Forgiveness & Heartbreak
“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
If you are like me you memorized that line (or perhaps your version says “debts”) when you were just a girl as part of the Lord’s Prayer, or the Our Father as I called it back then. I probably recited those words hundreds of times as a kid but it took me a couple more decades for the gravity of the meaning to fully sink in.
You see ladies, forgiveness is complicated. Kind of like that Facebook relationship status, “it’s complicated”. You really want it to work. I mean you may have invested years into making it work only to continue hitting a brick wall of disappointment, heartache, distrust, sadness, or regret. I know my past sure included those things. Complicated relationship statuses began early for me after my “first-love” broke my heart-Twice. I realize some of you may be shaking your heads right now in camaraderie thinking about that first break up. Well, it happened but not in the way you may be picturing. I mean he did leave. But- Permanently. His life was taken in an auto accident-Heartbreak #1. Now what he took with him was heartbreak #2. He brought with him to the grave the knowledge of something terrible that happened to me in my early teens. He was the only person I entrusted with that information, and in my mind when God took him away he ripped my trust in him away, too. I mean how could he let this happen?!?
Enter downward spiral for quite a long time after that-years in fact. My heartbreak turned to anger, bitterness, unhealthy distractions from reality, shame in response to those distractions, then repeat into numbness; and finally unforgiveness. Wow talk about an “it’s complicated” relationship status! If you are still with me my friend, you are probably figuring out by now that I am not only talking about human relationships, but I am talking about my relationship status with God. It was complicated.
My own unforgiveness held me in bondage. In my mind I was angry with the person who hurt me, I was angry with that sweet teenage boy for dying, but mostly I was angry with God. I developed an almost mocking tone when I would go to church as a dutiful daughter/granddaughter should do. I carried the weight of that unforgiveness around like a torch, like some kind of a trophy right into adulthood. When I finally decided to lay that torch down, it was freeing. Make no mistake, the torch didn’t go out like candles on a birthday cake in a couple of easy blows. The process was (and sometimes still is) grueling but SO worth it. Whatever your story of unforgiveness may be sister-lay it down, stomp it out, smash it to bits, rip it up, throw it out. Take whatever means necessary to destroy it and start to Forgive. Forgive whoever hurt you-not for them, for you. Forgive God if you need to for “allowing” whatever it was that happened to you in the first place. But most of all, forgive yourself for any human responses you may have had as a reaction to those hurts because we are just that-only human. We are prone to make mistakes requiring forgiveness. Our biggest reminder that we need daily forgiveness for being “human” came from Jesus himself. While he was in anguish & dying for us, he reminded us once again about the power of forgiveness:
“Father forgive them; for they know not what they do.” – Luke 23:34
If Jesus was able to forgive the very people who knowingly tortured, humiliated, mocked, and finally killed him for our freedom, imagine the kind of freedom that is on the other side of your own forgiveness. I am with you my beautiful friends silently cheering you on-change your relationship status from “It’s complicated” to “In a relationship”.
<3 Heather
