Forgive Anyway

 

"Vengeance is Mine, and retribution, In due time their foot will slip; for the day of their disaster is at hand, And their doom hurries to meet them." Deut.32:35

 

It is hard. I know. It is not the words you want to hear when you are hurting, barely able to breathe because of the weight of the offense. When you are having an out of body experience, when you are constantly and consistently trying to make sense of the hurt. When you are replaying it over and over in your head to the point where you lose sleep over it. It is painful... I know… But forgive anyway.

The problem with forgiveness is not the concept in and of itself but rather, the interpretation that we make of it. 

Forgiveness does not equate forgetting: the memory of the hurt will remain. But what you choose to do through forgiveness is to not re-actualize the condemnation associated with the wrong that you suffered. 

Forgiveness is not being weak: forgiveness- if not one of them- is the HARDEST thing you will ever have to do in life. It is surrendering your right to get even. If you have ever been in a situation where you feel like you were right and were done wrong, and you had to fight the urge to prove your point, then you know what I am talking about. Forgiveness is the hardest thing to practice, and it is an everyday thing. You never really get “there” because the minute you forgive an offense, another level unlocks.

Forgiveness is not a once and done deal: it is a constant surrender of your feelings, emotions every time the memory of the offense triggers you. It is running back to God and not being ashamed to say: “hey that thing that hurt me? It is still triggering all kind of emotions within me. Can you help me?” Recovering from a hurt doesn’t happen overnight.

Forgiveness is a decision to not base your interaction and behavior with someone on the hurt they caused you. It’s hard… I know… I cringed writing that because I know how hard it is and because I tend to define my interactions to people based off what they give me. But the real kicker is that me “matching their energy” says a lot more about my character than it does about them. I used to believe in matching energy, then I realized that I spoke more about a person’s character vs get even. I also realized that I didn’t want to get even. It was too much work to get out of my way to get back at people and for some of the things that I have been through, I could even think of anything that would hurt some people as much as their actions hurt me. I was exhausted. I just wanted to move on. I wanted to do the inner work and get to a peaceful place. Being intentional about forgiving gave me that because you see, unforgiveness will keep you stuck in the past. It will rob you of your joy, your peace, and your ability to move forward in life. What also helped me in my forgiveness journey is remembering that a) God sits high but he watches low and b) He will make all the wrong right in the end. It might take time, but I have seen instances when I let go and forgave and God avenged me better than I could have ever done it myself. To forgive is not to be stupid: it is to trust that God is a better rewarder than we can ever be and to believe that nobody, not even us, can avenge someone better than Him.

Forgiveness is divine, it is the ultimate act of love. For yourself and for others because remember that as a Christian you are to “love your neighbor as yourself”. Forgiveness is not much about someone else than it is about you: to love yourself enough to forgive someone else and set yourself free. It is a demonstration of the divine power in you because the truth is that to understand all that was written in this post about forgiveness and practice it, requires more than will power. It requires a supernatural power above your own to go against every “natural” instinct to inflict pain and damage when you have been on the receiving end of it.

People -whether they mean it or not- will hurt you. It is an undeniable fact and something we don't have that much control over. However, we do have control over our response (notice I said response and not reaction) to it. You get to decide if you want to stay stuck in it or move on with your life. It might seem like a huge and almost impossible ask to forgive but it is up to you to decide if not forgiving is worth losing yourself and your life to the pain you have endured. The choice is yours.

Until next time,

In The Name Of Love

 

We live in a society where we are constantly encouraged to be honest and blunt but a lot of us equate honesty with being rude and borderline disrespectful. we offer words that hurt, leave the heart and soul scarred on a gold platter, expecting people to absorb them under the premise of "tough Love". 

It is not foreign to me and although the way in which people deliver it sometimes makes me question if there is love buried under some of the words that are said, I understand the idea of it. It is a concept in which we supposedly give people the “red pill”. And if you are familiar with the matrix, then you know that the red pill is supposed to be the one that gives you the truth/ reality (although reality is subjective) while the blue pill maintains you into blissful ignorance. So to speak. Something happened to me earlier today and I thought I would make it a practical case of writing and perhaps helping someone be more mindful of the way tough love is being delivered by them. As people we are to correct the people we love in order to see them do well ( and also be better) in life. To rebuke and correct as a Christian is something that is prescribed in the Bible. However, it is a task we should not be carrying haphazardly. I will take my personal example and say that I get sensitive to criticism. And perhaps my sensitivity to it has shaped and weighed a lot more in the way I chose to offer criticism/feedback to people when warranted. Not only has it shaped the way I offer criticism, it has also shaped the way I correct people. People sometimes offer tough love from a place that is only tough, with no love as a foundation to support the feedback that is being delivered. Someone can offer tough love with their words with their energy still being warm and loving. And that is something you cannot fake. That is how you know that the person means good for you and not evil. Tough love still has love as the foundation. Or at least, it should.  It is not disrespectful and it is given in a way that points you into a direction that is better and higher than where you stand at the moment. As Christians, we are to represent Christ and the way we correct/ rebuke others is not to be excluded from the ways we represent Him. We are called to do everything in love (1co16:14), including expressing disapproval and correction. The Bible says in Hebrews 5:2 “He is able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and misguided, since he himself is beset by weakness.” I love how that passage deals with the two kinds that we will have to correct: the ignorant and the misguided. And people are misguided by all kinds of things including themselves. But there are also the people that genuinely do not know better. Whichever category they find themselves in doesn’t matter. The thing that matters is that we are to deal with them gently as Christ himself deals with them gently. 

Not too long ago, someone reached out to me regarding a task they had to complete (and that I would generally provide guidance on) and notified me that they were done. But when I went ahead to check, the task was absolutely nowhere to be completed. I quickly reached out and laid out the steps that the person had to complete before coming back to me and marking the task as complete. But something about my rebuttal/correction was wrong and the Lord convicted me quickly about it. My correction came from a place of belittling and making the person feel small. The person might not have picked it up, but I did. It came from a place of subconsciously making the person feel dumb. I didn’t disrespect the person. I was polite but the undertone and the way in which I matter-of-factly laid out the steps made me realize that I didn’t come from a loving and healthy place. Which led to me writing these words. Warren Wiersbe once said  “Truth without love is brutality, and love without truth is hypocrisy.” My personal experience walking this earth everyday is that I am witnessing more and more people offering “the truth” without love as the foundation. And a lot of times it is brutal and emotional manhandling at best, emotional manslaughter in the worst case scenario. A lot of good messages are being lost in translation because people are not building their delivery of truth on love. They want to be right, they want to hurt, they want to prove a point. No truth is cute or easy to say, but there is a way to show up and deliver it that can (and will) save someone. I am not saying we should be sugarcoating things and dancing around issues when they are there. What I am saying is we should work on finding better ways to deliver our messages of rebuttal/correction; ways that make people feel seen, heard, respected. Ways that makes them feel like they matter and that our delivery of what we deem the truth is more for their good than your own gain. 

Maybe this will fall into the pit of the never ending criticism and the resounding hymn of people claiming that my generation is too sensitive, that we cannot take criticism or be told wrong. But I hope and pray that it will stay on your mind. I hope and pray that before you go ahead and correct someone and/or offer feedback, you will pause for a moment and wonder where that correction/ feedback and rebuttal is coming from. Is it coming from a place of love? Is the criticism laid on the foundation of love? Or is it coming from a place of hurt or self gain? I hope and pray this week, you go around and “do everything in love” whether you believe in God or not, because in the actual state of this world, we could all use a little bit of it. 

Until next time,