Before We Go Any Further...

I've been praying a lot lately about what I want this blog to be about and what God wants me to share.

And I realized something. 

I need to write this post before I write all the others. 

I need to say something first before I say anything else. 

What I write in this blog post is one of the greatest lessons I have learned in my life.

And unless you understand that everything I write is filtered through this lens, much of what I say on here will make no sense. 

So, what is it? 

It's simple. I'm sure you're heard it before. I guarantee it. 

But I need to say this here on my blog so that I know that I've said it and shared this with you. 

It's about forgiveness. 

Forgiveness. 

How did that word make you react when you read it just now?

What does forgiveness mean to you? 

Can I share with you what it means to me? 

Forgiveness is loving another person as God has loved me and will always love me: unconditionally. 

God is flawless and I am not. But by His grace and by the power of the Holy Spirit, I can love others as He loves me. I can forgive others as He has forgiven me. 

Well, you might be thinking: What does forgiveness have to do with writing? 

Without forgiveness - receiving God's forgiveness and forgiving all those who have hurt me - this blog, this dream to be an author, all of this would vanish. Poof. Gone. 

This website, this book, this calling would be nonexistent. Nothing. 

I'm going to write on this blog about chasing your dreams for God's glory. But if I fail to share this with you, it's all a waste.

Because without forgiveness, you will fail. 

I know what that's like. When you feel like you have so many hopes for your life, but it feels like someone pressed the pause button.  

Unforgiveness is such a huge sin. It might not seem that big of a deal to you. The church doesn't always talk about this. But I believe it's something we need to talk about more. 

Because unforgiveness is so destructive.  

Yet it's so subtle. That's how the enemy of our soul works.

We get hurt because of the fallenness of this world and we don't let it go. We hold on to the pain, not being able to reconcile God's goodness in the face of brokenness.  

But it all creeps up on you. Slowly, slowly. Like how snowflakes fall one-by-one and yet blanket the ground in an icy white frost.

Moment by moment, hour by hour, day by day, it all adds up. And you're unaware.

Until you're caught in a blizzard. 

In this case, caught in unforgiveness. 

That's how it works. 

When it's finally a problem, that's when you realize its presence. But for a while it's dormant. All is well. The seas are calm. 

Then you try to row your boat to the other side and a storm rages. You cannot get going. You're tossed around and left confused. 

And this is it: it's not the winds or the waves outside of you; it's the tempest inside your heart. That battle going on within. 

I've been there. 

Stuff happens. And sometimes it's hard to believe that God can work all things for good. Been there. Felt that. I understand. 

I write more about this in my book, so I want to save those details for you to read there. 

But what happened was my Dad walked away from God when I was in high school. It was so horrible seeing the man who introduced me to Jesus become the prodigal son. This broke my heart is so many ways. So many ways. 

People might wonder why I'm so passionate about helping people follow Christ and not compromise. Why I encourage others to live wholeheartedly for Jesus. Why I talk and write about this so much. 

I have seen firsthand the darkness and brokenness of a life without Jesus. 

This all happened when I was 17, a junior in high school. I was still somewhat wide-eyed and excited about this thing called life. I was looking forward to senior year and college starting soon. My whole life was unfolding and just about to begin. I was sweet and fragile. I still am this way. 

So when I saw my father walk away from Jesus and turn his back on his faith, I felt my world begin to quake.

Yet what surprised me the most, though, is that my world did not shatter. While my father's faith in God seemed to be dwindling, my faith in God was growing. As much as all of this hurt me to see my father turn away from God, it taught me something very important: my faith in God was not some hand-me-down borrowed religion from my parents. It was my own.

I knew this because when my Dad's faith fell, mine didn't. By God's grace, my faith remained. By God's grace. And it grew even stronger. 

I could cry at the perfect faithfulness of God. He held my hand through this entire season - from the moment my Dad ran away until the moment he ran back. Back into the arms of His loving Heavenly Father. A Father who never stopped chasing after my Dad with His grace and love. And who watched over me through it all and never let go of my hand. And who holds me even still. 

I love my Dad. He is an amazing man of God. I don't hold anything against him for what he walked through. His life is different than mine. I don't judge him. I love my Dad. I'll say it again. 

While he was away from God, I wasn't mean to him. I didn't wish anything bad for him. I just wanted him to come home, to come back. To talk to me about Jesus again with that excitement in his voice and light in his eyes. To sit next to me at church. To quote Bible verses to me and pray with me. 

