Tag Archives: hardship

forgiveness versus moving on (guest post by tarah tubbs)

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tarah

1 John 1:9 says
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

It’s that simple. It’s that straight-forward. If we are sorry for our sins, repent and confess to God, it is erased. He has forgiven you, and what you did is no longer in existence.

In the past I have made several bad decisions involving this young woman pictured with me above. Throughout the entirety of our togetherness, I felt guilty. I knew what I was doing was wrong. As a christian I knew the choices I made were sins. Yet I chose them anyway.

Finally, after months of feeling guilty and realizing life would never get better until I let go of the thing, the person that had me in chains, I confessed to God. I knew He already knew, but laying prostrate in my guilt, confessing every detail of my sin to Him began my road to moving on. Immediately I felt His forgiveness. I then had to learn to forgive myself.

It’s been a long road. Understanding that with His forgiveness comes erasing of the sin is hard. If HE can forget, so should I. But for a long, long time I carried the guilt and shame of this time of my life with me. Carrying this guilt brought about physical manifestations. I’ve struggled with eating disorders since I was 14, but my eating disorder thrived during this time. I also participated in forms of self harm. I hurt myself because I felt I deserved it. I thrived on the feelings it created. In some small way, I wanted to die. A slow, painful, death.

But here I am. I can’t say it’s suddenly very easy. It’s not. I’m still recovering from the eating disorder that certainly could have taken my life. I saw that forgiving myself wasn’t the only step I needed to take.
I needed to forgive her for her part in things, too.

Matthew 6:14-15
For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.

It’s not enough to ask God to forgive YOU, to heal YOU, to save YOU–Before we even consider ourselves, we should approach God with a mind for others. As much as I blamed her for all the negative outcomes in my life, I knew that to move on I had to forgive her. So I did. I was surprised at how easy it was. God loves her, and so should I. If she asks for forgiveness, He has forgiven her. And so should I. So I did.

This has made all the difference. The things we did I can’t even speak of, I am just surprised either of us made it out alive. But I know that God watched out for us, because he promises to watch over His children. And now that I have forgiven her, it makes forgiving myself that much easier.

That part of my life is over. It is finished. According to God, it never happened. I am free. I can’t describe the overwhelming freedom this puts in my soul. This doesn’t mean the thought of her never crosses my mind–it does. But my soul is free from the past. I can think of her and smile, because I know she is alive, I know she is a christian, and I know I never have to deal with her again.

(Guest Post by Tarah Tubbs at Evolutions of Self)

How to be beautiful (Guest post by Jennifer Dougan)

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A song on Sunday sent me into snake ponderings.

The worship song surged around me in the church pew and I lifted my writhing three year old onto my hip. Unaccustomed to being with us in the service, he was a whirl of energy and motion. Hanging off the chair with one hand and shoulder draped off the edge, he had peered at the floor. Spinning over he cuddled onto his sister’s lap, squeezing her arms for a hug. A grey sandaled shoe jabbed into my side, and I quickly readjusted my shirt.

It wasn’t his writhings that turned my mind to snakes, though. The worship song that we stood and sang back to God said wonderingly,

“You make beautiful things, beautiful things out of the dust
You make beautiful things, beautiful things out of us.”
…
“You make me new, you are making me new.
You make me new, you are making us new.”

My oldest son has an eighteen inch garter snake that he found and tamed. Now the snake often coils comfortably up his arm as he walks the house, or hangs harmlessly around my seventeen year old’s neck as he corrects his math problems.

“Did you know,” my dad said, “that a snake is nearly blind right before it sheds its skin? With eyes that are clouded and dull, it is fearful and aggressive. Feeling vulnerable, it will often strike at the hand bringing it food too.”

My son built a reptile habitat in a glass aquarium, with cedar wood chips and an overturned log.

In order to rid itself of the old skin that is constraining it and hindering it, the snake has to be intentional. It can’t hole up in a safe dark corner, with dull, clouded eyes. Rather the snake has to purposely lean into the hard places between the log and the glass window, and push through the rough patches, intentionally poking into and through dark places. It’s the pressure and the pulling that tug off the dead to reveal beauty below.

We’re standing in the pews and singing and I’m holding my three-year-old in my arms and he’s writhing, and I picture my oldest’s newly-gleaming snake. Pearlescent emerald and gleaming amber striped down the snake’s back, leaving behind a faded, transparent wraith in the aquarium.

I sang “You make me new, you are making me new. You make things new…..

“You make beautiful things, ….

And I realize it’s me that God has been pressing through the tight places, poking into the dark corners, and leaning me into the rough patches to tear off the old, revealing beauty below.

How do we be beautiful? We lean into the rough places. We dare to walk with our Creator through the dark corners, through the tight spaces that’ll pull off the old and make all things new.

You make beautiful things out of the dust
you make beautiful things out of us

(thank you, Jennifer, for this stirring post. please visit Jennifer here at her lovely website)