From my last blog, you may have seen that Nepal was a month of forgiveness: forgiveness for myself, for others, and real honest-to-goodness HARD forgiveness.
I’m sitting with the Lord his month and just talking about life and processing with Him. And I felt like God has asked my to share an anonymous letter I wrote from month 7 in Nepal. This is vulnerable but I’m posting it because vulnerability and raw honesty (with ourselves and others) allows us to start the process of breaking out off chains that we still enslave ourselves to that Jesus freed us a long time ago with His death on the cross.
Dear —-
What I’m writing won’t be easy to read at times but hear me out. For years I didn’t know exactly what I felt towards you. Sometimes it was love and sometimes it was a lot of deep hurt, but a lot of time it was confusion and anger. I held onto resentment and bitterness.
As I grew older I fought back hurt and anger, trying to understand. But it took me a long time and a lot of growth in my relationship with the Lord to know that it was never in my human strength to offer you forgiveness and understanding. Every time I tried to extend forgiveness and grace and move on I was met with conflict and resistance. Human nature makes us want to hold onto hurt whether actual, unintentional, or subconsciously self inflicted, like a debt that occurs interest. It becomes something that consumes the desire to forgive and to love.
No matter what the truth is in how you and I got here the PURE truth is that God loves you so much and we will never deserve His love but He gives it to us anyways. He loves us with an overwhelming love that restores and redeems us, forgiving all our transgressions.
Our past happened, and I am who I am because I’ve walked through it. I’m done letting it be a dark cloud over me and you should too. Sin entered the world a long long time before you and I did. But God made a way to come back into true intimacy with Him, where we get to live in our true identity as beautiful creations of the Father, not in our mistakes. And in this intimacy, we get to see more of God’s love, pursuit of us, and heart for us. The closer we get to God, the more we become like Him. Our heart looks more like His and some of His infinitely pure and gracious characteristics become ours. What I am trying to say is that human desires cause us to make mistakes in our lives, but God extends us forgiveness and grace in His mighty love for us. All we have to do is accept the sacrifice Jesus made in His infinite love for us.
I wrote you into a debt that you could never repay. And I’m sorry for that. But just as Jesus renews, loves, and forgives with a kind of mercy that forgets hurt happened, I am able to offer you the same through Him. God’s love has changed me entirely, and while I am very much still walking beside Him, learning and stumbling, my heart for you is the same as His.
In God’s perfect love, I am extending you forgiveness and grace for our past. In forgiving and giving grace to you, I’ve also had to do the same for myself. I know what you and I have done and said will never just go away, but I hope you can see my sincerity in this. I pray that you get to experience the love of the Creator and see His heart for you.
You are a beloved child of God and I want nothing but for you to come into this and know deeply and truly this Love.
