Forgiveness

We as Christians are called by God to be forgiving.  Now some of you may be saying “Well of course, ‘Forgive as in Christ God forgave you’”, or you may be saying “Oh no, someone else trying to tell me how I’m supposed to forgive *Insert Name Here* “, or even “I’m past this.  It was a long time ago and I’ve moved on”.  Well, my goal for this post is to shift our perspective on what it means to forgive because up until recently, I thought I had forgiven someone as well.

I was getting ready this morning like any other day.  Kids running around asking for everything under the sun, laundry piled up next to the washer, toys everywhere, and I was trying to collect everything I needed to get out the door for work.  I put my shoes on and grabbed my phone.  I pressed the power button to check the time for the fiftieth time this morning and saw a Facebook notification about someone’s birthday today.  I turned it off and headed to the car after I gave my kids ten hugs and kisses each (since my children won’t let me leave the house without them).  I got in the car and decided to take a quick look at whose birthday it was.  We’ll name her Jane.  Now, I knew a lot of Janes and decided to hop on her profile really quick to figure out who it was exactly.  I scrolled down and recognized who it was after looking at a few pics.  However, what stopped me and caused me to start going down this rabbit hole of forgiveness, was a picture of my ex from high school in her friend's section.  I hesitated for a moment and stared at the profile image that hadn’t changed for years, wondering what he’s up to now.  All the while, flashbacks of our relationship racing through my mind.  To sum it up without going too far into it, he forced himself on me physically and caused me to have a twisted view of how a relationship should be moving forward.  It’s been over 10 years since then and I thought I had forgiven him.  You may be thinking to yourself “How could you forgive someone for doing something like that to you?”.  Well, even after our relationship ended, every relationship I had after that was based on physical intimacy because I thought that's how you love someone.  Needless to say, every relationship I had was toxic and ended within a year.  That is until I met my husband.  I won’t be going into a gushy, romantic love story about my relationship with my husband, but I will say it was the relationship that led me and my husband to Christ.  Being able to look back on all the terrible things that happened before I was given the family that I cherish and love today, allows me to see how God was able to use all the wrong decisions I made in my life and bring me back to Him.  In a weird way, it makes me thankful for the experiences that led me to be who I am.  It has allowed me to pour into others' lives, relate and understand others who have gone through similar experiences, and be thankful for the family that God has given me (messy house and all).  However, I was confusing my thankfulness to God as forgiveness for those that had hurt me in the past.  In reality I mostly felt indifferent toward him now.  I wasn’t holding onto any anger or resentment toward him, but I wasn’t forgiving them either.  After that moment of hesitation from seeing my ex’s profile picture, I clicked on it and decided to see where his life ended up.  The first couple of posts on his profile were people saying happy birthday to him since his birthday had just recently passed, but then I stopped at a post his mom made for his birthday.  It was a picture of a baby.  Tiny, soft and confused.  It made me think of my kids when they were that small and then it sparked something that caused an explosion of thoughts within me.  I never thought of my ex as someone else’s child.  He was just the teenage boy that I dated in High school, and nothing existed before that, but he was born in this world just as lost and confused as I was growing up.  He was searching for love and acceptance in all the wrong places because he didn’t know God either.  Suddenly, I saw my ex in the perspective of God’s lost sheep.  I felt sad to think that he was lost and searching for something to fill that hole inside him.  It was as I was looking at this picture of him as a baby that I saw myself reflected back and I wanted nothing more than to show him the truth of God.  I was filled with peace and forgiveness toward him.

Too often we can’t forgive someone because we only see the wrong they caused when we see them and we don’t see them the way God does.  God sees them as His child just like He sees us.  He loves us and His heart aches when we are far from Him.  When we are lost and searching for something to make us feel fulfilled or happy, God is there waiting for us to choose Him.  We are called to be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as Christ God forgave us.