Reconcile: The Second Step of The Grace Cycle

Take the Quiz "How Fast is Your Hamster Wheel Spinning?" at quiz.1fit-wellness.com 

In this powerful episode of The Grace Cycle Show, host Karen Dittman explores Step 2 of The Grace Cycle: Reconcile—learning to accept the things you can’t change or control. With heartfelt compassion, Karen guides listeners through the process of releasing past trauma, surrendering control, and embracing emotional healing through God’s grace.

Discover how acceptance and forgiveness can bring freedom and renewal, even in the face of painful circumstances. Through biblical truth, scripture reflections, and personal stories, Karen offers spiritual encouragement and practical tools to help you walk the path of reconciliation and restoration.

This episode is especially meaningful for Christian women, faith-based listeners, and anyone seeking peace, purpose, and a deeper relationship with God in the midst of life’s challenges. The episode closes with a prayer for strength, healing, and grace.

Practice Reconciling through the Acceptance Process found here: https://youtu.be/sXm1XAI5usI

00:00 Welcome to The Grace Cycle Show 

00:12 Introduction to Reconciliation 

00:50 The Birth of The Grace Cycle 

01:53 Acceptance and Healing 

05:24 The Importance of Forgiveness 

08:40 Scriptural Insights on Moving Forward 

10:44 Resources for Healing and Growth 

12:10 Closing Thoughts and Prayer 

12:53 Final Encouragement and Farewell 

Christian podcast, emotional healing, forgiveness, surrender, faith-based encouragement, personal growth, grace, acceptance, letting go, trauma healing, spiritual growth, Christian women podcast

