Episode 10: Forgiveness is a Journey

Forgiving someone when they’ve hurt you, betrayed you or offended you in some way is not an easy thing to do. Living with unforgiveness, resentment or grudges can keep us stuck and unable to move forward in freedom. In Episode 10, Hetti-Marie shares that to forgive someone can be an immediate choice BUT forgiveness itself (or “getting over it”) is a journey that can take time. Listen in for some real talk about being human, wrestling with forgiveness and learning to  follow God’s Word even when we don’t feel like it. 

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to the Kathleen Jesus Praying Mom podcast. I'm your host, Hetty Marie, and I'm so glad that you're here today. Today we're gonna be talking about a topic that I think everyone can relate to, and it is about forgiveness and getting over it. Now, this is a topic that I think I'm hoping that I can share in just one episode, but I wouldn't be surprised if this turns into a two or three episode series because forgiveness is one of those things that I believe that we all sometimes wrestle with. And it is a topic that is really hard to talk about because when you've experienced hurt, it's hard sometimes to let it go and to truly experience healing in our lives. But it is so worth it when we finally make the choice to. I like to start off my episodes as always talking about my caffeine of choice. And today I went out and I picked up some chai latte with mango syrup in it. Don't ask me what inspired that, but I thought I would give it a try, and it was an acquired taste. Um, I don't even know if the the verdict is in yet about what that tasted like, but I did finish all of it, so either I just didn't want to waste it or it was sort of acceptable and what I needed because it had caffeine in it, so there it is. I decided to just go with it. All right, and as always, I like to talk about our residential canine, Bryn, who is looking at me like, why are you talking about me? What's going on? Leave me alone. I love my dog, he is my favorite. I also like to talk about a song or something that inspires me, and there's a couple songs that I really like that kind of go with the theme of forgiveness, and that is a song that is called Heart of the Matter by India Ari. I believe it's a cover song, though. I think she did a cover of someone else's song. It is a beautiful song with beautiful images, so I encourage you to download that song and play it in your in your room, turn off the lights and just let that song wash over you. It's such a wonderful song about forgiveness and it and how forgiveness is the heart of the matter. And I'll tell you this, it is certainly a topic that I think all of us can relate to in some way. Another song that I really like, and I'm a my Miley Cyrus fan from back in the days of Hannah Montana. I love Misa Miley Cyrus. And one of the songs that she recorded uh at the very start of her musical career is called The Climb. And I love this song, it has such fantastic lyrics, and I'm speaking as a songwriter. I love it. Great lyrics, great song. Um, it has a country sound to it, and I'm a country music fan through and through, born and raised. And so, what I like about the song, The Climb, is it's a reminder that it takes time to get to where we want to be. And forgiveness is not a destination per se, it is a journey, and it takes time to get there, but it is also a choice that we have to make to start that journey of forgiveness. So, we're gonna talk about that today. I wish I can tell you that there are 12 easy steps to forgiving somebody, or here are the 10 tips that are gonna make it uh easy for you to forgive when you've been offended. I wish I could, but I can't. All I could do today in this episode is share with you some of my experiences and some scriptures that have helped me to really uh capture um the essence of what it means to start the road to forgiveness and to make a choice. So let's begin by sharing this uh suggestion, and that is make a choice to obey God regardless of how you feel. And when I say obey God in the Bible, it talks about forgiveness. Here's a uh a story or an encounter, rather, that Peter had with Jesus, and Peter is my kind of disciple. He was just raw, he was real, he was like, he's like, I will jump, I will jump somebody for Jesus if you like Jesus. Who do I need to cut? I just love Peter, and so Peter was keeping it 100 with Jesus, and he walked up to Jesus and said, Okay, then Peter came up and said to him, Lord, how often will my brother sin against me and I forgive him as many as seven times? So Peter was like, Hey, I'll give you a number here, Jesus, because seven times is a lot, but as many as seven times, and Jesus said to him, I do not say to you seven times, but 77 times. I wonder if Peter's jaw fell to the ground. I do. I wonder if he fell over, fell off of his chair because I don't know if he was expecting that answer. Jesus is reminding us that your brother, your sister, they're human. They're gonna fail, they're gonna make mistakes just like you do, just like you will make mistakes. And we need to exercise forgiveness and practice forgiveness because people mess up, people make mistakes. And when I read a passage like that, I'm so grateful that it's in the Bible because it is a reminder to all of us that we're gonna experience hurt and our brother is going to sin against us and do something that offends us, but we need to make a choice to obey what God's word says, even if we don't feel like it. I would like to think that the moment we say, okay, God, I forgive so-and-so for what they did to me, that magically we feel better. No, I'd be lying if I said that. What happens is I believe that it is the start to our healing of the offense. It is the start to our journey of forgiveness, because I don't believe that forgiveness just happens right away. Sometimes, with