Lavender & Lace

Time doesn’t heal a broken heart.

Grace heals a broken heart. 

Sometimes when we hear that word “forgiveness” we attach it to the hardest things that we have ever walked through. And we feel like forgiveness is such an unfair gift we now have to give to the person (or persons) who hurt us the most.

If you’ve been reading my blog for any amount of time you are probably familiar, at least in part, with my story. But just in case you haven’t or you aren’t aware, a few years ago I went through a series of events that devastated my life. I packed up my life and I left my home, my friends, my job, my career, and everything that was familiar to me and moved across the U.S to be with my family as a result of that fallout. It was absolutely horrible and it took a very long time to come to terms with the things that had happened and the way in which I got to be in the place that I was. And I did this with the help of a very loving therapist.

And one of the first exercises I did when sitting in the office of my new therapist was list out all the hurts that I had endured. A laundry list. Note cards that would have covered the entire office floor had they been laid out. And upon reviewing all of them do you know what my therapist said to me?

“I believe you.

What’s been done to you is terrible.

It should have never happened.”

And in that moment something in me softened and I realized that I had been waiting, all this time, for the person(s) who hurt me to give me that gift. To acknowledge how badly they’ve hurt me. To say that they were sorry. To do some kind of repentance. To promise they would never do it again. But if I continued to wait for that person who hurt me to say they’re sorry before I could heal and move forward then I’d be allowing that person(s) to wound me twice. Because that’s a choice they may never make.

What I’ve come to realize is that I don’t really need those people to tell me they’re sorry. What I needed was another human to bear witness to the pain that I’d walked through.

And if you are someone who has never had that type of encounter before let me be the one to say it to you;

I’m sorry.

I’m sorry that they said what they said.

I’m sorry that they didn’t say what they should have said.

I’m sorry that they hurt you.

I’m sorry that they stole for you.

I’m sorry that they belittled you.

I’m sorry that they abused you.

But beloved, you deserve to stop suffering because of what another person has done to you.

It doesn’t mean that what happened to you is ok. Forgiveness is not condoning or excusing the injustice done. That injustice was, is, and always will be wrong. It is not forgetting. We do not forget atrocities against us. Forgiveness, in contrast, is an abandoning the quest for justice. 

“Vengeance is mine, says the Lord.” (Romans 12:19)

Nobody who has hurt you did so out of love. Therefore it’s not in your power to forget or not feel.

This is where we need help.

Forgiveness is injury specific. It’s about injuries before it’s of person. But too often we want to jump over that without the specifics of what the person is being forgiven for. And why. We have to undergo the process for each injury before we can really release overall. We can acknowledge the act of what took place. Name the things that happened. Examine them and surrender them.

But at the same time, we have to walk through the healing process of healing from the impact of what happened. The impact is the consequence of what that person did and how it wildly changed us…and that is going to take time.

“When we forgive, we are good to those who are not good to us; we are trying to love those who are not loving to us. Forgiveness is: a) in the context of being treated unjustly by others; b) a deliberate attempt to give up resentment toward that person; and c) the deliberate striving toward offering kindness, respect, generosity, and love to that person.”-Dr. Enright

Forgiveness is Gods provision to us to heal us.

When cruel things are done to you it can be life altering. But it doesn’t have to be life ruining.

When I was living in the most pain I had to reduce my life down to the limitations of living hurt. I don’t know if you can relate? Are there places in your life where you have limited yourself because of hurt?

It affected what TV I could and couldn’t watch. What music I could and couldn’t listen to. Places and things that I could and couldn’t do because of the potential that it had to bring me back into those places of hurt.

These are very tender things and they take time. Sometimes you find yourself in these places where you are stuck and you just can’t move forward.

But the sum total of your one incredible life must not be reduced to the limitations of living hurt. The completely delightful, beautiful, fun, and brilliant way God made you must not be tainted by someone else who lost their way. 

You’ve got far too much going for you to be stunted by anger or haunted by resentment or held back by fear. 

This is a depth of forgiving that the world is missing. There are hundreds of scientific journal articles on forgiveness and they all miss this point. When we forgive, we are to be in unity with Jesus for the one who harmed us.

It is an act is holiness.

It is sacrifice.

It is worship.

John 15:12–14: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.”

Christ is about healing. He is always healing the human person, that’s what reconciliation does. Sin is fragmenting but Jesus comes to heal.

This is why definitions matter: because healing is not fixing, pain management or behavior modification…healing is an ongoing encounter with Gods love and truth. And that love and truth brings me into wholeness and communion.

A true healing journey is not going to make me more self-centered or more self-absorbed. If that’s what’s happening then I’m doing it wrong. A true healing journey is going to make me more like Jesus. 

Christ is the only way. He is the way, the truth and the life. Everything else, all the other modalities are a way, and depending on how much it relates to Christ is had the potential to draw you towards him or away from him…but he is the only way. 

Therapy helps us to understand but the Holy Spirit brings us to breakthrough. 

If someone has done something very cruel to you it’s because something very cruel has been done to them. It’s not an excuse. It’s just a fact to consider. 

Forgiveness gives us the ability to look at the ones who’ve hurt us through a different lens. To look up and over the actions and instead into the heart of the person who is broken and hurting the same way we are. To consider, is it possible that he or she is a wounded, confused, crushed person, who shares inherent worth like I do? Those behaviors do not define that person any more than they define who you are.

Just like healing is a choice. Forgiveness is a choice.

God gives us this grace to be free to live in alignment with his mercy but that grace that comes into us is met by all kind of resistance. Underneath the surface of a wounded heart is a tangled up landscape of all the brokenness and all the sorrow we’ve suffered. We have a hard time welcoming that gift and responding to it. 

Forgiveness is a manner of dealing with our pain and dealing with our enemies and Christ does. 

Dealing with those who hurt us the way Christ dealt with those who mocked, rejected, scorned, abused, hurt him. 

It’s a command. 

Forgiveness is an act of the will. First and foremost. Emotions and the will don’t always have to move in unity. So even if you don’t feel love for the unloving person, you can still begin the process having made a decision that starts in the heart.

It’s a practice of virtue.

Choosing of goodness over retaliation. 

And this means that as impossible and daunting as it feels, there’s a way through. 

Over time as we begin to see the truth of who we are and who the other person is we allow the truth to come forward, and we choose to leave the battle posture. Usually we cling to un-forgiveness because we just don’t want to be hurt anymore. And what we are being asked to do is lay down our armor. We will never heal ourselves by wounding another. 

It’s almost like uncovering the wound. I remember when I was a little kid, I fell off my bike and I slid on the concrete. And my knee was all scraped up with those little pebbles in it. My babysitter kept saying to me, “I gotta see it to get it cleaned” but I just held my hands around my bleeding knee because I was like; No way am I letting go because I don’t know what you’re going to do to it. And I also didn’t want to look at it, I didn’t want to see how bad it was. 

So, can we trust that the Lords hands are gentle with us and that his heart is good? That he knows what he’s doing and knows how to heal wounds?

God is helping heal all the places we don’t love like Jesus. So that we can live in unity with him and reflect him to others. That is what this life is all about. To live in love, as God is love.

Healing is turning my gaze to Jesus and allowing him to tell me who I am in light of all that has happened to me. And bringing all things into the light. 

I’ll talk to you later, friends.