It doesn't mean that I'm going to stick around a tolerate the behavior that's become the norm, but it has changed my perspective on justice and my relationship to a God who promises to fight my battles.
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I have three children, and I’m constantly amazed by how much
they fight.
As an only child, I suppose I knew in theory that siblings
fight, but I was quite unprepared for the theory to become practical. Not only
are the battles/squabbles/world wars constant, but the cruelty my babies are
capable of came as a complete shock.
When I formed my opinions of parenting – long before I had
children myself – I assumed that the parent’s role in these squabbles was cut
and dry. I imagined I would intervene, punish the guilty party, and comfort the
innocent.
Those of you who are parents are laughing because you know
it’s rarely that simple. Simply establishing who started it – whatever “it” is
– can take the better part of the day. And punishment isn’t so simple. Often,
the motivation for meanness is rooted in deeper hurts and fears. The child who
smashed her brother’s lego creation, for example, feels left out and is afraid
she’ll never be a part of her big brother’s world. As a mama who wants, first
and foremost, for my children to know they are precious and beloved, I can’t
just punish the crime. I need to change behavior in such a way that restores
the offending party to the fold.
Of course, this type of parenting takes time and wisdom, and
unfortunately, I’m only human. Often, while I’m comforting and restoring, the
offended party takes matters into its own hands. For example, the builder of
the now smashed legos might get tired of mommy talking and decide to establish
justice by punching his sister in the gut. Now, as a parent, I have an even
larger job. There are now two guilty parties: the one that was mean in the
first place, and the one that didn’t trust me to finish the job correctly.
This past year, my own life was turned upside down. A
betrayal, either by someone close to me or another person I don’t even know,
destroyed everything I’d worked on for years. Worse, I don’t know -and probably
never will – anything near the whole story. In the very real grief that
followed, I found myself fantasizing revenge, but I could never figure out
where that revenge should be directed. Was the person I don’t even know the
liar? Or the person I know and want to believe, but who has shown me that
honesty isn’t a priority. I would go out for mental health runs, and as I
replayed possible revenge scenarios in my mind, it would literally feel like
someone kicked me in the chest. Four or five mile runs became one or two. My
fight for my own justice was literally draining the strength from my body.
One night, as I dug into a book outlining the impact of our
thought lives on our bodies, a single truth jumped off the page. “Maybe your
prayers aren’t being answered because the sin of unforgiveness is separating
you from God.”
The sin of unforgiveness.
It feels unfair, almost. To be a victim first, and then
condemned because you’re angry about it.
But the more I read about unforgiveness and how it sabotages
our minds and bodies, the more I realized that forgiveness wasn’t what I
thought it was. It wasn’t, for example, hunkering down to let people walk all
over me. And it wasn’t pretending that what other people did wasn’t right.
Rather, forgiveness means handing over my right to fight for
justice – literally handing off that burden that had been crushing me
everywhere I went – and letting God pick it up. As I sat there – in the tub, no
less – I could hear a voice say, “How’s the revenge thing working out for you?
Have you managed to get any justice? Why don’t you let me fight for you instead?”
Forgiveness means acknowledging that we mess up, big time,
and we want that grace and mercy. We want to be restored. God is asking me to
hand over my right to fitting revenge so that He can seek restoration of all
parties. I don’t know what that will look like, or if I’ll even see evidence of
it this side of heaven, but I do not that the battle is not mine to fight. The
burden was simply too heavy.
When I made that decision to hand my unforgiveness over to
God, I felt literal, immediate peace. I did feel lighter. Of course, very
quickly I found myself presented with another situation where I had to
forgive…and another…and another. I’ve become quite the regular in my war room,
handing over my hurts and my battles again and again.
I don’t have the big picture. I can’t say that God swooped
down and struck down my enemies. Of course, His goal for them is restoration,
too. His timing is not my own.
What I can tell you is that the peace of stepping into God’s
obedience was worth it. I wasn’t getting anywhere on my own. It’s time to let
him fight these battles for me.
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