that brother that Peter's talking about, it's like you're gonna have to forgive a lot along the way. But that is still your brother, that is still somebody that God made, and you need to make a choice to obey my word, even when you're not jazzed about it, even when you're pretty stiff, you're you're still upset about it. You're gonna need to make a choice. I call forgiveness a journey because just like a trip to where we want to go, there are gonna be roadblocks and obstacles. And I don't know, have you seen the move, the TV show The Amazing Race? I like watching shows like that. Reality shows always crack me up because you see all the different obstacles and the the challenges that they're having as they're trying to get to their destination. And where God is trying to take you, there are gonna be obstacles, there are gonna be offenses, there are gonna be hurts, there's gonna be moments of trauma, okay? It just happens. Persecution and feeling like you're crushed by betrayal. Let me tell you, God is trying to get you somewhere. So you're gonna have to make a choice to forgive and say, okay, I just stepped in something. I can either stop here, complain, cuss people out, look for someone to blame, or I can wipe this off, dust this off, and keep moving forward. That's what I want to encourage you to do today. And if nothing else helps that you hear today, I encourage you to forgive to free yourself. Because here's what it says in Matthew 6, 14 to 15. For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your father forgive your trespasses. We hear about it in the Lord's Prayer about forgive us of our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. I love the Lord's Prayer. It's that continual reminder that we need forgiveness just like everybody else does. And just like how God forgives us, we too need to exercise the same forgiveness to our brothers and sisters and our neighbors and the people in our lives. It's important that we do. I like what Saint Augustine said. I didn't know it was St. Augustine. I had to Google it. And Saint Augustine said, resentment is like swallowing poison and expecting the other person to die. I would probably categorize forgiveness the same way. When we choose to harbor unforgiveness in our hearts, we are keeping ourselves back. And I would encourage you, if you're listening to this and somebody comes to your mind right now that you say those words that Jesus said on the cross when he was beaten, whipped, um, crucified, hung up, humiliated, left to die, Jesus said these words on the cross. Father, forgive them. And if there is, I don't think there's any greater example of forgiveness, the power of forgiveness, than that to be to have gone through all that injustice and to still make the choice to say, in the middle of it, not like it was over, in the middle of it, father, forgive them. And to not harbor anything against his neighbor and the ones who did that to him. It's just huge, it's so powerful. And forgiveness is a powerful thing, but let me just tell you, it is a journey and it takes time to get there. But we have to make a choice. And I'm saying this to somebody today: choose to do it, even if it's just to free yourself from the offense. Another thought here is to check your boundaries. I wish somebody had pulled me aside when I was going through some of the things I went through a few years back and said, check your boundaries, because sometimes the people that are closest to us, the people that we love so much, the people that we spend so much time with and give so much love to, sometimes we may not have boundaries, or our boundaries are not set, or we've just allowed people to ignore our boundaries, or we haven't verbalized our boundaries. Whatever the case may be, check your boundaries. Because even the people that we love the most need to know that we have boundaries and they need to know where they are so that they don't cross them. Okay. And when they do try to scale the wall, that's when you have to enforce your boundaries and say, hey, if you continue to talk to me that way, I'm gonna have to end this conversation. Or whatever boundaries you have in place to say, hey, I told you about this. If you call me at this time or what have you, I'm gonna be working and I can't answer the call or what have you. You need to be assured in knowing that when you set a boundary and you enforce it, that the people in your life will respect it. I heard it said, and I'm telling you, it just resonated with me. It said, you will experience resistance from the people who benefited when you didn't have boundaries. Hmm. So it might mean checking your boundaries, setting up those boundaries as you need to, and communicating to the people that you love, that you care about on how you want to be treated, because that is the healthy approach. So that way you are not gonna be offended or experience offense by things that the other person was not even aware would offend you. Okay, does that make sense? I'll give you a story. I remember um feeling just taken advantage of when I was asked to do a favor for someone, and I dropped everything, whatever I was doing, and I just grabbed whatever I could and I went out, got in my car, did them a favor, came back, and they're like, Okay, thanks. And I was like, What? I didn't feel appreciated, I felt upset that I was rushing around doing something and didn't feel valued for all the effort that I put in to do this favor for this person. I was like, excuse me, and I was just stewing on the inside all night long because I felt um taken advantage of. And what came to my mind later, much later, was that I didn't have any boundaries in place for this person. I just dropped everything when I shouldn't have. And I could have very easily communicated to that person, hey, I'm in the middle of something right now. The soonest I can do that is at this