Forgiveness in the bitterness

I met with a very special woman this week for coffee – a woman that I never had the chance to get to know in the past, and hadn’t been very kind to.  Sometimes our surroundings and circumstances choose for us which group we belong to and who we just don’t care for much – a silly and shameful process of division that I’d bought into throughout stages of my life.  The Lord put it on my heart a few weeks ago to apologize to this woman.  And I’m so glad He did.

We sat in Starbucks, trading turns telling stories about our kids and about our hardships, when a topic came up in conversation that made my insides churn – people who abandoned you in the storm.

While we are enduring very different trials, both of us have experienced great loss.  And, both of us are still very seated in our journeys through the storm – paddling our way through rough waters toward a hoped for place of normalcy up ahead.  This woman had lost everything in Harvey – their home and all of the belongings they’d accumulated throughout their lives, save her precious family that was rescued by a canoe leading them to dry land on the night the dam waters came rushing into Kingwood.

She asked me, “Are the people you thought would help, there for you through all of this?”  I fought back tears as I sorted through the truth of that matter in my mind – something I do often, but feel ashamed to admit out loud.  Bitterness is like a shadow that follows me around.  I will myself to lose that shadow, and I ask the Lord to take it from me, but it has reared its ugly head lately, more than before.  Throughout my life I’ve learned to ignore that feeling of being let down by people I love – clinging to a self-made motto of independence.  I would tell myself I don’t need anyone, I can get through this alone.  But a different side of bitterness is found when you see those you love most hurting because of the actions of others.

This woman spoke about her closest life-long friends that never even called to ask, “What can we do to help you?”  And then the other side of the spectrum in God’s beautiful puzzle pieces – she told me about a man she’d never met that showed up to assist her family in finding safety that night in the little boat.  I was reminded of a high school friend that did a beautiful thing for us when we were in the hospital – Josh fighting for his life.  I told the woman, “We haven’t even spoken to her in decades, yet she treated us like close family – coordinating prayers for us and setting up a page to collect donations to help our family with the astronomical medical expenses we would soon face.”

As this woman spoke deeper about her own burdens and the subject of her children surfaced, I could feel the deepest parts of her pain – the hurt on behalf of the ones she loves most dear.  The same place my deepest sorrows are found.  I think through all that my husband has been through and this most difficult fight that he fights now with each new day – feeling abandoned by so many, and searching for purpose here on Earth, the “what’s next” in a place of forgotness.  I think of my kids who have no choice but to swallow this pill of a new normal – and the overwhelming impact on their young lives.  They all appear so strong on the outside but I see the tears that no one else does.

Leaving this coffee shop conversation, I spent most of the rest of my day facing my bitterness.  I asked the Lord “Where does my help come from?”  And a scripture I know well immediately entered my mind.

“I lift up my eyes to the hills– where does my help come from? My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth.” – Psalm 121

Sitting alone on my back patio, I cried harder than I’ve cried in a long time.  I thought about a quote that I’d recently read in a book written by a mother who’s only son was sentenced to life in prison without parole.  Paraphrasing, she said, “Every person that walks through the unthinkable circumstances of great loss, needs at least one person to walk with them.”  The Lord reminded me that he moved my mom across country (in a move that made zero sense), into the home directly behind me just a month before Josh’s stroke.  She may not have the means to help in everything that we struggle with and face, but she listens and she cares.  My mother calls me every single day just to ask the question, “Are you OK?”  I bowed my head and thanked the Lord for my mother.  Then, I asked, “What about Josh God?”  Who’s there for him?  And the Lord said, “I sent you.”

Sometimes the heaviness of all the weight I feel on my shoulders is too much for me to take, and those are the times when I let bitterness creep in.  I scream out “I can’t do this by myself!  Where is everyone!”  I look at my family through a lens mixing self-pity with love, whispering, “I will be there for them until the day I die.”  And I mean it.  But I wasn’t always this way.  I didn’t always carry the unselfish love of Jesus Christ in my heart.  In fact there were times I was an absolute horrible mother.  I was a dreadful, self-centered wife and I spent more days thinking about what people didn’t give me, instead of what I was giving to them.  I’ve lived in dark places mentally – and I was not the one that broke that chain.  God did it.

