JUST LET IT GO....Part IV

….Princess found that the valley of compassion was a place of great pain, yet also a place where she began to feel better about life than she ever had before. It is most excellent when we can be moved by compassion for those who have mistreated or abused us. Why? Because it is a great indicator that forgiveness has shown up on the scene.

What Princess learned in the valley of compassion, was that her mother did the very best she could. At first that was a hard pill to swallow, but nonetheless it was the truth. Her mother was not June Cleaver (Leave it to Beaver), or Donna Reed. She was much more like “Mommy Dearest” but she didn’t know how to be anything else. The tears that Princess began to shed for her mother came with the realization that she was a woman who lived to be in her 60’s, yet she was never happy. She never experienced peace or felt fulfillment in her entire life. She missed out on a daughter who for many years tired to please her, but she did not know how to receive that gift of love. She was a woman who was very hurt by the fact her mother died when she was young and her father abandoned the family. The bottom line is, “Hurt people, hurt others”. Her mother lived a life of perpetual hurt, as many of us do.

How we get caught up in living a life of perpetual hurt is to be a recycler of our pain. Recycling is good for the environment and even then only certain things can be recycled and reused. But in our emotional state of being that is not so. Emotionally if we choose, we can recycle any and everything. And a wounded spirit has the tendency to recycle past hurts and injustices, over and over and over; turning them into idols and trophies of “Woe is me,” and the “Somebody done me wrong” song. This is why God says, “He will turn our ashes into a thing of beauty.” Only He can recycle all the rubble into art.

Another great lesson Princess learned in the valley was that she could not undo the things that had happened in her life. There was nothing she could possibly do to change her childhood…at ALL! Past events in life can be likened to when an egg is broken and spills out, it is impossible to put it back together; which is the origin of the Nursery Rhyme “Humpty Dumpty”. But we do have choices of what we are going to do with the egg once it is out….we can cook it, throw it away, or if it made a mess, then clean it up. But the one thing we will never be able to do and that is, take it back to its original state. Same with the past! We cannot undo it; therefore it is not profitable to try to continue to live in it by bringing it with us into each new day.

And though she could not undo the consequences of the many poor decisions she had made as an adult, she could begin to take responsibility for them. And this was not easy; because “Woe is me” had been her crutch for most of her life. “If only my mother had been different. If only she had encouraged me and loved me. If only she had protected me! Then my life would have been better. It’s all her fault, because of the way she raised me.” But now, God was asking Princess to throw away her crutch, lean on Him and learn how to walk tall. She wasn’t sure she could do it? But given how her life had been, she realized that she had nothing to lose and the possibility of something to gain….thus began her journey of learning to “Just let it go!”

Once any of us agrees with God and what His Word says, it is inevitable that change is going to come. As with Princess, she decided to agree with God that He could take the rubble of her life and change it into a thing of beauty. She didn’t see how He was going to do it, and she really didn’t understand exactly what He totally meant by it; but her decision to move into agreement with Him was all she needed to do. The rest was up to Him.

There is not a formula or a 5 step process to handing over our rubble to the Lord. As human beings we basically love to have a formula or a process to do something. It makes us feel in control and that we are accomplishing something. But since God has made us individuals, formulas and processes very seldom really work for us. We become frustrated and give up when we have spent so much time working the formula and God doesn’t respond as we think He should. We become weary of the steps when the pay off is taking too long. Again, God is not responding as the steps had promised.

Since most of us cannot really articulate what the real problems are in our souls, we must go to God in prayer for that. We have to ask Him what is wrong and talk to Him about what we are feeling. We have to look to Him for guidance as to where to begin the unraveling of the mess of what is really going on with us. We cannot get to the root of our problems without Him. Our lives are layered and riddled with sin, and only a God of compassion can handle the task of what needs to be exposed and at what time in our lives. We just could not handle everything at once. It would literally kill us. And since the heart is wicked and above all else deceitful, on our own we could never find the truth of what we need to know.

Have you ever watch the news when people are shifting through the rubble of their homes after a hurricane or tornado has hit? It is very sad in many ways especially when they are not able to salvage any material items, and everything is gone or ruined. You can often feel their pain and suffering as they fall to their knees and the tears flow. But then you always have someone who is so grateful that all their family is alive and that their stuff can be regained or rebuilt. They are the ones crying tears of joy. I think we experience both of these scenarios when we walk through the rubble of our lives with God. We cry over those things that He insist that we let go of. We wail and scream when He says, “You must forgive and move on.” We feel hopeless for a season as we don’t see a way to fix or rebuild things. But then as with any devastation, time can heal the wounds if we allow it, and we begin to get excited because we are alive!! We get excited because we are here for another day, and though it was bad, and though it was horrifying and horrific, we have lived to talk about it! We get excited because we begin to see a new us! We are elated because today is good and there is great hope for tomorrow. The part of the past that held us back, gets dimmer and dimmer with each passing experience with God, and now we see ourselves immerging into that thing of “Beauty” that we thought could never be. We see how the horrors of our past have made us strong, not weak as we had once thought. How God has worked it all together for His good and for His purpose, and it was not in vain, as we once believed.

What Princess has learned over the years, (yes, this is a process) is that the closer we move to God; the more we look like Yeshua (Jesus). One of the many attributes of God is that He has a compassionate nature. You can see it from the beginning of the Bible to the end. And His greatest act of compassion for us was the death on the Cross. Compassion for her abuser was crucial to Princess being free. She could no longer say, “Yeah, I’ll forgive you, but I’m never going to forget!” True, she has not forgotten her childhood, but there is no longer pain attached to it. When she remembers now, it is usually to encourage someone else to get through the pain and hurt of their past. Remember in part 3, I told you “I would talk more about how there is good to be found in the midst of the rubble?” Well, here it is. Princess greatest gift is that she is an encourager. If asked, she will tell you that when she was a baby Christian, she wanted to have gifts that put her up front. The “Look at me” gifts! She is not alone, many of us want to be seen, (of course that is a different blog all together…LOL!!) and having the gift of encouragement wasn’t on her list at all. But what God has done, is taken the rubble of her life, changed it into something good and said; “Now I need you to be a living example of what it looks like to come through the fire, and help others, just as I have helped you.” Wow!!! God trust Princess with other people. That is huge; because there was a time He could not trust her with herself. Remember, she had a spirit of suicide at one time in her life.

If we want to live the full like that Yeshua bought for us at the Cross then we must learn to play the cards we’ve been dealt in life. As Kenny Rodgers song goes, “You have to know when to hold them, know when to fold them and know when to walk away.” Do you have to rely on your own understanding to be able to do this? No! That is where letting go enough to let God be God in your life comes in.

My prayer for everyone who will read this four part series is that you will ask God to help you live….Ephesians 4:32 (AMP) And become useful and helpful and kind to one another, tenderhearted (compassionate, understanding, loving-hearted), forgiving one another [readily and freely], as God in Christ forgave you, so that you can begin the process of letting go of that which has imprisoned and held you captive all your life. Please take a moment to listen to the song of the week. It really sums up how our hearts should be.

If you missed any of the previous blogs they were posted as follows: Part I March 20, 2010, Part II April 3, 2010, and Part III April 17, 2010.


Be Blessed,
Pat

Hope to see you, Saturday, May 15th. Don't have a clue yet what I'll be writing about, but I'm sure the Lord has something good in store for us.



Monday's Blog: Sharon is up "Women and their Finances"