Cures for the Soul

I was amazed that a secular book would talk about forgiveness as an essential tool to overcome trauma and toxic relationship styles. For both the offending party, and for yourself. I believe there is a lot of truth in that, but more from a Biblical perspective.

Over in Myanmar, I traveled with a friend to her hometown and experienced life from a local perspective. The thing I remember most, and has influenced me a lot was watching her extremely bitter Aunt interact with my friend and the community in general. She had better relationships with her 7 dogs and 9 cats then she did with the humans around her. In that moment, I knew that if I didn't want to be like that when I get old, I have to do something about it now. This started the process of studying forgiveness and not turning to resentment. Sometimes, at least for me, it's good to have an example of what you don't want in order to go after what you do want.

So we are commanded to forgive our brother till 70x7 or 490 times. For those of us with elephant memories, it's hard to forget things, but it would still be hard to keep track till about 500.

I remember reading a book that talked about how you need to bring things to God and allow Him to help you work things through, before you can actually forgive from the heart. From personal experience, I tend to agree with this, versus the push to “Well, just forgive...” Yeah, I've been there and tried. Doesn't work. I hope it does for some, but I've found that forgiveness requires supernatural assistance. I've also discovered that God is more then willing to help with things like this.

In Jesus' prayer pattern, it talks about God forgiving us as we forgive our debtors. A parable also illustrated that we need to forgive to experience forgiveness. This secular book even mentioned that as we turn to healthy values, and pursue those things, we attract those values and relationships with people who are also pursuing healthy things like forgiveness. So as we seek to forgive and leave things in the hands of God, we will find forgiveness.

John Bevere says (I'll put into my own words here ) that until we leave offenses in the hands of God, God's hands are tied and He can't correct that person until we surrender it to Him. Once we leave the righting of a wrong in His hands, and up to His timing, He can do whatever He wants with it. We don't need to worry about whether His side of justice will handle it, or if He will be merciful. As a school counselor says at Southwick, “Fair isn't having everyone be treated the exact same way. Fairness is everyone getting what they need.” Reality is, if you really leave it in the hands of God, you stop worrying about what happens after that.

While we need to validate pain, and acknowledge it for what it is, we can't stop there. We need to get to a place where we can rest with the hurt feelings underneath the urge for revenge or resentment. We can give those feelings space to be, but then ask ourselves if we want to be controlled by this drama forever, or have the choice to allow our hearts to be free and blossom? At some point, we need to stop worrying about what they did, and make the decision to allow ourselves to grow and get beyond what an evil world is intent on doing to not just us, but everyone.

After we have applied forgiveness, we can center ourselves on unconditional love. Stop and reflect on that a bit. How do you reflect on God, and His promises, His loving character, and the truth that He loves you?

Recently, I was given a package of beautiful 5x7 cards with Scripture scripted elegantly on them. One of these says “Because I am, you are.” On the back, is a long list of Who God IS, and what we are because of Him. We've seen lists like this in multiple books, and been told to memorize and get truth into our brains, but until we open our hearts, it doesn't really sink in.

The Bible has a lot of promises from beginning to end that we can cling to. It also is the best “Romance Story” ever. If we doubt that we are loved, go from the beginning to the end and read it word for word. Love is dictated throughout the whole Book.

Even if our family forsakes us, God will still love us. That is unconditional. There is no performance required to keep it coming, or to get it. God loved all of us so much that He gave His most valuable relationship and allowed His own Son to be sacrificed for us. I think most of my readers know these Scriptures and the doctrines of Christianity, so I won't go diving into this other then to encourage you to read and claim it for yourself.

Many of us have also read the “5 Love Language Series.” I heard someone say recently that if our love language is “Words of Affirmation” and we are verbally abused, it hurts us worse then someone with a different love language. I bring this up because we often think God is like our dad was, or that the way other people treat us is the same thing that God thinks about us. That's not necessarily true. Take some time to reflect on this in your own life and challenge yourself to believe truth instead of lies. Circumstances don’t change truth, neither is it based on truth.

Another aspect to look at is that depending on your gender, love or respect means more to you and motivates you differently then the opposite gender. Regardless of what this Ephesians passage has motivated you to believe or react to it's truth, God is still more love then your husband can give you, or more respectful then your wife. We can't allow marriage relationships or the lack of them to define what God's unconditional love looks like. BTW, on a big rabbit trail for the ladies out there, if you think about how you act when you don't feel loved, then you can start to understand his craziness when you don't offer respect and allow him to do all those crazy wild things. Don't even think about trying to tame him or just make him love you. It's not the way he was made. The quicker we can latch on to that truth, the better we'll all be. Enough said for the moment. Back to unconditional love...

When I stop and think about the fact that God sticks with me through thick and thin, I know that I am loved. Look at Luke 7:47 and see the correlation between forgiveness and ability to love. Coming in touch with our own pain, and the broken things we do because of our pain and realizing all of this drama can also help us find truth like how much God has patience, mercy, grace and love for us. When I think about it, I just gotta shake my head in awe, say thanks, and live life in a way that glorifies Him as much as I can.

Meds don't heal trauma, but guess what!??? Unconditional Love does!! They say that Adhd and PTSD have a lot of the same symptoms. How many kids are drugged, instead of loved? Stop and think about it awhile. Adoption and love are both central themes of the Bible. God is the Master healer. Hats off to all the people who partner with Him to make a difference in this world.

So wrapping this all up, I find that forgiveness is a way to getting to know how much unconditional love God has. After we take that first step of letting go, we open our hearts for so much more. God's got more love to give then all the offenses in the world piled together. There is more then enough to go around. And it's deeper then we can fully understand.

When we start living out of how loved we are by Him, and getting our worth, value and self esteem from Him, instead of turning outward to other sources, our lives and perspective on life is transformed. What I'm finding is that sometimes it takes an extreme amount of pain to get to the point where we stop turning to other things like I talked about in the last blog post, and start reaching for something more solid. Once we find His love as our anchor, it changes everything. We are deeply loved, and there is enough space for us to feast at the Family Table, too.

Isn't it worth going to the pain of finding out what this truth is? :)