These trials we face offer a choice.  And I’ve faced trials of much smaller magnitudes my whole life, making the wrong choice – to turn a cheek or to carry-on with the mindset of “what’s best for me.”  It took a big one – a trial that sent me to my knees in unspeakable pain and hopelessness for the Lord to break my heart open and fill it with unselfish love.  He changes us when we say “Yes Lord.”  He gives us purpose to be “that one” someones needs – like a lifeline in the midst of everything shattered.

Through this revelation in facing my own bitterness, I can’t say “yes Lord” for anyone else – I can only control my own choice of servitude to my Father.  I’m reminded of all the times I turned my back on people I loved.  I’m reminded that the LORD is the finisher of our faith and our stories.  And that glimpse of truth into my own walk with Jesus from the darkness into the light helps me to see bitterness differently – to see my own bad decisions, when the Lord gave me opportunities to be there for others and I chose not to.  I see my own ugliness and my multitude of sins all those times I let my kids down – forgetting that they were a blessing God gave me.  I see the disgust in me as I cursed the day I was married, caught up in heated arguments with Josh in the past, forgetting all the times I had prayed and asked God “Please give me Josh in my life.”  Yes, I loved that man so dearly when I was a teenager swooning over his dark eyes and dimpled smile.

God gave me a beautiful family.  He has gifted me with the very things my heart desired most and I failed HIM over and over again.  Realizing my own faults, he shows me where bitterness can end.  He shows me to stop looking around at everyone that has left us behind and to thank HIM that HE never will leave us behind.

Forgiveness is hard to find in search of those closest to us – because it’s easier for us, knowing their circumstances to justify all they should’ve done differently.  But pain is a part of life.  We will always be let down by other human beings, so long as darkness remains in this world.  And though we don’t always know how to face the one in the mirror in truth, we too have let many people down – even if we didn’t realize it.  God is LOVE and in understanding that, we can see the process of him pouring out himself into vessels (into us).  Through our trials.  Through our heartaches and pain, we can know that he will rescue us from ourselves, so long as we’re able to lay it all down and admit our own faults – asking him to forgive us for all our mistakes, and asking him to help us forgive others (who are just as imperfect as we are), because HE forgave us first.

In admitting my bitterness to God, He’s showing me how to turn bitterness into thankfulness.  Even if its just “one” that stands by your side.  That ONE is a gift sent by God to walk with you through the storm.

Who would’ve thought that an apology would lead to a heartfelt conversation with a woman I once thought was so different from me, but yet she faces the same challenges I do in heart-wrenching trials today.  Who would’ve thought that meeting this lady for coffee would lead to a new chapter of healing in my own life – learning to lay down my bitterness before the Lord – in a continued battle to forgive myself as I forgive others…. THANKING the Lord for the ones HE will send to help me, instead of being upset with those that he did not send.  Help doesn’t always come from the places we expect.  And in tragedy we find two cups with the choice of which to drink from “love” or “bitterness”.    I hope this helps someone today find forgiveness in their heart towards another who has let them down.  If you feel hurt, betrayed or alone today.  Its OK to cry.  It’s OK to be angry.  But as you wipe away your tears, don’t let them be in vain.  Ask the Lord to heal your bitterness from the root of where it comes from and to fill your cup with thankfulness, for HE will never leave you.

Lord, today I thank you for the strength you give me in Jesus to carry this cross as far as you may have me go.  I thank you for your gifts in these beautiful children I have and I thank you for my loving husband.  Father, he may be broken right now, but he has me, and I thank you for giving me a new kind of love in my heart – to never forsake Josh as you will never forsake me.  I thank you for planting that same seed in my mother.  You knew how much I’d need her now and you made sure that I would have that ONE person to walk with me through this storm.  Father let me never forget the power of ONE – as only ONE was required to save all, in the selfless act of Jesus Christ who laid down his life for me.  Father, I pray today that all who are hurting and feel abandoned by this cruel world can fill your hand in their lives, your ink on the pages of a story that you will finish and their purpose to carry on because they are precious to you.  I also ask you Lord to continue to give Josh strength, hope and most of all purpose, as he battles with hurt and disappointment that only you can truly understand.  Father, I thank you for showing me the root of my bitterness and the hypocrisy in my own thoughts.  Help me to forgive others as you have forgiven me.  Father paint beauty with my ashes and let this family’s suffering be a testimony that leads others to your beautiful son, Jesus Christ.

Amen.