Grace came at a cost, but I wasn't treating it like that. I treated His good grace like it was “plan b” for my life. A door prize that you threw away right when you got home. I am so thankful that I don't live in Old Testament days, because I am pretty sure that I would be in exile. Instead He meets me with breakfast on a beach.
What lead a grown man to sob uncontrollably in my arms, while saying over and over I want my mommy, I want my mommy? Forgiveness. I met him in Rwanda and walked him through forgiving his mother for leaving him and his siblings in the genocide for her own safety. Years he had held on to the pain, but he was in a place where he wanted to forgive her, and try to reconcile with her as well. Before we get there though...there is something else we need to address.
Which is harder, to say "your sins are forgiven?" or "get up and walk?" Can I take a moment and answer that? The forgiveness of sins part has definitely got to be harder. Like by a long shot. And I say this because I will tell people all day to have faith that to do what Jesus says, but for me forgiveness is not as easy as telling people to "just have faith" that what He says is true. Following Christ isn't easy my friends. And this is one of those acts of obedience that I can easily forget about, until I am confronted by the truth. And that is what happened Saturday morning, when someone called me out on it. The truth felt like a truck hit me. I was holding onto hurt from 20 years ago. 2 decades is a long time to hold unforgiveness, and carry it in your heart. But that is what happened, for more than half my life.
My daughter is fearless. She is 2 and a 1/2 this year and has been loving being in pools this summer. She has loved it so much that she has taken a love to jumping into the pool (sometimes off the diving board...yes all with a puddle jumper). She will jump when we are there right next to her, and she will jump when we are not, almost like she doesn't know the danger of the water. And this can leave me thinking "Can't you have a little fear? Just a little? Just enough to know that there are dangers in the world, like that this water can hurt you...kill you?"
If you ever want to feel like a fraud, write a blog. Seriously. More times than not, I feel inadequate in the things that I share because so many times I feel my faith and trust in Jesus isn't strong enough to put out there for the world wide web to read. And if you want to feel like a bigger fraud, change your blog's domain name to your own name. But that is what I did. I have been thinking about it for about 6-8 months now, but felt it was prideful. However once I started having major problems with my site, I decided to switch blog platforms again, which would mean designing a whole new site, and with that I decided to change the name of my blog again to a name that will never change. But there is another name that is unchanging...