Forgiveness

This is something I've been struggling with for several years now. I've learned that forgiveness is something that you never really fully understand, and once you think you have mastered it..it masters you and then you are wrestling with your emotions all over again. Saying you forgive someone is the easier than the actual process.

One reason I forgive

Several years ago I learned something about one of my family members that rocked me to the core. I went through all the stages of grief: denial, anger, sadness and then acceptance (although I'm still working on that last part). I didn't understand how I would ever be able to forgive in this situation. My inability to forgive took a tole on my relationships. I lashed out at my husband and daughter and became a version of myself that I did not recognize. I'd like to say it was my hormones and postpartum depression. But I knew deep down that it was the
internal struggle of forgiveness and my inability to control the world I once knew crashing down on me.

I've always had a strong sense of self, but in this stage of life I have never been more ashamed of myself and who I was becoming. I was saying hateful things to the people I loved. I hit inanimate objects. I even threw a protein shake at my husband.

God taught me quite a bit during this time though and gave me a support system that allowed me to keep my head above water. I got more involved in my church and Sunday School group and I was able to express some of my feelings and learn that several people were struggling with forgiveness too. One guy in the class said something that really spoke to me. He said, "I must continue to forgive; each day it gets easier."

Then I realized that God has forgiven me and has forgiven that person already, so what is my excuse? "Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony." Colossians 3:12-14.

Fast forward to present time. I'm STILL struggling with forgiveness. Just when I think I've moved forward and moved on, I get a reminder and see a reminder that it's still fresh and the wound is still not completely healed.

I've prayed several times for God to remove that from me so I can completely heal.. but he doesn't. For whatever his reasoning is, it's still there and it still pops up in my life like it just happened yesterday.

With all due respect to my friend, forgiveness doesn't get easier. For me it has gotten harder, or even it's been the same, consistent struggle. Perhaps God is making it harder so that I must be reminded of how he forgave me first.

I feel that just as God allowed Satan to test Job and take everything away from him, he is letting Satan test me. The "father of Lies" is really, really good at making me feel like the world owes me something, that the one who betrayed me still needs to pay for what he/she has done. He is so good and making me forget that God is control and I'm not. He is good and doing everything in his power so that I don't forgive and that I don't move on. As my pastor once said, "movement is growth and growth is life. The only way to make true progress is with Christ." Satan doesn't want me to grow, he wants me to be stuck. He wants to blur my reality with a deceptive version of what I think my life should be, instead of relying on the reality of God's bigger more beautiful plan. God's best plan. He makes me question the integrity and character of God.

And when you do that, you move into a dangerous place. It's why we are in this predicament in the first place. It's why we are cursed to die. Adam and Eve believed in Satan's lies and made them question God.

So how do we move on and how do we forgive? I don't know the answer to that, but that we must continue to do it. We must move past the false reality that we think we know what is best. Maybe the answer lies in remembering and trusting. To forgive is to remember that Christ forgave us. To forgive is to trust in God's ultimate goodness and get past the sin of self absorption. To forgive is to be a better person, a better version of yourself than you ever thought was possible.