October 15th is one of a handful of days that hurts my heart every year when I see it on the calendar. Today would have been my brother's 43rd birthday. As most of you know, my brother was killed in a car accident when he was 26. Seeing 10/15 come around on the calendar gets a bit easier every year but even now on the 16th occurrence, it still stings....and that's okay.
This morning as I was driving to work, I was reflecting on a conversation I had recently with a group of women that I do Bible study with. I was talking about one of the moments in my life that changed my walk with God. There have been several big things that I can point to that changed the way that I looked at my relationship with Jesus. One was a comparative study between the Bible and the book "The Shack" by Wm. Paul Young. If you haven't read The Shack...please do. Another HUGE moment and one I want to expand on today was the time a forgave God.
When I brought the subject up the other night at Bible study, I think I offended a few people who felt it was sacrilegious for me to think that God needed/wanted my forgiveness. At one time, I was harboring a fair amount of bitterness in my heart about some of the circumstances of my past and bitterness about my brother being ripped away from me. That bitterness was definitely keeping me from a relationship with God. I blamed Him. I knew that God could do ALL things so why didn't choose something different for me? I was deeply hurt by Him. So hurt, in fact, that I couldn't see past it to see the most amazingly wonderful things that He'd done in my life. I was sharing some of this with a coworker who had become a mentor and friend and she asked me if I had forgiven God. I kind of looked at her crazy and she told me about an experience where she had heard of this concept and followed through with it. I kind of put the thought aside because I didn't quite know what to do with it.
Several weeks later, I was in physical therapy for my shoulder. I had done my exercises and they had put me in a room to ice it up. They were always good about shutting off the lights in case you wanted a nap. :) I remember being on that table surrounded by the darkness and tears just started falling down my cheeks. I was completely overwhelmed with life at the time and I couldn't get my emotions under control. I just remember being angry. God was working on healing me...but in order to do that..He was pulling out hurts and memories that I wanted to long forget. That day..on that physical therapy table...I realized what my friend had been talking about. I was so mad at God for all the things He had done to me or allowed to be done to me and it was affecting my ability to let Him have control of my life.
Does someone have to be guilty for us to forgive them? Do they have to have committed some sin for us to forgive them? Forgiveness has everything to do with the person who has been wounded and not the offender. We all hurt each other all the time even when we are trying to help each other out. Often times that hurt comes from someone who doesn't live up to your expectations of them.
Benjamin Corey wrote this and it sums it up better than I could:
Sometimes, people will fail to live up to your hopes and expectations. Even though they're not guilty of doing something wrong in the situation, we are tempted to live with the emotional weight of disappointment and resentment that result from our own lost hope and unfulfilled desires. In these cases, the only option that allows us to live in freedom, is to forgive the person who disappointed us. Even when that person is God. Read more: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/formerlyfundie/forgiving-god/#ixzz3GEZMU0zl
So...there on that physical therapy table...I started whispering to God that I forgave Him. I forgave Him for not giving me the childhood that I thought I deserved. I forgave Him for all of the things He had asked me to do that I thought weren't fair. I forgave Him for taking my sweet brother home to live with Him instead of leaving him here to be an awesome Daddy to his boy. It sounds ridiculous...but my heart changed that day. I wall that had been blocking me from trusting God came tumbling down. There are still days when I struggle with what He is asking me to do but it is no longer rooted in disappointments from the past.
Hear my heart...I am not saying that God has sinned. It isn't about what God did or didn't do. It is about the condition of my heart. Just something to think about.
I welcome all discussion and your thoughts.
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