Transcript

0:00

Hi, and welcome to The Grace Cycle Show. I'm your host, Karen Ditman, and our goal here is for you to stop trying harder in your relationship with God and find a different way to grow through His grace. In today's episode, I'm going to be talking about reconciliation, the second step of The Grace Cycle. But before I get started, I wonder, do you feel like your life is like a hamster wheel and it just won't stop? If so, then I'd encourage you to check out my quiz. How fast is Your Hamster Wheel Spinning? at hamster.1fit-wellness.com.. This 50-second quiz is going to help you see what's spinning your hamster wheel, how it's impacting you, and maybe some ways that you can find to help slow it down. As I get started today. I was thinking back about how I came up with the idea for the whole grace cycle. I was working on the book Thriving in Grace. I had been writing the chapter about grace and how it is God's power to help us overcome the past, and I realized I needed some kind of a framework that would help explain exactly how to tap into God's grace for change. I was already aware that growth and change require a new approach, and so many of us kind of go into battle mode when we want to see change in our lives. And that's where God showed me acceptance as the second step of The Grace Cycle. I actually had been writing, got in my car to drive to work. I teach a fitness class at our local rec center, and so it's just a few minutes away, but I almost remember exactly where I was on the road when I had this. Moment, like this light bulb moment, God just dropped this in my head and went, yes, yes, that's it. So I started practicing this acceptance, reconciling with the things that I can't control or change and teaching it to other people. And I found in my life, and I've seen it in others, more peace and true healing from the hard things in my story. Now I want to pause here for a moment and just acknowledge you may have things in your life and in your past that no one should ever have gone through. You may have been deeply wounded, traumatized, and it might feel rather insensitive for me to just be saying, well, you just need to accept it'cause you can't change it. That is not my heart. So I want you to hear the truth from God. That he is with you and he has always been with you. He loves you and he has so much good for you when you can learn to be reconciled with the things from your past. Let me show you some reasons why this is actually really important. One truth is that we can only heal in reality when you deny the past or fight against its consequences. That just keeps us stuck, right? We have to live in reality. We have to live in a place of accepting that this is my reality, so that we can then make choices for the future that are based in reality, not on what I wish my reality was. I have known women who have been in relationships with people and they're living. As though the man they're in relationship with is a different person than he already is. This is not, well, maybe this does show up as trying to change somebody instead of loving them where they are, but we can't live in a place of wishful thinking. We have to live in reality. When I look at the Bible and how Jesus healed so many people, you know what he did? He just entered into their stories right where they were, and from that place he brought healing and peace. He probably had the power to change the past. He's God, he had the power to never let things happen to people that hurt and wounded them. That's not what he chose to do. He chose to enter into their story, into their life, in their place of pain and deep need and. In that place, he brought them healing and restoration. Think about the woman at the well when Jesus met her, did he change her reputation with the community? No, he didn't, but she was able to go to her community and bring those people to Jesus and. He changed them as well as changing her. He didn't change her choices from the past, but he did come to a place where he healed her from their impact. But healing from that impact, you know, he had to ask that woman to live and acknowledge the truth of what her life had been up until that point. He asks us to do the same thing so that we can be anchored in truth and reality, and then accept his healing and peace from here. There's another important part of this that I know is hard and that is forgiveness. And one of the hardest things I believe Jesus ever said was that if we don't forgive other people, then God won't forgive us. I still wrestle with that, but what I do know is that if God requires me to forgive people who have hurt me, it doesn't excuse what has happened, but it does give me freedom from what has happened. I have someone in my life who I have a very close relationship with, and this person did some things that hurt me deeply. Really touched on the core of my identity, and as we were working on restoring our relationship, I realized I had to forgive. We had met to spend some time together, and then I was driving home from that meeting up a highway. God encouraged me to forgive and I began naming all of these things, all of these wounds, all of these things that were done to me that were so hard and envisioning, literally throwing them out the window. So they would sit there on the side of the road and they wouldn't be on me anymore. I couldn't even really tell you anymore what these things were that hurt me because I have let them go. They are not a weight on me anymore. See, forgiveness doesn't necessarily excuse what has happened, but it does release that burden from me. I don't have to carry it anymore. And the flip side is sometimes we have done things that wound and hurt other people, and we need to accept God's forgiveness. When Jesus died on the cross, he took all of my sins. He took everything that I have ever done to hurt another person on the cross with him. So when I accept that truth that my sins, my actions that have hurt other people, died on the cross with Jesus and he took them away, then that releases my shame. It doesn't give me an excuse to continue hurting other people, but it releases my shame from my own sins because I can accept God's forgiveness for what I did. A few other things. When we let go of things that we can't control, then we surrender to God's work in our lives. Also, this builds resilience. When I can look back at the past and see how I survived, how I got through some of these very difficult things, I can draw on that knowing that I have a strength within me to move forward. The resilience from facing what has happened in the past can actually help me to have the strength I need to move forward and grow and do what might be another hard thing I. Even if it's not a thing that's traumatic and wounding change is not easy, and in all of this, it builds a new level of trust in God. And when I can trust God, then I can choose to surrender to him and his work in my life. I'd like to just share a few scriptures that I've found that also reflect this. Isaiah 43, verses 18 and 19, God says through the prophet, forget the former things. Do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing now. It springs up. Do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. Through Isaiah. God was not saying pretend things didn't happen in the past, but he said, don't dwell on the past. Don't let the past control you. Instead, God is doing a new thing. Look for that new thing that he is doing. Paul had a similar perspective when he wrote in Philippians three verses 13 and 14, and he was writing in context of his seeking to live the resurrection life of Jesus. But one thing I do, forgetting what is behind and straining toward what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me Heavenward in Christ Jesus. And Jesus himself said in Luke 9 62, he was answering several objections from people who were not sure they were ready to follow him, there was a man who wanted to have a chance to say goodbye to his family before he committed fully to following Jesus. And Jesus said to him, no one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God. Now, can you imagine somebody who is getting both hands on a plow and then looking back over their shoulder, they're not gonna plow in a straight line. We need to fully commit to moving forward in our service, in our growth, in our love for God, and then we can just let go of the past. See, the key is not to let the past control us anymore, and instead we forget them by taking away their power over us. So I'd like to offer you two resources that are really helpful for this. The first is an acceptance process that I have written up and recorded. I will put a link for that process. Into the show notes so that you can work through that yourself. Take about 10 or 15 minutes when you can just be alone with God and help identify the things from the past that are still controlling you or maybe things in your current life outside of you that you have no control over. You need to let go of. You need to release it's actually really helpful and really powerful. I've been able to do it myself a few times. One other resource, John Eldridge has created an app called Pause or One Minute Pause, and in this app he has a 20 day program called Experience Jesus. I've been through this recently and found some real healing from. Some places in my childhood where I was kind of stuck and I was living out of some of these wounds. But I finally found healing and resolution working through this app. So it's 20 days. It's in the last few days that he really gets to this healing, but it is a powerful and worthwhile. Twice a day, morning and evening. You could do just the morning, but especially in the last five days, you'll wanna do both morning and evening sessions. Just prayerful, guided meditations, beautiful time with God. So I, I don't normally do this, but I'd like to pray as I close out this podcast episode, Lord Jesus. We acknowledge that many things in our past are deeply traumatic, are very hard, and we don't understand them, but we trust and surrender, and I pray for my listeners today that they would find the strength by your grace to look at these things and. Allow you to bring them healing as they become reconciled with things that have always been outside of their control. Amen. So as I wrap up, you might be listening and thinking, uh, I still don't even really know where to start. I'm not even sure I can get clear on what's going on. I don't know where all of this is leading. And that could be just because there's a lot going on in your life and you're struggling to slow down. So that's why I created my quiz. How fast is your hamster wheel spinning again? You can find it at hamster.1fit-wellness.com or click the link in the show notes and this quiz and its results will help you figure out your own next steps to thrive by living in grace. So that's it for today. Would you take a second to subscribe to the show so that you'll be notified when future episodes come out? And also it would mean the world to me if you would rate or review the show and that way more people can find out about it. So until next time, get curious, stay connected, and live in grace.