Posts Tagged ‘forgiveness’

Don’t hate me but, I am a Cat person. I love dogs too. But my whole married life for the exception of a couple of years we have had a cat. I know there is quite a large group of anti-cat people but truly I love all animals, well, except ferrets, sorry can’t take the smell!
Recently, we adopted a new kitten. We found her during a fourth of July trip to Iowa, and named her Alley Cat! Like puppies, kittens love to play with everything and anything…which can get them into trouble.
I don’t have a lot of super expensive things but I do have some things, that I probably paid way to much for…like this one beautiful vase.
Let’s just say that Alley helped the vase fall to the floor, where it became a pile of pieces of a vase that I paid way to much for. Broken, crushed, destroyed and the beauty of the vase gone forever. Or is it?
I am broken. Some days it feels like I have been broken into a million pieces. I know I have felt crushed by my past and the consequences that still haunt me. I have destroyed progress that I continue to try and make, and trust me there are more days than I want to admit that I do not feel beautiful.
As I watched my husband and son tackle the huge task of putting the vase back together, it made me think of how God can put people back together no matter how many millions of pieces they may be broken into. There is no sin that He won’t forgive. He can help you learn from your past. He can lift the crushing weight of any circumstance. What you have destroyed He can heal and He thinks I am beautiful everyday.
I am no longer fearful of my brokenness because of the One who “fixes” me. Like my vase, I am still broken (you can see the cracks) but my purpose remains and I am committed to becoming the woman God created me to be.
Psalm 34:17-19 NIV
The righteous cry out, and the LORD hears them;
he delivers them from all their troubles.
The LORD is close to the brokenhearted
and saves those who are crushed in spirit.
A righteous man may have many troubles,
but the LORD delivers him from them all

Click here to enter your link in the blog hop and view the entire list of entered links…

Being the middle child really is tough.  I have always considered myself the middle child.  There is four of us, my brother first and then three girls.  I am the middle girl, so I consider myself the middle child. (Maybe a stretch but it has worked out for me so far!)

I am a mother of three, so for those literal types out there, I have a “real” middle child.  He is my joy and fear at the same time.  God is so masterful in how he creates each one of us.  All of my children have such unique personalities.  This was very frustrating at first.  When I felt like I had gotten something figured out with my first child, it would have been nice to use that knowledge on the other two as they came along….but that wasn’t part of God’s design for me as a parent!! I have had to learn different ways to get my children to obey, be motivated and communicate their feelings.

My Noah, oh my Noah.  How I love him.  He is the spitting image of his Daddy.  He is creative, outgoing, competitive, has a heart for Jesus and I think, very handsome!!  Why then, do I struggle, in connecting with him as his mother?  It is a shameful thing to admit that I struggle with this.

Noah is also, a strong willed child.  We butt heads on almost everything.  Sometimes the drama that he creates around some of the simplest things, like putting on his shoes, dumbfounds me.  In my most sacred parts of my soul, I know some of my struggle comes from how much I see of myself in him.

This inner struggle he seems to have, to be heard, noticed, and given praise is never fulfilled.  But is it ever in any of us?  Maybe I relate to his struggle because I am a middle child too.  I have always tried to fill him up because I know what a life of never feeling full can lead to.  I want him to learn from my mistakes and feel full, heard, noticed and known.

In an attempt to continue to fill him up, I started leaving him Notes on his desk 2 or 3 times a week.  Saying things like, “you have a beautiful smile” or “I am so happy God let me be your mom”….and then last week while I was writing one of my notes to him, it hit me, God has left all of us notes to help fill us up.  Notes that give encouragement, security, love, forgiveness and grace.  We can find all of His notes in the Bible.  God is the only thing that can fill any of us up.  So my notes for Noah became scripture.  Notes that Noah’s heavenly Father has sent for him.  I just get to be the messenger!

Thank you Lord, for your book full of notes for all of us. Thank you Lord, for filling me up!  Thank you Lord, for letting me be Noah’s mom.

Go check your book full of notes from the One and only God of the Universe.  He has written them just for you.

Romans 8:38-39 (New Living Translation)

³⁸ And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,^[a] neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. ³⁹ No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.

“I forgive you” my daughter says when she has been punished for something naughty she has done. When a favorite toy is taken from her for a “time out”, immediately she tells me she forgives me. Even though this really isn’t they way forgiveness is supposed to work, it stuck in my head and I started thinking about people or situations I needed to forgive and hadn’t.

I am almost positive that the God of the Universe didn’t reserve his forgiveness just for me. Why then do I withhold forgiveness from anyone? One of the worst things about withholding forgiveness isn’t really about what you are denying the person who has offended you; it is what that withholding can do to your own heart.

