I struggle with jealously and insecurity and frustration. I struggle with loving people unconditionally. I struggle with wanting others to be happy when I’m not. I struggle with my pride and what I believe I am entitled to. I struggle with sharing and being generous. I struggle with being selfish.
I struggle with submitting to authority, especially when I don’t agree with it. I struggle with guilt and shame when I’ve done something wrong. I struggle with a need for control that stems from a fear of being hurt or manipulated.
I struggle with what others think about me – do they think I’m smart? Successful? Funny? Easy to talk to? I struggle when people tell me I’m intimidating or not easily approachable or that I take myself too seriously. I struggle with being a reflective person and getting stuck in my own head.
I struggle with failure and routines – If I’m not being challenged, I’m moving backwards – if I fall into a routine, then I’m weak. I struggle with surrounding myself with scales and lists and value systems that I’m constantly measuring my self worth by.
I struggle with forgiving others who have wronged me. I struggle with forgiving myself because I convince myself I don’t deserve it without earning it.
Some of these things I’ve explored throughout my life and know where the roots ultimately come from. Others, I’m just starting to become aware of the hold they’ve had on my life for so long. Even if I understood the root of all of them, it wouldn’t matter because ultimately, acknowledging them is not the point.
It’s a good first step, but the point is taking all these flaws and giving them to God, knowing that only through Him will I be sufficient and made whole.
I am unbelievably aware of how broken of a person I am. Even in the midst of frustration, waves of guilt and shame wash over me because, “I knew better than to hurt them again” or “how could I have possibly believed that lie again” or “how could I have let myself get frustrated after I just apologized and told them I was working on it.” The key word here is, AGAIN.
I messed up AGAIN. I missed the mark AGAIN. I hurt them AGAIN… on and on it goes.
When will I ever stop messing up? – The honest truth is never.
In the end – the guilt and the shame all summed up rests in failure. And honestly, it’s only going to continue the more I try and fix those things within myself on my own. I don’t allow myself grace or mercy because “I should have known better than to keep making the same mistakes again and again.”
I envision God watching me run as hard as I can all while having a tether tied around my waist. Regardless of how far I get or how hard I run, it’s snapping me backward over and over. I can see Him now, just standing there, thinking, “When will she get it? When will she realize that I’ll gladly pick her back up all day long, but that’s not the point of why I’m here. If she would trust me long enough to stand still and wait on me, just for a moment, after I pick her back up – I could untie her from that tether and we could run freely together.”
My last week in Nepal – I worked with a group of 25 Nepali women (ages 12-20) who had been abandoned, abused, or cast out from their family and their communities. Even before getting to know these girls, their joy for the Lord was radiant. You could just feel it as you approached them – how steadfast they were in their faith and devotion to God. They have experienced pain, heartbreak, and rejection in a form I will never understand. Yet, their hearts weren’t hard and their spirits weren’t selfish or prideful.
I was there with a team of 10 other racers to help lead these girls through a retreat that would speak love, truth, and worth into their lives. Specifically, the topic of discussion I was leading was on forgiveness. “I am not qualified to lead this,” I said during my prayer to God the night before “but YOU have qualified me. So, give me the words to speak.”
How was I going to look into the faces of so many beautiful young women who had been hurt, abused, and rejected by the majority of the people in their lives and ask them to forgive those who hurt them? They didn’t deserve the hand they were dealt. There is nothing in this world that justifies the abuse they have had to endure. One look into all of their faces at the beginning of my talk broke me because I could feel the weight of their hurt and the lies they had been living in for so many years.
God broke my heart for them the way His heart broke for them.
At the end of my talk, I wiped the tears off my face, stood up, and asked the girls to each grab a blank piece of paper. I challenged them to be still and ask God where He wanted them to enter into forgiveness in their lives. Did He want them to forgive someone? Did He want them to ask for forgiveness from someone?
After a few minutes, I invited them to write a letter to that person explaining what God was revealing to them. These letters weren’t going to be read by anyone or sent anywhere. They were just symbolic to allow God the space to step in and stir their hearts. I left the room and gave the girls the option to hold on to their letters and continue to use them to pray over or to fold them up, give them up to God, and lay them at the bottom of a wall we had set up and covered in scripture.
Naturally, I expected a lot of these girls to hold on to their letters – I assumed God would want them all to hold on to their feelings and keep praying over the words they had written down. After all, this was just an invitation into the first step of healing and forgiveness from a life full of wounds. These women have lived with the same tether I have had, believing lies of their value and worth, believing they deserved what they got, or wrestling with the forgiveness of others and/or themselves.
When I walked back into the room – there was a pile of letters stacked up on the floor. God showed me in that moment what forgiveness looked like – it is free and it happens the instant you let God enter in.
Forgiveness has nothing to do with the other person – forgiveness is between you and God. You’re not admitting what happened to you is okay or that what you did to someone else is okay – you’re allowing a space for God to step in, stir your heart, and remind you that you were freely given a gift that you didn’t earn.
Even before you were born and did anything wrong, even before you asked for forgiveness, God gave it to you – freely. When you allow space for God to step in and begin the process of forgiveness – you are choosing to step out of lies – lies of guilt, shame, anger, and pride – and into admitting that what Jesus did on the cross is enough for you, and it’s enough for every human on this planet.
Leaving the retreat – I knew those girls taught me more than I could ever teach them. I am so grateful for my time with them and will never forget the lessons I learned.
I am human – and I will always continue to wrestle with the sin in my life – but, I can rest easy at the end of the day knowing God is enough for me. He alone gives me strength. It is only through Him I have worth. It is only through His free gift of forgiveness will I accept true mercy and be able to love others unconditionally.
“Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!— assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”
Ephesians 4:17-32
My squadmate, Amaris, put together this incredible video of our Beauty For Ashes Retreat:
