Forgiveness - one of the hardest things in the world to do, but a huge part of repetitive issues in your life are due to issues that are left unresolved, unforgiven.
My recent issues with love and how to hold onto it when I find it have almost everything to do with the fact that I have been living in the past. I have been found time and time again comparing yesterdays mistakes to tomorrows problems. Of course, that comes naturally. Whether you have had positive outcomes or negative ones, your responses often reflect the course of action that lead you to the resolution (and heres the key) in the past . We tend to react, instead of think. Or at least, I know I do, especially where emotions are concerned.
I am inquisitive by nature. I was the child that asked why the sky was blue. I constantly want answers to the nature of things and rarely do I just bask in the experience. One of the questions I asked recently led me to find the answer in a painful way, the hard way. I did, however, get my answer. This led to a series of questions regarding my character flaws and insecurities. I wanted to deal with these problems that persisted in my life, causing grief to those I love and care about, as well as myself. I wanted to close the doors and change that part of me to reflect the love I feel, rather than the fear nestled deep inside, rooted in past experiences that I would never wish on foe.
The question that lead me to feel pain of loss again was "is this the real thing?" The answer was yes, but I didn't get the answer until I lost the love I had found. Which was not what I was trying to accomplish, unfortunately, my foolish heart has a tendency to doubt things because so many others have mistaken my kindness for a weakness and abused it. Naturally, I had to question the feelings I was dying to feel before I could let myself go and bask in the beauty of his dedication to me.
I was living in the past while I was trying to enjoy the present and predicting my future based on something someone else did. I hurt the person so deep they began to question the feelings that came natural to them in the moment. My past not only caused me pain, but has caused him a grief after finding something he was searching for, leaving him trying to dictate and control his feelings with his thoughts instead of his heart. My past was reliving itself in a way I never intended and quite frankly, I wish it would have stayed where it belonged instead of interrupting my new relationship and changing the course of my life path. Unfortunately, it couldn't.
My past and my future is like a hallway, one long hallway that started when I was a child. The hallway is full of doors, behind me are doors that are opened and in front of me are doors that are closed. Yesterday, this man helped me realize that my insecurities are my issue and I woke up questioning how I could deal with those insecurities. My first instinct was to fall back and run to my past, but clearly that has done nothing for me. I had been reliving and recreating a past that only hurt me. As I got on my computer and checked my notes on facebook and emails in hotmail, I found myself visiting a friends page who has been a positive inspiration for many months. His faith in God is strong and I have gravitated towards him during times of darkness and weakness looking for answers. On his page I found an old posting answering someone else's questions about what to do in a situation. In his response I found the sentence "you seem to prefer the pain you know to the pain you don't know." This hit a nerve, as it seemed to be directly related to the questions that were bothering me today.
The pain I know is something I know I can handle. I got through it before, and I know I can get through it again. At the time I was experiencing it I didn't realize this fact, but now, I know it and therefore I choose to relive my past because it is easier to face whatever disappointment could possibly be ahead of me. I was indirectly recreating my past with every new possibility that lay ahead. This is how I have kept myself in the same place for a little while, despite the desire to move ahead.
When I went to my inbox, there was a message from the man who started this journey with me. He responded to a poem I felt the need to write him and in that message I said, without even realizing it, was that I realized I had insecurities and that I was holding on to the past and that I have a Christian obligation to forgive a certain part of my past and the person who caused the pain and resentment. I also said I didn't know. Then I went to my church website and got the notes for today's sermon. In the notes there was a particular line the struck a nerve cord and made me sing a tune of "uh oh" that's exactly what I did to this man. I got into a situation with him that required me to respond in loving kindness and understanding. Instead, I went to my past and found my response. Pastor Bruxy said in his notes that "I must be careful to resist the urge to 'cut and run' at the first sight of immaturity in others. I took this as a direct message to me from God because it was exactly what I did to my new friend. I saw he was about to embark on an experience I had already gone through and instead of standing by his side, knowing it was going to be a difficult journey, I chose to run, in attempts to prevent him from going on this journey at all.
