A lifestyle of forgiveness.
When we are deeply hurt, we can choose to tend to that hurt as if it is a fertile soil for forgiveness or we can stake it as a battlefield for bitterness.
Someone may have contributed greatly to your hurting heart. I am so sorry, friend. I want you to know that I am with you & God sees you. There is no excusing the fact that you are suffering. Hurt is real, brutal, and raw. And yet, I want to challenge you with an idea: that you, and you alone, are responsible for your response to that hurt. Your offender is not to blame for your bitterness, if bitterness is the response you choose. Just as they are not responsible for you offering forgiveness, if forgiveness is what you choose.
I have spent time in both camps. I have spent months steeped in my hurt, seeing life through the teeny, limited keyhole of my pain, blinded to the bitterness that was taking root within. Until that root was revealed, I spent many days confused, afraid, angry, and unable to understand why I was feeling so persistently heavy-hearted despite being in a season of life that looked beautiful on-paper. There was active hurt being inflicted on my heart throughout, but my responses to that hurt were out of proportion to the offenses, I inflicted deep hurt through my reactions to new and old pains, and I could not understand why. What an agonizing place to be! If you are in a similar place, friends, that is okay. There is no shame or condemnation. I just want to share with you: there is hope.
Blessedly, once the deeper root of unforgiveness was revealed in my life, God so sweetly and quickly helped me take care of it. It was not an easy journey. It meant confronting my hurt on a deeper level than I was aware existed, and it meant understanding that things would get more painful before they got better. But through wise counsel from dear friends from church; a paradigm-shifting book recommended to me about releasing offense (“Total Forgiveness” by R. T. Kendall); and many hours of tears and prayers and bringing my hurt and brokenness to the Lord, I am learning more about grace, healing, and love than I could ever see before when my vision was limited by pain. The journey is ongoing, and I am finding that this is a road that is ripe with lessons, richness, and loveliness. We can cultivate a lifestyle of forgiveness, friends; and in doing so, we can experience renewal in deep and indescribable ways.
Friend, wherever you are in your journey, I want to encourage you, choose forgiveness. It’s the harder of the two choices, to be sure. It requires a humbling knowledge of how much God has forgiven us for, to the point that we can’t help but to extend that forgiveness to others. It means that the person who hurt us may never understand the depth of the pain they caused; they might not even care that they have our forgiveness. It means letting go of the false sense of control that bitterness offers and letting our heart be soft. But friend, that soft place, that’s where God’s healing and lasting work truly begins. What forgiveness does is it FREES YOU. It lightens your load, refreshes your heart, and places the situation in God’s capable hands. It breaks chains that hold you captive to the past and torture you in the form of hurtful memories played on repeat in your mind. Forgiveness allows you to move forward with peace in your heart, hope in your eyes, pep in your step, and grace in your words and actions. And the more you choose it, the more it is woven into your lifestyle, the more peace & hope & pep & grace you can scatter around like confetti to the people around you.
Your offender may never understand the implications of your forgiveness for them. But nonetheless, it will be a liberating gift to you. God has already offered us the gift of forgiveness in far greater a measure than we could ever deserve. What right have we to withhold that gift from others?
Choose freedom, friends. Forgive.
Ephesians 4:31-32 💛
Captivated Me 