emotional response and keep a young man compliant and available.
They didn’t provoke my pain, but they still leveraged the longing of the heart.
For the next few years I tried to make the calling stick. I became a youth ministry intern, led a small community church, and continued to live by faith. I slid into loneliness and debt, eventually moving home and crying in a pub garden with my Dad.
He bailed me out. I landed a youth ministry job in Cambridge and spent the next four years serving the work and paying him back.
Will is not enough
As a 43-year-old, I spend more time in this story than I’d care to admit, and revisiting it reveals a measure of bitterness I still find difficult to process.
Yes, I write from the rubble. My scars are symbols. Without them, I’d have nothing to say.
And that is why this chapter is harder to write than most. Because ‘scars are symbols’ is true and the bitterness remains. Pain and purpose fighting for the same space.
You’ve felt this too. Not just the wound, but the paradox of it. Something that shaped you and still makes you quietly furious. The weaponised performance review. The mentor who moved the goalposts. The leader who claimed their applause based on your work. The promotion that was promised but never honoured. The person who saw your longing and used it for their gain.
The world tells you your scars make you stronger. And it’s true: you can be a better boss, a kinder friend, a more emotive artist because of what you’ve survived. But turning your wounds into symbols isn’t an act of sheer will. It’s a daily decision of the heart.
Otherwise your work amplifies your wounds instead of who you are. When your work is an extension of what you lack, or the wounds you bear, no amount of effort will bring you meaning.
Your output doesn’t balance the ledger or determine your value. It never has.
I needed to forgive
One day, the youth charity leader came to speak in Cambridge. I was there but couldn’t face him and left early. Years later our paths crossed again. In my search for peace I’d convinced myself that I should apologise for any bitterness I’d held against him and the organisation, so I waited for a conversation.
As he approached me, I was stunned by what he said: oh, you’ve decided not to be rude this time, have you?
In the years since, his star has risen and his influence grown. He leads an international charity, writes books, speaks at conferences, and shapes minds. Me? I went on to experience five redundancies in a decade and even today, find it hard to shake the feeling that I’m a failure. The one who doesn’t have enough faith, who’s always too late, and now too old.
Bitterness. All too easy to find if I cared to look.
Though those things often feel true, the Oboe’s A invites me to notice a different reality. I’ve met and worked with people whose stories I understand because of what I’ve lived through. And slowly, forgiveness has been gaining ground on the bitterness that loves to run the show and direct my actions.
Looking back, I didn’t need to seek forgiveness. I needed to forgive.
To this day, it remains the only thing I can control.
You need to forgive
Forgiveness isn’t a one-time thing. It’s a posture, a daily decision of the heart. And it’s required right now.
Forgive the employer who didn’t honour you.
Forgive the coach who didn’t help you.
Forgive yourself for not knowing enough, for not acting enough, for not being wise enough.
Forgive yourself for the bitterness you cling to today, and the narrative walls you choose to live within.
And forgive the system that exploited your longing.
If you’ve spent time, money, and faithfulness in pursuit of an outcome that didn’t arrive, forgive the other person’s role in it and forgive yourself for choosing it.
I’m not just saying let it go. You’re right, you didn’t get what you deserved. But whilst your mind wants to fight for it, your heart longs to put it down.
When you don’t, you lose.
If I hadn’t believed that I was too late in my younger years, I could have gone back to school or trained as a police officer. I could have returned to my cleaning job where I felt content and useful. When I started my business, I could have focused on relationships instead of forcing a sense of scale and parading my success stories in front of others.
But I didn’t. Not because I didn’t know enough, not because I wasn’t aware of my options. But because I hadn’t yet realised that the Founder’s Noose was feeding on my lust for what’s fair, pushing me towards getting what I deserved.
No amount of work could release me from that hunger. Only forgiveness could do that.
Today, you might feel trapped by the walls of your story, but you haven’t missed it. You’re not too old, too late, or too irrelevant. A calling isn’t a destination you miss, it’s a direction of travel that starts right where you’re standing. It’s found in the rubble of the walls by those who choose to tear them down.
The question is whether you choose to continue the story, or write the sequel by forgiving yourself, and those who hurt you.
Therefore I am
You have heard it said: I think, therefore I am.
But my mind wants to show them how stupid they were for letting me go.
My mind wants to become famous so they can experience the shadow of my wisdom.
My mind wants to win, and it overrides the wisdom of my heart every day.
In other words, what I think is not a reliable steward of what my soul needs and what my best work requires.
So instead, I say this: I forgive, therefore I am.
Forgiveness isn’t about feeling better (though you will). It’s about accepting that none of us can undo what’s been done and choosing to tear down the wall between who you are and who the work needs you to become. It’s the daily decision to stop keeping score, to resist the temptation to live according to what we’ve lost and how we’ve been mistreated.
It’s the only thing we can control.
Without it, bitterness remains on standby, ready to flood the space where forgiveness should be, ready to do our thinking for us: driving the desire to win, to overwhelm the past, to finally take what we deserve.
Being unable to forgive (or not realising that you could) is the silent curse that manipulates your message, compromises your content, and makes you a target of the Isolation Economy: forcing you to outperform your past, the system that made you feel alone, and the people who caused you pain. They are your competition and your job is to beat them.
It’s the reason you remain at the centre of your story asking ‘how do I get seen?’ versus ‘how can I see others?’
For me, it makes me think I need reach, when I simply need relationships. To revel in the abundance of one, instead of the dopamine hit of a social graph moving up and to the right.
Honestly, I’m not some zen master writing from a position of inner peace, nor have I satisfied my programming for success. Some days I’ve forgiven the people who wounded me, and some days I haven’t. But I know the days when I feel content, when I feel like I count, when I write with a fire in my heart instead of a chip on my shoulder. On those days, the walls of these stories don’t exist, and so I aim for more of those.
And ultimately, the actions of old enemies were just expressions of the system they were stuck in too. If there were justice to seek, how would I ever find it?
In the end, the deepest, truest, most magnetic version of your story isn’t found in victory.
So today, don’t try to win. Don’t try to be seen. Operate from something new:
Forgiveness.
Practice Note:
One action to carry into this week.
When a troubling memory replays without permission, or when you feel diminished or jealous because of someone else’s success, note it down and remember, that’s not your story.
With a deep breath, say or whisper aloud this short mantra: I forgive, therefore I am.
Where We Are:
This is Week 178of a year-long practice.
Movement 2: Empathy - eight weeks exploring kindness and respect for self and the power genuine connection.
I Forgive, Therefore I Am ← You are here
Dance Then, Wherever You May Be
Personal Brand is a Cult
The Power of And
Community is the Great Leveller
Think Like an Artist
You Can’t See the View When You’re in the View
Click here to read the Overture and Movement 1.