My past ensures that my present is stagnant. Every day, thoughts arise in my head that harbor my current situations and without any thought, things don't go the way I'd like them to go and that's because the change I desire is a pain I have yet to experience. I know that my pains of yesterday were so unbearably hard to conquer when I first went through them and so I avoid creating situations that will lead me to pains I don't know without even knowing whether that is the direction they are heading in. I managed to switch from being a positive, uplifting person who sees the flip side of the coin in a variety of colours in other peoples real life situations, to someone that could only see in black and white in my own experiences.
The questions and answers were right there in front of my face and my black and white tunnel vision was preventing me from seeing what it was that I was looking for. I got hit at least three times with the answers and still, it wasn't enough. I still wasn't hearing the voice of God tell me the answers to alleviate my inquisitive mind. I chatted, I posted materials on my page and I spent a couple hours wasting my time. I had two books on my side table staring at me and something inside me telling me to read where I left off. I had started reading these books to get the answers I was looking for in my life, yet somehow, while lots of it made clear sense, I wasn't getting the messages I was supposed to be receiving and had this experience not fall upon me, I'm not sure I ever would have.
It is in the realization that I have trapped myself where I am, incapable of moving forward or maintaining a healthy relationship with men, that I have truly discovered the answer to my problems. It is definitely not going to be easy, but I am ready. I know I'm ready because I have God guiding me. He has been pulling me gently even when I was resisting, He knew it was for my own good. Strategically, He has placed obstacles on my path He knew would slow me down long enough to delve into discovering what the answer might be. And the answer is forgiveness.
This is not going to be an easy journey and as I laugh hysterically with how funny God is as I open the book and find that where I left off was the beginning of the chapter entitled "Forgiveness." I read a few pages and I'm in tears, because it is exactly the pivotal point I need to be at in my life if I truly want to get past where I am so I can get to where I am going. "First, you need to forgive yourself and truly let go of the resentment and understand that I forgave you long before you even made your mistake, that is the price Christ paid for you!" Forgive myself huh?! *SIGHS* I knew I had led myself to and through all the situations I put myself in and in a way I was mad that I had managed to sabotage things that could have changed my life for the better, but how do I forgive myself? "By letting go." Letting go... "It is in the past, let it go!" I hadn't realized how tight of a grip I had on the past. I hadn't realized I even had a grip on it, let alone a tight grip. How do I let go? "By forgiving yourself."
The next step to this process is forgiving those that hurt me. As I continued to read the chapter in the book entitled "You're late again, Lord! The impatient woman's guide to God's timing" by Karon Phillips Goodman, I came to the part that insisted grudges held against others manage to keep me in a waiting room, which is Karons way of saying a stagnant stage in your life that keeps you from moving forward.
Everybody knows my life has been full of so many ups and downs that some friends lovingly give me the self-diagnosed title manic depressive. I went through a rough childhood that led me to look for love in the wrong places, finding abusive men to now, full blown insecurities that scare healthy men off which cause me to go through the motions of hurt, disappointment and then back up to healing, but not truly forgiving. This is how the motions become circular and why I find myself in similar situations-I create them so I can relive them because I am too afraid to experience possible joy because it is an unfamiliar pain.
One of the people in my past created my life's testimony, a book entitled Held Captive, which is a work in the making for me. I need strength to continue writing where I left off. This project has been put to the side because when I read it and write it, I relive it. It was important to me to find a foundation, a true love who could be a rock through my weak moments and support me through the pain and remind me that it is in the past. I was looking for a husband! Sadly, each man that came in my life on a noble stead with a sword in hand ready to take on the challenge, I scared them off into oblivion, my past being my only weapon! The ironic thing about this whole thing is that the same thing that is going to get me a husband is the same thing I need to get me a husband and now I realize, I never needed anyone. I needed God!
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