Forgiveness

Wow, I have really been slackin' on the blog updating.  Almost made it an entire month this time! 

I have really been thinking about forgiveness a lot lately.  Yesterday marked a year since my divorce was finalized. In about a month I will have been on my own for 2 years (yes, it took a long time).  When I look back to 2 years ago, I see someone totally different than I do now.  I see a very hurt, bitter, sad person (mostly hurt).  I can remember seeing my life change before my eyes and not having any control over it.  That's the scary/crazy part about life.  Sometimes even though it's YOUR life, other people make the choices for you and no matter how hard you try, you can't change things. But there is one thing that IS certain in life.  God can take a seemingly hopeless situation and turn it into good.  I would like to be able to say that I did not struggle with that at all, but I would be lying.  There were many, many days I spent worrying, crying, wondering how I could possibly make it on my own.  I was a stay-at-home mom at the time. I had no job.  I did NOT want to depend on my parent's to carry me financially.  I had spent the past 6 months recovering from the worst depression I have ever experienced. And God provided for me and Brian.  He worked everything out and all I had to do was trust him.  My mom said to me once after everything first happened, "Jessica, God has carried you so many times and you don't even realize it."  She was right.  Even during the dark times, He was there.

For a long time, I harbored a lot of resentment.  How could someone just walk away?  Why could I forgive people for mistakes made but they couldn't seem to do the same?  How was it always all my fault?  Questions that seemed to dominate my life for such a long time.  I am sure people resented me for a lot of mistakes I had made and I sure resented them for the things they said and did to me.  It would almost eat me alive. People would slam me and say things about me that they knew nothing about in reality. Things that crushed my spirit because I could not stop them.  I would go to church, see my friends with their husbands and families and cry because I no longer had one. I could not see past that.  It wasn't until I realized that I did everything I could do that I was able to find peace.  I had apologized for my past mistakes, worked hard to have a good marriage, but that was all I could do.  I had done everything humanly possible to make my marriage work, and ultimately, it wasn't my choice.  Once that became clear to me, I knew I had to let it go.  I knew that I could not claim to be a Christian and harbor the kind of resentment that I was.  I knew that it was wrong of me to accept Christ's forgiveness of MY sin and yet refuse to forgive someone else.  If God could willingly die for my sins so that I would have forgiveness, then it was my duty to forgive also.  Even if I wasn't even sure how.  It was a struggle, don't get me wrong, but the peace and freedom that it gave me was worth it.  There came a day when we both cried and told each other how we felt and BOTH apologized and offered forgiveness to each other.  Yes, we have regrets. Yes, we both wish things had been different. But God gave us a precious gift of forgiveness that led to a relationship that is based in mutual caring and consideration of each other and our son, not a relationship that is rooted in bitterness and hatred.  THANK GOD FOR THAT.  Divorce is wrong.  It is not God's plan.   Just as sin is not God's plan for us.  But I am a sinner, along with everyone else on the Earth, who is loved by God so dearly that His love for me (us) is far greater than any wrong I could ever do. And by His grace, a situation as bad as divorce can be made into something good. I am thankful everyday that God has not given up on me but has pulled me from every dark situation in my life, who has rescued me from bad choices, who has carried me even when I was unaware of His presence.  It all comes down to love and forgiveness.  I pray that God will help me become a person who can love and forgive people just as He has loved and forgiven me.  That is something that I am far, far from doing on my own.  My sinful nature wants to come out and say mean things back to people who hurt me, to start rumors about people who have started them about me, but that is NOT the right thing to do.  God knows our hurt, our frustration.   It is up to us to make the choice to not take that route, but instead to give it to Him.