Training camp. These two words are so much more than 12 letters describing the 10 days I spent camping in the Georgia heat. They represent 10 days of literal blood sweat and tears. I cried more in the 1st 5 days than I have in the past 5 months. It felt a constant 155 degrees outside, so sweating became the norm. And I cut my foot one time. So yes, training camp was challenging.
But it was so incredibly beautiful and moving, that it’s really hard for me to convey. I will tell you one lesson that it me the hardest, and hopefully it’ll hit home for you too.
Wow. A man from South Africa named Deon talked to us about forgiveness, and that was his main point (No way in heckies did I come up with that; that was the Holy Spirit talking through Deon). Take whatever you have in your head: your unforgiveness, your grudge, your hate, and tell God that He is bigger. Tell Jesus that His death was bigger than the wrong that was done to you. That His sacrifice WAS and IS enough. I promise you that if you approach this with an open heart, you will feel peace. If you truly believe that when Christ died for your sins and everyone else’s sins, then choose to believe that His death is more important than the lies and hardship someone else has done to you.
The cool part about this, is it doesn’t just apply to other people’s grievances. You have to forgive yourself too. So do it again. But this time think about yourself. God is bigger than your mistakes; He is bigger than your wrong doings; Christ’s death is much bigger than any wrong you could EVER do. And I mean EVER. He sees you as perfect and holy, if you can only forgive yourself and see yourself the way He does.
I mentioned crying a lot at training camp– and this one statement is why. Unbeknownst to me, I had been holding grudges against a lot of people, even if they didn’t know they had done something wrong. The biggest person I had to forgive? My mom. She died when I was 14 and left me here alone. I felt abandoned. Did she have any control over her leaving me? Absolutely not. God called her home unexpectedly, and she didn’t have any choice in the matter. But that’s the tricky thing with the devil. He made me feel abandoned, left alone to grow up, that I could never amount to what I was supposed to because of her death.
And these past 10 days have shown me that the enemy is a stupid liar, and that Christ’s death was enough. Even though it has been a long hard road (and will continue to be), I have finally forgiven my mom, and given her death over to Christ. Because His sacrifice was indeed, enough.
I’m not telling you to love your neighbor as yourself, because in reality, we hardly love ourselves at all. Think about how you talk to yourself. How you beat yourself up when your project or choices don’t go as planned. How you shame yourself for looking or acting a certain way. Would you ever talk to another person the way you talk to yourself? (I really hope you said no, because jeez). Instead, look at your neighbor, your enemy, yourself, with grace and forgiveness. If you look through these lenses instead of grudges and superiority (guilty as charged over here), love comes easy.
The reality of this entire situation is that you just have to forgive yourself– for things you’ve done, and the things done to you. Christ already has.
