On Forgiveness...

When I started this blog, I was at a point where I was desperately trying to figure out what forgiveness was (I still am). I was broken, shattered into tiny fragments of my already broken self and forgiveness was nothing but a flash of a reflection of a thought that I'd catch every now and then and quickly shove to the back of my thinker. I had emailed my favorite pastor and asked him if in the history of his recordings of his sermons, there was one on forgiveness.

Thankfully, he said no.

Thankfully because had I listened to them soon after my betrayal, the significance of any hard words on forgiveness would have hit my hardened heart and nothing would have gotten in.

Finally, a couple of weeks ago, one of the podcasts I subscribe to had a sermon entitled, "Forgiveness". Just like that, hanging out in the open, declaring itself as the sermon I'd been asking for, and so I listened to it with a heart as open as was possible for me, as though the sermon was meant for me.

It was a hard message. If Jesus knows all I've done and all I will do and all the thoughts in my head for the duration of my existence as a human being and He forgave me for them all already and died on the cross for me, then how can I not forgive one event? Or even a few events? However brutal they may be, they don't compare to what I've done to Jesus.

My earliest childhood memory is of my dad hoisting me up to the railing of the balcony on my childhood home which hovered off the edge of a hill, so that somebody far below could take our picture. I was probably three, or maybe even two, with my curly red hair and goofy grin, but what I remember most was thinking he was going to throw me over. At that young of an age, I don't know how, but somehow, I didn't trust my own father already. I didn't trust anybody already.

Later on, when we'd go shopping, he'd hoist me onto his shoulders and I'd be so terrified of falling that I'd white knuckle his hair until he couldn't stand the pulling anymore and would take me down. I always thought I was on the verge of falling and that nobody would catch me.

In elementary school, I did the second level of swimming lessons over and over and over and failed every time. The entire school had moved on and were at least five levels ahead of me and I still failed. I couldn't put my head under water because even with lifeguards and tons of people around, I was so sure I'd drown and nobody would notice.

And I remember really early on, I believed in the Man in the Moon, not that he was a being, but that he was a spirit, watching over me, making sure I was ok because nobody else was. But then one night, I felt a bright light on my face through my blinds and crawled out of bed to see what it was. It was the quarter moon, a giant slice in the sky, but that night, the darkened side was vaguely lit and all of a sudden, I was crushed. Somehow, revealing that other side killed any illusion that the Man in the Moon was real. Somehow, right then- I must have been five or six at most- I stopped believing that anything was watching over me. I was alone in the universe and had to fend for myself.

I spent the next twenty-three or so years in that frame of mind, going through abusive situation after abusive situation, getting myself crushed over and over and crushing myself over and over. But for some reason, I never gave up. I just kept picking myself up simply because I had the capacity to. Somehow, I was given the resources and reserves of strength to withstand the brutal life beatings I kept getting.

I was a very angry teenager. I drank a lot and rebelled a lot. I was never bullied because I had an air about me that said, "I value my life less than you do yours. Try me." Nobody did... I had absolutely no value and nothing to lose.

But for some reason I kept going.

At sixteen I stopped drinking for good, deciding that the path that alcoholism led to was not a path I was willing to make my legacy.

The story goes on and on and all the while, God was a non-issue. I had thought about eternal things but as quickly as the subject came up, my mind went to a place where it "knew" it didn't know the answers and that was ok. After spending a lifetime alone with no protection and not feeling loved, the only thing that made sense was exactly that- that there was nothing. I was meaningless and useless other than for the here and now. As sad as that may sound, to me at the time, it was just how it was. I didn't know anything else. There wasn't another reality I felt I was missing out on.

But at the same time, I did mock religion. I mocked Jesus. I mocked His mindless, irrational, non-thinking followers. I mocked His sheep. I mocked everything about Him.

And you know, this week, I realized how funny it was that Jesus used so many sheep analogies and now atheists and "anti-religionists" use sheep as an insult. "You're sheep! Sheeple!" and while they think that's an scathing insult, from the inside, I've learned that it's what we're called to be. We're a flock, and none of us are meant to overpower the others. We're meant to bond together in order to survive. But I digress.

My point is, I totally blasphemed my way through life. People have their sins that Jesus forgives, but mine, I think is the worst kind.

My favorite pastor was talking about the worst possible thing his daughters could do to him- it wouldn't be to rebel against him or to be angry with him or to tell him off because he's disciplining them and they don't like it. The worst possible thing would be if they abandoned the relationship with him completely. If they said, "Dad, I don't want you in my life at all anymore." And that's what I did to Jesus (I know, those of you who know me will think, "hey, you did it to your mom too!" but where my mom is a broken and flawed person and my relationship with her is equally broken and flawed, Jesus wasn't and my relationship with Him wasn't abandoned because of His brokenness- and it's a story for another day.. ;)).

That little girl who let go of any "delusions" at such a young age so readily (I mean, come on, the dark side of the moon? Really?) must have broken God's heart so badly. I was barely conscious as a human being and I had already rejected whatever semblance I had of any kind of superior being along with any feeling of eternal love.

But Jesus forgave me. He watched me turn away and break my own heart and waited until it was just hard enough and brittle enough to shatter it completely and let Himself in. I won't take credit for that analogy though. That was Matt Chandler's. The harder your heart gets to Jesus, the easier it becomes for Him to crack it open, he said (paraphrased, obviously).

And it's true. In early winter 2007, I blogged a blog post entitled, "Tonight, I hate your god." At the time, I never capitalized the G as a sign of blatant and deliberate disregard for religious symbolism, and I took particular care of the one in my title because it was directed at one specific believer who told me he could not love me because I wasn't Christian. Of course, now I know that that very statement is completely backwards and absolutely unChristian in the deepest sense, but at the time, that type of mentality fit in with everything I already "knew" (or thought I knew) about religion, Christianity and Jesus.

Making a hateful statement about God as a title for a blog post written to intentionally hurt a Christian is about as hard-hearted as a girl can possibly get, even if the act itself is relatively trivial.

Being that my friends are, for the most part, atheist or agnostic, and most despise religion for a variety of reasons, the comments that post elicited were all positive and cheering me on, basically saying, "I want to be a part of your religion!"

I got non-believers to believe even less. I got non-believers to hear rational and irrational explanations that led them further from God. I did that my entire life.

If there is a God, and if that God breathed life into me, I accepted my gift of life, took it excitedly to a corner of the room, knelt down to unwrap it and whispered to myself, "I got this for myself. I did this. Through my own will and my own strength, I made it here. I'm alone in the universe and nobody cares about me. I did this."

And Jesus was watching.

For twenty-eight years.

I grew more and more angry and more and more belligerent, and then, when I was ready, He shattered my brittle, broken, busted up heart, took the pieces in His hands and handed them back to me saying, "Let's rebuild this. Let's." And after all my shatterings and brutal experiences, I finally said humbly, "Ok."

Ok, Jesus, help me rebuild my broken, shattered soul. And help me to forgive those around me who have wronged me and who have contributed to the shattering that brought me closer to You. Help me to forgive the way You forgave me. Help me love those I don't feel I have the power to love. Give me the power to love through Your powerful love, give me the strength through Your strength, and give me the humility to know it's from You when does happen. Give me the humility to divert the praise and the glory to You rather than using it to boost my own ego. It's all from You. Everything.

Thank You for showing me what forgiveness is and what love is such that through your example I might have hope for me and my hard, spiteful, resentful, scarred heart.

And might all of the goodness that happens beyond my comfort zones and through my growth in You point those around me to You and Your glory.