time, and I don't appreciate hearing about things at the last possible minute. So in the future, if this happens again, I might not be able to say yes. I didn't communicate my needs, I didn't communicate what my boundaries were, and as a result, I did feel taken advantage of. I probably was taken advantage of, but that was something that I had to look back and go, what could I have done differently to ensure that I didn't feel that way ever again with this person? So I hope that helps somebody who's listening today. One more thing I'm gonna share with you, and that is when it's hard to pray, when it's hard to verbalize all of the things that you that are on your heart, adopt what I call the three-word prayer method. And it's very simple, it's just three words because sometimes the words aren't even coming. Sometimes you're just crushed, you are in tears, you are sad, you feel broken by what has happened to you. And forgiveness feels like the last possible thing that you're gonna do. And so I want to encourage you in those moments where the tears are coming, where you are crying so much that it like it is burning in your throat, like just the pain and the heartache. You don't even know what to say except to bow your head and and and drop your hands and be like, God, help me. Three words. I need you. Maybe it's um make it obvious. Maybe you're saying to God, give me strength. I don't know what your three-word prayer is or will be, but I'm gonna ask you to not let go of the hand of God when you're going through the memories and the moments that come back to torment you, to try to remind you of what happened and try to get you to be vengeful and to take it back in your hands instead of letting it go and letting God take it. I don't know what that is for you or what experience you may have may have had, but I'm going to encourage you today that when that pops up, when that creeps up and knocks on your door to remind you of, oh, do you remember that person did that to you? You might need to have a three-word prayer in that moment and just whisper, Jesus, help me. And I believe He will. I like the story of the woman with the issue of blood, where she reached for the hem of Jesus' garment and she believed that if she could just touch the hem, that she would be made whole. She wasn't thinking, okay, I can, you know, grab the grab grab onto the arm of Jesus. She was just thinking, if I can just even just the hem. And sometimes our our small prayers aren't just small, but they're mighty. Small and mighty prayers. And sometimes it isn't the full garment, it's just the hem. You're holding on just to the string, the thread. But God has a way of fortifying that thread of faith that you're holding on to and fortifying it by his power and making that a rope, making that an anchor that holds. So let me encourage you today to trust God to turn to him and say, Lord, help me today to make a choice to forgive. If there are areas in my life that are boundary, boundaryless, that need boundaries, can you show me? Can you show me how to forgive so I can free myself from this offense? So I can truly walk in freedom towards the destiny that you have for me. And God, can you give me the words when I don't have words to say? That I can still hang on to you and say, Father, forgive them. Let's take a moment and let's pray. Dear God, we come with humble hearts asking for your help to forgive. You know the hurt, offense, or resentment we carry. Please give us the strength to release it. Teach us to forgive as you have forgiven us, especially when it's hard. Start within us a journey of true healing and freedom so we can walk fully in the purpose you've designed for us. Help us to let go, to trust you with the outcome, and give us your peace. Amen. Thank you so much for joining us on this episode of Kathleen Craven, Jesus Praying Mom. I hope you heard something today that resonated with you. I know the topic of forgiveness is not an easy one. Trust me, I've been through some things too, but here's what I'm gonna say. I hope what you took away from today's episode is that forgiveness frees you up to complete and fulfill the assignment that God has on your life. And when you make the choice to forgive, it is not a magic fix. It's not like the light switch goes on and everything changes. What happens is it starts that journey of healing in your life. And it might be, very well might be, an a regular journey of forgiveness and forgiving 77 times and over and over again. But let me tell you, it gets easier and you begin to recognize that wow, the way that God loves me, he is calling me to love others in the same way and to forgive others the way that he forgives me. I also have some resources that are available to you. One in particular is my book called Get Serious and Other Principles to Pull You Through. It's an easy read, a great book, an inspiring book that has a lot of stories and inspirational words and principles that I think that you will resonate with you and encourage you, especially in whatever season you're going through. Last but not least, feel free to follow, subscribe, like, leave a comment. I'd love to hear from you and find out what's going on in your world, what topics you'd like me to cover next, and maybe just some feedback as well about this podcast. We want to continue to encourage women, continue to uplift moms. We need it. We are given, given, given all the time, and sometimes it's great to just connect with somebody who's in the trenches with you, and that's me, Hetty Marie, in the trenches, doing the mom life, just like you are doing it, and trusting God and believing for good things for my family, and I'm believing it for your family too. Thanks so much for tuning in. I like I say all the time. We are lifting prayers and we're filling up cups with more Jesus worldwide. Thanks for tuning in, and I'll see you next time.