During that time, I remember talking with him - our conversations going on for hours and hours - somehow trying to change him, to reset his distorted viewpoint on God. 

It took me a long, long, long, LONG time to realize something: Only God Himself can change a human being. I cannot. His love in me can change someone. But I myself cannot. Only God could change my Dad. 

I came to a point where I just prayed and prayed for him. From when I was in high school to when I was at SPU, on my knees in my Emerson dorm room each night. Praying for God to reach my Dad.

Praying and praying for God to do what was absolutely impossible for me to do. 

Somewhere along the way, after waiting and waiting, and years and years of praying, I became discouraged. My Dad wasn't changing. And it was becoming more and more obvious to me all of the ways he had hurt me and shook up my life.

Why did he have to do this? Why did he have to do this to me? Why did he have to do this to our family? Why did he have to walk away? Why? 

I once heard that true forgiveness is letting go of the hope of changing the past. That's exactly what it was for me, except the opposite. My unforgiveness wasn't out of hate and anger or rage. It was holding on to the past, wishing to be able to change it somehow, yet knowing I couldn't. Wishing to be able to mold it into a different story, a different memory. 

That I could never change the past, which was rippling out and affecting my present, was what made me bitter. Why did God allow this? Why did my heart have to break this way?

And the more I thought about my own pain, the more it made me think about what other people went through. Why did they have to have their hearts break, too? Why did that bad thing happen to them? What is wrong with this world? Why? 

I couldn't understand then, but all the while, God was pursuing me. Asking me to trust that He could work all things together for good. Chasing after my heart and trying not to let it become consumed by unforgiveness and sorrow. 

And during that difficult season, I went to a concert. And God met me there with the answer. One I didn't know I needed. 

I totally did not expect it.

It was the beginning of my healing.  

I was at a Chris August concert in the fall of 2010. I went with my twin sister to the concert held at a church in Seattle. Chris sang a couple songs and then he sang a song that I'll never forget. One called "7X70" - the title a reference to the verse where Jesus says that we should forgive seventy times seven times when someone has hurt us (Matthew 18:22). 

In the song, August shares about forgiving his father and letting it go. 

Going to this concert, I wasn't expecting to come face-to-face with the state of my heart. But as I listened to the lyrics of "7x70", I realized that I needed to let it all go. All of the unforgiveness, the disappointment, the brokenness. 

Tears filled my eyes and I knew that God was calling me to do what was impossible on my own yet possible with Him: forgive my Dad. That night, standing in the darkened church illuminated only by the lights on stage, I surrendered to God. I told Him that I was sorry for my sin. I repented for having so much unforgiveness toward my Dad, maybe even unforgiveness toward God for allowing it. I repented for not letting it go. For holding on to the pain from yesterday and thinking it was too great for God to heal, too hurtful to reconcile with His goodness. I gave it all to God that night. 

As I was learning how to forgive, God reminded me of what Jesus said: 

For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. - Matthew 6:14-15

I had been so wrong! In refusing to forgive my Dad, I was denying myself God's forgiveness for myself. I knew that I needed His forgiveness every day and yet here I was living in a state of unforgiveness.

I wasn't forgiving my earthly father and my Heavenly Father wasn't forgiving me. I wasn't experiencing the abundant life because I wasn't forgiving. 

I humbled myself and asked God to reach out and help me. I knew that I couldn't forgive my Dad without His help. 

God showed me how: I started praying for my Dad. Even more than before. Not just praying for Dad to change, but for God to help me forgive. 

And I began to see something very quickly: You cannot pray for someone and harbor unforgiveness toward them at the same time. You cannot pray for someone else and remain unchanged. God was changing my heart, little by little, with His love. And as He poured His love into my heart, I was able to love my Dad unconditionally, forgetting his sin and calling him to return to God.  

I knew that I had finally forgiven my Dad when I began to see who he really was, all that he had been through, and that God loved him infinitely. How could I be unforgiving to someone God loves so dearly? God showed me that my Dad was never intentionally trying to hurt me. He was so hurt himself and his own brokenness is what was affecting me.

God wanted to heal that brokenness. And my brokenness caused by my Dad's brokenness. 

My relationship with God is so precious to me because He has always been there. No one has ever been there for me like God. He was there before my Dad walked away, while my Dad ran away from God, when my Dad returned, while I was hurting, while I was healing, and while I'm soaring now because of His love and forgiveness. 

That's how it feels like - like I'm soaring high on eagle's wings. Sometimes I shudder and think of everything I would have missed if I had held on to that unforgiveness. It would have weighed me down and I would not be the young woman I am now. Who I am is only by God's grace. And by His grace, I was able to forgive and become who He wants me to be, more and more every day now. 

I know with all of my heart that without this decision to forgive my Dad, my story would be different. Very different. Bad different. It would not be beautiful, but very broken. It would not be inspiring, but cautionary. It would be depressing and dark and everything I would never want my life to be, but exactly what life is like without God's forgiveness. 

For my morning devotions, I read the One Year Bible. Every day, there's a passage from the Old Testament, New Testament, Psalms, and Proverbs. I love reading the Bible. It's my favorite time of the day. I am desperate for God's Word. It is my very life. 

This week I've been reading about Joseph during my devotions. He had great dreams for his life. And then, out of nowhere, tragedy. His brothers - his own family - sells him into slavery and he is taken to Egypt. There, he works for Pharoah's captain of the palace guard before being falsely accused and thrown into prison.

Joseph spends years in prison before being released. Word gets around that he can interpret dreams because God is with him and gives him the meanings. Because of this, Joseph is made second-in-command to Pharoah himself and rules over the land where he was once a slave. 

After seven years of great harvest and abundance in the land, famine strikes. Hearing there is grain in Egypt, his brothers make the journey from Canaan to find food to sustain their family. Once there, they beg Joseph, who they don't recognize, to give them something to take back home and live on.

Joseph, however, does recognize his brothers, and after testing them a couple times, he reveals his identity and invites them to return with their father Jacob and enjoy life in Goshen. 

There's this one verse from Joseph's story that always stays with me. It gives me chills every time I read it: 

You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. - Genesis 50:20

I love that Joseph is able to see past his pain and what they did to him. He understands God's great goodness and love so much so that he no longer holds on to their sin against him or the plans of the enemy.

Joseph, from his position as the right hand man to Pharaoh, can see that all that he has is from God.

And while it took a broken road to get there, God knew what he was doing. Out of his brokenness, God was paving a path for Joseph that would take him from the pit to the prison to the palace. To the palace where he would save his family's lives, and thus generations and generations of God's chosen people. Generations of people who would live and die, and eventually be known as being a part of the lineage of Jesus Christ. 

So much of life can really only be understood when we look back on our past. But not just look at what it was, but remember and see everything with new eyes. And look for God's hand in our past. 

And looking back, I now know that God used my heartbreak to make me care about others more. To think about the words I speak and to speak words of kindness and encouragement. To trust Him through the darkness. To have a faith of my own. To learn how to forgive. To be changed by God's love and discover how to love unconditionally. To see people for who they can be and not just who they are. To leave unforgiveness at the cross and to allow God's love in Jesus Christ to flood my heart and overflow. To surrender all brokeness to God so that He can heal it. To live whole and healed, but always remembering where He's brought me from and what He's done. To see that God had a purpose through it all so that He can reach others through my life by His love.  

Without forgiveness, there would be no story to read here. No book for me to write. No dreams come true. No happy ending. 

It is out of my journey to forgive that this book is possible.

And it's out of God's forgiveness toward me and my forgiveness toward my father that I am able to live the life that Jesus wants me to live.

A life of wholeness and beauty. 

I pray the same for you. 

Is there someone you need to forgive? 

I can't explain all the reasons why your heart had to break the way it did. 

But I know that I know that God is good. And He will work it for good if you trust Him. 

He did it for me. And when you surrender and ask Him to help you forgive all who have hurt you, He will do it for you. 

Don't live brokenhearted. 

Life's too beautiful and God is too good is miss out on your destiny because of a broken heart filled with unforgiveness. A broken heart that God is more than able to heal with His love. 

He will take your brokenness and make it beautiful. I promise you.

And your healed heart will then live to help others see Jesus.

And He will set them free and make them whole. 

And in their freedom and wholeness, they will seek to see others free and whole. 

And together we will fulfill the reasons why God first caused our hearts to start beating: 

We will be the people God created us to be and do what God has called us to do when we love and forgive. We will be healed and whole and beautiful messengers of the Good News to this world.

And they will listen because they will see God's love in our hearts. They will see Jesus in us. And this world will be changed by His love. One heart at a time.