Learning to forgive myself and forgive others is a doozy! Only God knows how I have had to sit and wrestle with Him so that I could get to a place where I could forgive myself or someone who has wronged me. In wrestling with Him I’ve had two teachable moments that have helped me tremendously.
The first one was when I was raising our girls. As I mentioned earlier in the week, I have a tendency to be hard on myself and dwell on my mistakes longer than I should but thankfully I am getting better. When our girls were young, I remember having hard days and thinking I’d ruined them and there was no going back. Then one day when the girls were in high school, God whispered to me, “I am bigger than your mistake. There is nothing that I can’t redeem. The mistakes you’ve made are the very things that are going to show your kids my love and power!” Those words brought instant peace. God wasn’t giving me permission to fly off the handle and parent however I wanted. He was giving me permission to be set free and walk in peace. Trusting that He would take care of our kids despite our imperfections.
The second time God taught me a lesson on forgiveness was when we experienced hurt from a family member. I just couldn’t forgive them. First of all, they didn’t deserve my forgiveness and I was just too hurt and too mad. But I knew I needed to get there. So, one day in reading God’s word, I read that love keeps no record of wrongs. After reading that I realized that I was keeping a record of all the ways that they had hurt my family. In that moment, I was able to begin to forgive. It took work and it was a choice but thankfully I was able to get there.