A Victory Worth More Than All the Green Jackets in the World

First, a big thanks to Chris Fabry listeners who are stopping by the blog today.

(For those of you who aren’t up on the name, Chris is the host of a national radio show called Chris Fabry Live.)

Earlier today, Chris left me a voicemail and asked if I was cool with taking his interview with me a different direction.

A Tiger Woods direction. (Since come on, good or bad, that is where the public mind is going to be at after his apology.)

This request of course hit home (the part of home I’d like to hide away in a closet) as I’ve been blogging about my own ongoing struggles and learnings regarding forgiveness. (Read the posts here: Person of the Zero Chance, Will the Real Crazy People Please Stand Up?, and The Something that is Missing is Forgiveness.)

And so, yes, let’s talk about Tiger. Let’s talk about me. Let’s talk about our universal need to ask for forgiveness, to forgive, and to be forgiven.

Because that is a matter close to my heart, close to my own need for growth.

You’ll find a few of my thoughts about Tiger below the video:

While lots of people would’ve loved to be Tiger Woods on other days in his life, no one wanted to be Tiger Woods behind that microphone today.

To have to own that his behavior hurt and complicated things for a lot of people.
His family. Yes. More than anyone.
But it wasn’t just his family, Tiger was deliberate to point out.
It was his friends too who had paid the cost.
It was those who worked with him, shared life with him, who were thrown into the middle of the sprawling drama he created.

The list of people his actions impacted was long:
…those in the PGA who shared his work and love of golf.
…his fans.
…his foundation.
…children who looked up to him.
…yes, even those sitting in their living rooms watching his life for their own personal entertainment.

Its funny, I think.
Because people will look at those words–to all those parties who shared in his suffering–and they will think Tiger did this for them.
And he did.
He did.

But the greatest victor, the real champion of this story, is…once again…Tiger himself.

Because Tiger got to the point where he realized the burden of concealing his mistakes–of pretending, of creating stories, of diverting blame onto others–was more costly than just coming clean.

He got to the point where it became more important to take his own hits, than to let other people take them for him.

He got to the point where he wanted to be free to live in the truth…more than he wanted to keep up the lie.

My guess is, unlike Tiger’s other press conferences following his many PGA victories, fans weren’t sitting in their living room cheering him on.
And, my hunch is, companies weren’t clogging his voicemail with multi-zillion dollar endorsement offers either.

But if they were smart, they would realize that this victory is the one that really counts.

Because owning up to his mistakes and choosing to grow as a person gave Tiger a victory–of health, of clean conscience, of renewed love toward those he hurt–worth more than all the green jackets in the world.

If there is a day that will be important to Tiger’s future career, mark my words. It was not the last Masters he won, it was today.
If there is a day that fans should applaud, it wasn’t when he sunk those three impossible putts in a row, it is today.
And if there is a day Tiger should be breaking out the fist-pump, it is today.

Because today is the day Tiger found the freedom of forgiveness.

What about you? Are you a prisoner to your own unconfessed failures? Or are you building a prison of your own unforgiveness, forcing yourself to live confined behind a grudge?

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