If you are anything like me, (sorry, but there has to be at least one person out there) holding on to the offense in some situations can become a kind of obsession. Like the care and devotion required to grow a bonsai tree. They require just the right amount of water; sun light, temperature and constant pruning. You want to tell others how you have been hurt (another sin by the way); you will play out different scenarios in your head where you get to seize revenge on your offender and cause humiliation for them. Oh, what sweet revenge, right? But what actually happens, is a drift from the One who has forgiven you millions of times over and over again. The offense starts to poison your heart and if left untreated it can become like a cancer consuming all of you. And this could be just one instance!!!! This cancer will invite other cancers to come and take up residence in your heart, like bitterness, resentment, guilt, shame, fear and even hate. If you are not proactive you could end up with a heart that has no room for the love of Christ and seems to be covered in a thick black tar called pride and self righteousness.

Those of you who are different than me, tend to never acknowledge that there was any type of wrong doing in the first place instead you internalize your hurt by not speaking about it at all. You say nothing and act as if nothing has happened and if any emotion regarding the hurt starts to show itself you immediately push it back into a nice little box next to all of the other hurts you are carrying around. Guess what? That doesn’t work either. Sooner or later all of those boxes will start to bulge and rip, until finally they can hold no more and it starts to ooze out the sides, until an explosion happens and you end up spewing all of that pent up hurt, resentment and bitterness on everyone around you. It reminds me of a pair of jeans I once owned. I loved those jeans. I loved them so much that even after I had out grown them I still jammed myself into them, contorting my body into all kinds of strange positions and asking for assistance from girlfriends to get them on, until one day after getting them on they burst! I do mean burst! The button went flying off and the zipper completely ripped out. I felt a very deep sadness that the jeans had finally quit on me but also a very distinct sense of relief. I am pretty sure that was my spleen and a few other internal organs sensing the release in pressure.

We are human and forgiveness isn’t going to come naturally for most of us but God has commanded us to forgive and more than that he has also commanded us to go to the person who has offended us. This is not always an easy thing to do especially if the person who has hurt you is not a Christian. If that is the case, you are not off the hook, seek wise counsel from your pastor or a Christian mentor and make plan, realize that the person may not hear you and accept your forgiveness. The most important thing is that you truly forgive and move on.

Please don’t mistake forgiveness with forgetting. There are some hurts that still require you to forgive but not to forget what has happened. We still need to protect our selves from situations that could put us or others in danger.

I am committed to becoming more like my daughter and immediately asking for and giving forgiveness, to keeping the cancers out of my heart, realizing when the jeans don’t fit anymore and living the life God has planned for me!

Who were you 20 years ago, 10 or even 5? I know for me the farther back I go the more I desire to be less like who I was in the past.
We can never truly escape our past and who we have been but we are in control of who we are today. I am in control of how I handle the stresses this world demands of me. My insecurities are no longer in control of the direction of my life. Don’t get me wrong I still have insecurities but with God’s help I am committed to keeping them in check.
I believe we need to embrace our past.
My past is a vital part of who I am today and in some respects it is what motivates me. There are many things from my past that cause a great deal of shame but knowing and understanding this, helps me when I am faced with similar situations and choices I need to make. I know that I will make mistakes today, tomorrow and next week but by the grace of God I hope I keep my eyes open to my failures and hold tight to the assurance God offers me, that I am His and my sins and past have been paid in full.
Recently, I heard someone described learning from our past like this…”being in a row boat, on a lake facing our past but rowing away from it, looking at it straight on but moving away from it to open, uncharted waters.”
My tendency has been to turn away from my past. To try and hide it behind me, giving it a good swift kick when it would try to peek out and expose itself. Today I am committed to turn and face it, embrace it but not glorify it. Where is your past? Behind you for sure, but are you looking at it as you row into new uncharted waters?

Acts 13: 38 (NIV) “Therefore, my brothers, I want you to know that through Jesus the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you.”

There are days when I don’t actually like myself very much. I know who I want to be and how I want others to see me but that doesn’t seem to be who I am.

Most of my family gets to experience who I am, unfortunately. I have such big plans for the type of mom, wife, sister, daughter and friend that I want to be. It seems like most of the time I can get in a zone and be really good at one of these but the others pretty much go neglected. All to often I lose it with my kids or my husband or I share something with someone that really wasn’t my information to share!!! Ugh!

Some may say that being “aware” of this is a step in the right direction. It is just so disappointing to me. There are times when I become “aware” that I am not behaving the way my heart truly desires and I do it anyway!!!

Recently, I was trying to teach my 3 year old daughter this very basic concept, “if you know it is wrong then don’t do it.” We had just adopted a stray kitten into our family and Layla and the kitten really didn’t hit it off. Actually, there was a lot of hitting, carrying by the neck and tail pulling going on. Bet you can guess who was doing all of the abuse! One particular time when she had gotten into trouble for the hitting I told her she was not allowed to touch the kitten for the rest of the day. She looked directly at me stuck out her index finger, slowly moved toward the kitten and touched her!! She knew she wasn’t supposed to do it but she did it anyway! Sigh….

The good news is, that God forgives my failure as long as I repent and have a heart that truly desires to get it right.
Thank you Lord for loving me even though I am disobedient most of the time. I continually remind myself that who I am is, a treasured child of God!!!

Oh, and by the way, Layla and the kitten continue to work it out. It’s not perfect but the kitten seems to forgive her because every night I find the kitten snuggled up against Layla in her bed.

Ephesians 2:4-5
“But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.”