One of my most favorite sayings is this:
I would always find myself getting angry and hurt by the actions of other people. And I would react, strongly. I would decide what things I was going to do or not going to do because of how they treated me in that instance. There are so many instances I can think of off the top of my head. People I can think of who I am angry with, who I haven't forgiven for how they have hurt me or made me feel. I can think about things I don't do to try to return the feeling and punish them for hurting me. They're things that mostly end up hurting me more and don't effect the intended person at all. All week I have been struggling with this. I was seeking counseling from my peers about it, I was praying to God, asking him to show me the way, show me the answer, how I should be behaving, how I should start healing. I asked him to help my relationships, help the people I love to see how they have hurt me and make them correct their actions and seek my forgiveness.
Forgiveness.
Isn't that something. Forgiveness. Forgiveness was never about my interaction with them. It was about my interaction with myself. It was about handing it over to God and asking him to help me heal my heart where I was hurt and for him to justify the wrong. God will handle the punishments and the judgements. I am not in charge of that. I have no business considering that or trying to justify that. Who am I to decide which punishment fits which crime? What if the person committing the crime is praying for forgiveness while I am planning a punishment... then I'm the one not trusting my God.
That was one of the verses from church today. And it was a HUGE wake up call for me. WHAT am I thinking? Do I not sin? Do I not ask my Father daily for forgiveness? And does he forgive me? Yes. Every time. Is he hurt when I sin against him? Yes. I literally never tied those two things together...
Forgiveness is about healing your heart. I have been feeling weighed down by my anger and my sadness. It was so heavy and my heart felt heavy. I felt like things were just going wrong. Healing doesn't mean the damage never existed, it doesn't mean that I move on like nothing happened... but it does mean I move on. Healing means that I'm no longer letting the damage control my life.
I very rarely have a hard time forgiving myself... unless I do something very embarrassing or hurtful. I can usually take the steps to remedy the situation with myself or with the affected person. Sometimes not. Sometimes I can only ask for forgiveness from God and have to choose to move past it without a resolution. Why is it that I hold my loved ones to such a higher regard? I try hard to not put them in the situation of needing to forgive me but I KNOW I am not perfect. Not close. And I do put them in those situations and I hope for forgiveness. I love them so much, and part of loving someone is forgiving them for their faults. Just as I expect and hope that they forgive me for my faults. Because we are not perfect.
Talking about "faith" with a friend, she mentioned it's "the game". And being funny I said "yeah sometimes I forget the rules". And you know, that's what it is. I'm learning so much on this journey and I'm trying to remember all of the things I'm learning every day about God and his love and how he wants me to live this life and the pathway to Heaven. It doesn't mean it's easy. And I'm still not perfect. I really want to remember this about forgiveness. I kept asking God this week to show me how to forgive people and to heal my heart and he gave me just that today.
This is where the healing begins. :)
