Hey everyone! So I recently got back from training camp and it was so good yet so challenging. The Lord showed me a glimpse of what it looks like to walk in freedom and rest in grace. If I am being completely honest, I do not even know how to describe it to you. It was one of those “you had to be there moments” and that is why it has taken me almost a week to finish this blog. This week I learned one of the key principles we need to understand before the Lord can take us deeper and that is that He fights our battles. Some of you know that my relationship with my dad has been an honest struggle. I had these ideas in my head that the Lord would one day reconcile this relationship but every time I wanted it to happen, it never would. I wanted to “fix” everything that was wrong with it but when I tried, I never could. I tried to love “harder” which ended up in me exhausting myself and throwing myself away so that I could show him humility. I tried to be Jesus without actually asking the actual question of “what would Jesus do” (classic, I should have been wearing one of those wristbands, maybe it would have clicked a little bit sooner). I wanted to be the perfect daughter by never letting him see me fall and in the end, it is the fall that shows him that I am just like him. We are the same and the grace he doesn’t deserve is the same grace I don’t deserve. I don’t know how to forgive or how to give grace but I know a God who does and He wants to walk with me through forgiveness and giving grace. He wants to fight with me because He wants what’s best for me. As I was worshiping at training camp, the Lord kept telling me, “tonight is the night to forgive your dad.” The reconciliation that I had been longing for my whole life was in front of me and it was the very thing that I feared the most. As I wrestled with the Holy Spirit, he gave me a vision of waves on the shore. I was standing on the shoreline allowing them to crash over my feet. I had no clue what it meant until a moment later a staff member of AIM walked on the stage and said the Lord gave her a vision to share. It was of a girl who was chained up with weights on her feet and she was sinking in deep water and the Lord was telling her to give up her chains. When she finally did, God took the chains and weights and lifted the girl up and set her above the water. In that vision, God took the burden of her heart and allowed her to come to the surface and breathe. He was telling me to do the same. Coming out of worship, I was so scared of what forgiveness looked like. I had held onto my hurt for so long that they had become a part of me. They were a justification of my actions towards my dad. After worship, we typically had a session and that night, the session was on forgiveness and how to forgive when you don’t want to/don’t know how to. I could not stop crying as the speaker was talking. I surrendered my relationship with my dad to the Lord and told Him to take it because I was tired of drowning. I was so tired of feeling like I couldn’t breathe and feeling like I the Lord had abandoned me in this one area of my life. When I gave up my burdens, I felt like I could finally breathe again. God began renewing my mind and replacing the memories where I felt lonely with ones where I felt loved. I have never seen my dad in the way I do now and I am so thankful for it. I love that we get to serve a God who loves and cares for us and that we are so favored by Him that He wants to take the hard parts of life and walk through them with us. I am honored to be able to serve a God like that.
