Forgiveness

Forgiveness:

It’s the hardest thing to give away, and the last thing on your mind today.

It always goes to those that dont deserve. It’s the opposite of how you feel.

When the pain they caused is just too real. It takes everything you have just to say the word, Forgiveness.

Forgiveness.

It flies in the face of all your pride. It moves away the mad inside. Its always angers own worst enemy.

Even when the jury and the judge Say you gotta right to hold a grudge,  It’s the whisper in your ear saying- Set It Free.

Forgiveness.

These are some of the lyrics from one of my favorite Mathew Wests songs. When I first heard this song, and maybe a few 100 times after that, I cried and cried. I cried a cry that came from so deep within, that I didn’t even know that type of cry existed. A cry that carried so much weight that it nearly suffocated me. We all have times in our lives where people have hurt us. Some have been hurt deeper then others, but regardless the pain is still there no matter what the circumstance may have been. And we have all had to make the choice to either forgive, or not to forgive. For me, in the past forgiveness usually came pretty quickly, and without much thought. My whole life I had been taught that forgiveness was very important. That we should forgive as God has forgiven us. And I believed that, in fact I still do. But after one particular event in my life forgiveness didn’t come so quickly, in fact, it took me almost 20 years to forgive. And it most definitely did not come easily. I had held on to this anger for most of my life. There was no way I was forgiving, and there was no way I was forgetting. Years and years went by and that anger only got deeper and darker. Eventually my unforgiveness imprisoned me. And guess what.. That person I didn’t forgive? They wernt effected by my unforgiveness at all. All this time I had been going through life thinking that some how I would be doing myself an injustice if I forgave, because that made what they had done right. But in actuality, I was doing myself an injustice for holding on to it for so long. I had walls up around me so high that I had missed out on some of life’s most beautiful moments without even knowing it. Because in my head I was strong, I was determined, I was tough. When in reality, all those years, I was broken. I was weak. I was sad. So very sad.

After much prayer and some counseling (wow.. that was harder to admit that I had anticipated) I realized I had been torturing myself all these years. Finally I did just as the song says above. I let it go. I forgave. I forgave, and I freed myself. Now, I will be the first to admit, my forgiveness didn’t mean I loved, or even liked this person again. In fact I haven’t spoken a word to that person in over 10 years. But, between me and God.. I forgave. Two months later I became pregnant with my first son after almost 3 years of infertility. I couldn’t help but to always wonder if that forgiveness allowed me to finally get pregnant. Now, I am not saying that God gave me a baby because I forgave. That’s not how God works. But what I am saying is it that sometimes, just sometimes when you let go of things that are killing you, God will breath life back into you. In my case, it was my son. God gave me my son, when I was finally capable of fully loving him.

Now as a mom of three, I’ll be honest, I still struggle with forgiveness. It’s so hard to let someone who has hurt you “off the hook” and that feeling only heightens when my children are involved. We feel that some way, some how, we are justified in feeling angry and upset and that it is our turn to voice that bitterness and “take a stand” but yet, as I was reminded today… Often we are fighting battles God never asked us to fight. We are taking a stand against something that is in fact breaking us, instead of building us. I don’t know about you, but those are not the battles I want to fight anymore. Far too often I find I am fighting a battle in order for someone else to see the true me. But what I lose sight of, is that it doesn’t matter how those people view me or my family. What matters is how God views me. What matters is how my children view me, and I am tired of fighting battles that will never be won. My thoughts and my words are molding my heart each and every day, and more importantly, they will forever leave a lasting impression on those three sweet miracles that gave me life again. So today, I choose forgiveness.