The past few weeks have been filled with daily cleaning, snuggles with my pup, loving time with my Husby, and even more revelation from The Lord.
Recently a good friend of mine forgave someone in their life for years and years of past hurt {like 20 or more years}.
My friend's complete selflessness and understanding made me take a long look at my own unforgiveness in my life.
I realized.....
.... I don't forgive well.
I hold on to the hurt as some strange way to protect myself. I distance myself so far from the person that I need to forgive -- even with people I shouldn't distance myself from. I justify my behavior because so-and-so did such-and-such so I don't have to forgive them. But the Bible says to forgive so that we can be forgiven {Luke 6:37} and that we need to forgive 70x7 times {Matthew 18:22}.... Although I know sometimes it feels like for some people we have almost forgiven that many times (kidding). The Bible even says that we should PRAY and LOVE our enemies {Matthew 5:44-45}. That's a little hard to do when we have unforgiveness in our hearts.
I was dealing with some unforgiveness recently that was just eating away at my heart. It was hard to focus. My heart felt broken. And.... I was angry. But after weeks of feeling this way I realized that this was just hurting me. So I started to ask The Lord to help me forgive and to see this person through God's eyes.
Forgiving this person does not say that what they did was ok. Forgiveness says that they hurt me deeply but I am CHOOSING to release that hurt. This person and I are restoring our relationship and working on trust -- and it's a great thing.
We are all human. We make mistakes. People let us down. Forgiveness is something that is needed in all relationships and I pray that I can continue to grow in this area.
I think that there is no magical number in how long it should take to forgive someone. Forgiveness is so personal. Also in some cases we need to move that person further away from our hearts... And I believe that is ok. Forgiveness is not is not for the person who hurt us - its for us.
So those are some thoughts I have been having for the past few weeks.
Praying for every single one of you and that a fresh encounter with The Lord will be experienced this next week! And if any of you need to forgive someone {even if its yourself} I pray that you can take that step and just release that person.
Forgiveness and love. - Monica
4 comments:
Thank you for sharing. I needed to be reminded of that. I do the same thing you do and it's hard to forgive someone who has hurt you.
Thank you so much for sharing. This is something I have been working on and praying about. Here it's God reminding me once again. Thank you sister!
I have a hard time forgiving too. I hate that I let past hurts eat me up inside and I am trying to really get ahold of this. Thank you for sharing!! <3
love you! and yes.. forgiving is SO hard - but so so so freeing!
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