Forgiveness

You told me today...you wonder if I've completely forgiven you.

Thank you.  I'm glad you can say it.

This I need to think about. Father, examine my heart, show me. I definitely DO NOT want to live with unforgiveness--for their sake, for my sake.

It's been a long journey. Painful. Yet so much learned about love and grace and forgiveness. I have forgiven at various points along the way. Then, eight months ago incidents that sparked angry thoughts showed me there was more to forgive. I journalled out my anger to God--the good reasons I had to be angry and not trust and... yes, all valid, but I needed to lay it down, to forgive, to choose to not think about it all. God sees it all, God sees this person, from a different perspective.

I did it. I forgave. I laid it down. Yet even in those days I realized that forgiveness was a continual choice. I have often returned to re-read that journal entry. I will continue to. 

Have I forgotten this now?  Once again, this time of the year brings so many reminders of what happened THEN. All the parts I've heard confessed and processed--I've seen the grief and repentence--those are easy to forgive. They are truly gone, truly forgiven.



But what lingers, or what comes up new, are questions about things not confessed, things I have not heard you talk about. I have not heard you say how you see that now, so I am left to wonder if that part has changed. I wonder if you have repented of that. Then, when in the now you do something similar, something that does not reflect the growing maturity I often see...I question, I wonder, I doubt, and I wonder if it is all a ruse, if it might happen all over again. 

I am not the repentance police. I can never know a heart. Even if you clearly did not repent and did not change, I would need to forgive. 

So...have I forgiven all? 

I hope I'm not playing games here, holding on to something I should not (Lord, search my heart, reveal), but what is the difference between forgiveness and consequences? Even with forgiveness, certain realities remain, and it seems they somehow affect things. But they cannot, they must not supersede another reality--that you have been given new life, that you are completely forgiven and made clean.

What now? 

Forgiveness seems to be a process. I thought I had forgiven all, but recently again some thoughts have come. It is time to go process, to write them out before God, to list out the reasons I am angry.  Father, once again, please lead. Show me how You see things, in spite of, beyond, the realities I see. Do Your cleansing work in my heart.

Unforgiveness will leak. I do not want that.