Forgiven and Free

I've mentioned on here that I've had an amazing year this past 12 months and that I hoped to one day share my testimony about it. I REALLY wanted to share this unbelievable experience I had but the problem was that I really couldn't put it into words. I still don't think I fully understand the remarkable change I've experienced but I did have a breakthrough over the weekend and feel like I can start to share it with you.

On Sunday, Pastor Geoff spoke on Forgiving Yourself. I've heard that phrase before. It's not a hard phrase to understand but it's a difficult concept to grasp, I think. After hearing his sermon, I realized “Hey, that was part of my year of healing! I think I finally have started to forgive myself – like really forgive myself.”

We are taught to forgive others. "Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you." Colossians 3:13 As hard as that is, I think it's much easier to forgive others than it is to forgive ourselves. At least for me it is. I have high expectations. I've come to realize that others are not going to live up to my high expectations but when it comes to me (and my family – gulp), I still expect “perfection.”

When I was young, it wasn't too hard to live an easy, close-to-perfect life. As I've gotten older and gone through more life experiences, I've struggled. Sins I've committed, mistakes I've made, simply not living up to my perfect expectations. All of these things started to add up, weigh on me. I asked forgiveness of God, of others, but never forgave myself. God forgave and forgot. I just wasn't able to forgive myself and in turn, thought others felt as horribly about me as I felt about myself. Maybe some of them did. But for the most part, I'm sure it wasn't what I did that drove people away but how I dealt with it or couldn't deal with it.

I was bogged down with the weight of every bad decision I ever made on my shoulders. Now I'm not talking about killing people or robbing banks or other crazy bad things. It was all of the little things that added up and I just couldn't let go of. I always thought, “I'm better than that. I know better.” Mistakes weren't an option.

Pretty soon I found myself not being the wife I should have been, the mother, the daughter, the sister, the friend, etc. I had ended up letting down people all around me in mostly small, insignificant ways. If you were to ask those others, they would probably not even remember or had not noticed to begin with but I knew and I wasn't going to let myself forget it.

I started to pull in. The less I put myself out there, the less I had to admit I was less than perfect. I started to hide things so people couldn't see the mess that was my life. I became miserable.

Starting last year, God started an amazing work in my life. He overwhelmed me with His love. Over and over He poured out His love on me. He showed me that there was nothing I could do to earn His love and there was nothing I could do to stop it. He just LOVED me. I've always struggled with feeling like I need to earn the love of others (and probably myself). As He made me realize that I was worthy of His love no matter what, I realized that I was worthy of loving myself no matter what.

It opened me up for so much. I was able to develop new friendships and renew old ones as well. I was able to respond to the voice of God and follow His leading. I was able to feel freedom – freedom in Christ. God broke the chains of “unworthiness” in my life and replaced it with freedom. Freedom to be who God wants me to be in all of my imperfection. It feels so good!

I still have my days and I still don't always enjoy my less than perfect life but I'm much more ok with it. I am able to remind myself that God loves me despite all of my faults. He is able to use me despite my imperfections, and maybe even because of them.

Please do yourself a favor and forgive yourself. You will never be perfect. I know we live in a society where perfection is the goal. We should all have perfect homes, perfect children, perfect marriages, perfect looks. It's unrealistic. We can't be fully perfect. Jesus is perfect and He is all the perfection we need!

Forgive yourself and live in Freedom! It's a great place to be! :)