Disclaimer:

Over the many weeks to come, I will be sharing extremely personal stories that illustrate my point. As with many emotional struggles, these stories mainly involve other people. The main characters in my story have been family members. The only reason I am able to share these stories is because God has healed me and has restored relationships where there once was pain and hurt. My family and I now have loving, healthy committed relationships focused on God rather than ourselves. We have been restored and although their actions may have deeply wounded me in the past, I no longer feel any pain regarding them. We are not the same people that we used to be. We have discussed and hashed out our hurts and reconciled. And where there were differences of opinion or in the case of my mom I was not given the chance to reconcile, God has given me understanding to see what each person was going through. I understand their actions and can forgive even when there wasn’t resolution for these deep wounds.

In no way, do I intend to defame another and make them look bad for their behavior. I am sure I play a large role in the hurts of others who aren’t sharing their story with you. One day you may hear them or hear my children tell you the hurts I caused them. I take full responsibility for those things that are mine. With God’s help, I pray the hurt I have caused has been changed into something good. The purpose of this sharing is to explain how God helped me understand the things that happened to me and put them into His perfect perspective. These stories are about what God did to change ME! The hurts happened and nothing can change that, but God is so much bigger than my experiences and He worked in me to change and grow. So the stories I share are to explain how I changed, not how God changed them. Their part is really the catalyst that helped me learn more about who God is and helped me become whole. In fact, I now see the benefit of that pain because it has transformed me and drawn me closer to God. I am where I am and how I am because of these “negative” experiences. You see, within God’s perfect perspective, I can agree with Joseph who told his brothers in Genesis 50:20, “But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive.”

There are also people in my life who are not different and because of this I cannot share their part in my life with you. What I can do is choose to love them where they are and pray that God will work to change their hurts into something good. I want to encourage you to see each story I share impartially and without judgment on anyone else. Instead follow the advice of Jesus in Luke 6:37 when he said, "Judge not, and you shall not be judged. Condemn not, and you shall not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.” We are able to forgive because we have received forgiveness in God’s perfect perspective.

Now for your part, the million dollar question: Do you want to be healed? Do you want to feel better? “Of course, I want to be healed,” you may say. I only ask because sometimes we aren’t ready for what God has to say. We aren’t ready for the sacrifices that God requires for healing. Sometimes our hurts become our life and we are too scared to give them up. We rely on our emotional struggles because they are all we have and they keep us safe. Yes, you heard me right. Whatever emotional struggle you have, currently serves a function, albeit a dysfunctional function. It is not, however, the abundant life God intended for you to live. If you still answer yes to that question, read on. But be warned, you probably won’t like what I have to say.

The information that God gave me to share is not for your spouse, mother, father, sister, brother, aunts, uncles, friends, colleagues, roommates, co-workers, neighbors or children. It is for you and you alone. You cannot change someone else. Let me say it again more strongly, “You cannot change ANYONE else.” Here is the good news. Only God can help someone else. God has the desire, the purpose and the plan for that person in your life. There is only one thing you can do to help someone else change. You can facilitate change in someone if you are focused on Christ, loving Him completely, and abiding in Him. Through that relationship you can shine a beacon on someone else’s life or become burning coals on their head. How is your love quotient right now? Are you loving people or are they all creeps and jerks?

With the help of God, you can only change you. Your relationship with God is paramount to Him. God has blinders on when it comes to your life. It isn’t that He doesn’t care about others, but in your relationship with God, you are all He sees. In a sense, God asks you not to care what other people are doing wrong in your life. He asks you what you are doing wrong, where you have failed, or what you need to learn from this experience. He is also asking you to trust him even with this.

Isn’t that what Jesus asked us to do when He said to pull the log out of our own eye before we try to find the speck in another’s eye. You must view your journey with the same blinders that God has for you. Focus your eyes exclusively on Him and ask Him what it is He has for you to learn. If you in anyway, shift your focus off God and onto your sinking ship, whatever that may be, you will miss what God has for you. Like Peter, you may start out strong walking across the water, but once your focus waivers, you will begin to sink.

This seems like an impossible task and you are right. It is impossible. You should just give up: give up your agenda, give up your rights, give up your hurts, give up control of the situation, and give up your expectations. You must admit defeat. Call it quits and give it to God. I don’t write anything that I haven’t thought before, believed before or done before. Like Paul says, I am the chief sinner here. I don’t ask this lightly or without regard to the sacrifice it will require of you. I know from personal experience that what I ask, what God asks, isn’t fair. You may have sacrificed, given over and above or been the bigger person and yet God asks you to give even more. I hate being the bigger person more than anyone. It makes me feel like I am taking all the hits, that I am being taken advantage of and that the other person is getting off easy. Whatever happened to you in the past and whatever you are feeling right now can seem insurmountable. It isn’t right the hurt and injustices that have happened to you. It isn’t fair. It is horrible, awful and no good at all.

No one should ever be asked to sacrifice themselves this way and yet someone did that for you, for me, without us asking, because that is what we needed. God isn’t like Alice in Wonderland who gives very good advice, but seldom ever follows it. As God told my older sister, “I always follow my own advice.” He never requires anything of us that He hasn’t already done himself. He asks no less than what he did for you and for me. Where Jesus died a physical death, he asks us to “give up our life for our brothers” and to become “living sacrifices to God.” He asks us to die, so that we might live!

It is not easy, but then nothing ever worthwhile ever is easy. Anything worth living for must also be worth dying for. Die to yourselves, become a living sacrifice, and pick up our daily cross. In return, Jesus promises that his yoke, his burden is easy. It sounds so contradictory, but how I wished I had listened sooner. I can testify that God’s burden is lighter and his yolk is easier than anything I carried before.

I may have just stirred up a million “buts” that you have running across your mind, but let me stop to answer your questions now. “Yes, you can go on.” “Not, it won’t last forever.” “No, it isn’t right what they have done.” “Yes, the pain in your life downright stinks and ‘No’ God doesn’t agree with it or wish it happened to you.” In fact, ‘Yes’ you can be angry and hurt because God is angry and hurt for His children, but ‘No” it isn’t ok to stay where you are.” “Yes, God does care.” “Yes, God is with you even when you don’t ‘feel’ Him.” “No, You are not alone, but ‘Yes” God will use the pain in your life to draw you closer to Him and draw those things from you that are hindering you.” And ‘Yes’, God can make all things new and He who began a good work will be faithful to complete it.”

“But what about me,” you may ask? “What about you?” God replies. “Aren’t I enough for you? Why are you turning to anyone else in this world to define who you are, to heal you, to love you unconditionally, to save you, to meet your every need, to give you what you desire? What about you? Don’t you think I care more about you than that? You are my child, my precious darling, my boy. I know what you need and what you need is me. More of me. Breathe me in. Live me. Stay here. Talk to me. Tell me how much it hurts. Tell me what you are feeling.” Contrary to how you may feel, God is not a petty, vengeful God who is out to get you. He doesn’t desire that you feel pain, but, and here are the key words, ‘when necessary’, He will allow pain in order draw something from you that is keeping you from the life He offers.

So I ask again: Do you want to be healed? Are you tired of all this mess? Are you ready for a change? Are you ready to utterly abandon everything you ever desired? Are you ready to give it all up? When you are, God is waiting to transform your hurts into something good. He is ready to trade your sorrow for dancing. And if you still have “buts” then I say, ‘Read no further.’ But if you are ready, really ready and willing to trade it all in, then you are ready to understand that you have a God-sized problem that requires a God-sized answer. Are you ready for Him?