People hurt us.  As my husband reminds me often, hurt people hurt people.  It could be that you hear from a “friend” that your mutual friend thinks you brag about your children.  It could be that your middle schooler is the only one not invited to the sleep over.  Or it could be that your pastor had an affair, or your husband had an affair.  Maybe your husband’s long-time business partner stole money or your child is being bullied. Whatever the specifics are, you have been thrust into a situation where you are understandably angry. Anger really isn’t the issue…the issue is when we nurse it, we focus on it. We think about it. We talk about. We feed it until it becomes bitterness and unforgiveness.

Forgiveness is one of those simple truths that we can completely grasp and agree with in our minds, BUT those dad-gum emotions have trouble getting it! And as is my nature, I like to try and justify my own unforgiveness. I have separated forgiveness in my mind into two categories; one – forgiving people from your past who you no longer have to see or have relationship with; and two – forgiving people who are still part of your life and who will often times continue to hurt you over and over again.

Forgiving people from your past, who you no longer have to maintain relationship with, though difficult, at least to me is certainly the easier of the two. I can think through the situation. I can hold it, look at it, show it to the Lord … and repeat. But at some point, I am usually able to release it. To hand it over to Him and trust that He will make it right. I shed a lot of tears and it isn’t pretty, but it’s doable.

The second type of forgiveness, however, is hard. I mean HARD. Maybe it’s an in-law that is certain to remind you at each family gathering that you are an outsider or a step-parent who plays your relationship like a game where there must be a winner and a loser. It could be a co-worker, maybe even your boss, or a teacher or…you fill in the blank. But when you consider forgiveness, you know that you are forgiving for yesterday, today, and many tomorrows. How does that work?

Forgiveness has little to nothing to do with the perpetrator, but has everything to do with us. It reminds me of the TSA recording that we have all heard so many times in the airport, “Please do not take a bag given to you by an unknown person.”

That recording made me laugh for years. Who in their right mind (especially post 9/11) would accept a bag from a stranger in an airport? No one!

Why do we allow others to hand their baggage over to us emotionally? Forgiveness is about refusing to take the bag. When we take on the baggage of unforgiveness our hands are full and our load is heavy. That was never His intent. His yoke is easy and His burden light.

As I write, I am imagining myself clutching and hanging onto unforgiveness in my own life…and you know, as I examine that image in my mind…it looks exactly the way it would look for me to clutch and hang on to an ideal. In both scenarios, the thing that I am gripping in my hands has my attention and is stealing my strength. We hold onto something we worship in His place or something that is His to unpack, yet we refuse to turn it over because we want some assurance of the way He will deal with it…it has control of us and consumes our time, emotion, and energy.

Of course there will always be those who hurt me…those who I must forgive and there will be those people for you as well. Some of those people will live forever in our past and some of those we will have to sit next to at Thanksgiving dinner. But the fact is, it only becomes unforgiveness when we take their baggage and refuse to simply release it to Him. When you can take your hurts and simply release them to Him your hands will be free and your heart will be light and all of a sudden the way He unpacks that bag won’t even matter to us.

My love,