Breaking Free

 

"...underneath heartache, pain,

suffering, loss, bitterness,

fear, anger, resentment,

and sadness, there is simply a

deep-rooted desire to be

loved and accepted"

 

I've had the opportunity to talk to many people over the past few weeks as they've shared their stories and their personal struggles in life. Every story was completely different, yet there was a common theme among all of them. Each person was shackled by chains that kept them from experiencing the freedom that Christ delivered to them when He died on the cross. Each person was held in bondage created by their own inability to let go of the very things that have immobilized them.

I've spent many hours writing and praying for answers, for insight, and for a deeper understanding that could explain the pain that plagues the lives of so many. What causes brokenness? Why do we let things get between us and who God created us to be? How do our hearts become so hardened? Why do we push away people we love? How do we become shackled at the feet, unable to move forward on the path that God laid out for our lives?

Through my own struggles, I've found that underneath heartache, pain, suffering, loss, bitterness, fear, anger, resentment, and sadness, there is simply a deep-rooted desire to be loved and accepted. Think about it. That's all any of us really want.

But....then we live life - a life that is filled with experiences of people hurting us, abusing us, judging us, rejecting us, and abandoning us. We begin carrying this pain with us everywhere we go like a backpack filled with heavy rocks. The heaviness of it all weighs us down until we can barely move through life anymore, so much that we can't even see the goodness and blessings that are right in front of us any longer. Simply put, we miss out on life.

Many of us can even remember the names of childhood friends who picked on us, betrayed us, and broke our trust. We remember our first heartbreak and the very moment we told ourselves we will never let someone that close again.

We spend a lifetime building walls that separate us from others and that prevent us from really experiencing life. Imagine putting on another layer of clothing for every time you got hurt. With every layer, you'd become more and more disconnected from the world around you. It is true that it will hurt less if someone slugs you. But the reality is that those walls do not discriminate, because it is also true that you will no longer be able to feel the embrace of a warm, genuine hug of a friend anymore either.

As time goes on, our backpacks get fuller and heavier. Life becomes more about survival and less about living. The pain becomes so heavy that it causes even more pain. Before we know it, there are so many layers of hurt and subsequent layers of protection that we don't even know where our own thoughts, feelings, and actions come from anymore. Then another vicious cycle begins because eventually the moment comes when we realize we've become someone we hate and we don't even know how we got there, adding even more to the backpack in the form of guilt and shame, followed inevitably by denial because obviously we prefer to avoid that which causes yet even more pain.

I spoke to a young woman recently who had been battling addiction for years. She's already lost custody of her child and recently found herself in jail, where she was forced to detox. When she got out, she shared her experience with me and my heart just broke. When I saw her...this frail, broken girl...all I could see was everything that had led her to this place in her life. It was so clear -  she too simply wanted to be loved and accepted. Yet, here she was fighting for her life - and not just her physical life, but the life that God has for her. She was sober for the first time in a long time and she talked about having the ability to see things and feel things she couldn't before when addiction consumed her every waking thought. She wanted a new life. However, the more she saw, the more she felt and all those feelings came rushing back like a flood - all the feelings she had been numbing for years. We talked for a long time and I saw a spark - a tiny spark of hope despite the overwhelming mountain this young woman would have to climb.

Sadly, within 24 hours, the pain had become unbearable and she was back on heroin. My heart sank to the floor when I heard and I became frustrated and angry with the sin of the world. We all know someone who has been there - someone who has been so beaten down that there's just no fight left. The reality is, she is just a girl who had been hurt, abused, rejected, and just wanted to belong to something or someone - she just wanted to be loved and accepted like all of us do - and now she is owned by a drug that controls her body and her mind.

Also, I received an email from a man who had such a bad experience at a church once that he hasn't felt comfortable going since, despite his love for Christ. When he needed help the most, he was judged and forsaken. He has held on to those heavy, painful "rocks" for almost two decades. He too is shackled by the hurt that he experienced and has been unable to let go of the pain and move forward.

The dichotomy here is that as long as he continues to hold on to the pain that he experienced when his brothers and sisters in Christ did not extend grace and compassion to him, he remains unable to extend that same grace and compassion to others - starting with the very people who hurt him.

Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye. (Matthew 7:3-5)

As broken people we do this. We become so consumed by what hurts us that we don't even realize we are doing the same thing to others. We experience judgment, and then we judge those who judge us. I'll say that again. "we judge those who judge us". Ironic when you think about it, huh?  We feel rejected and then our love for others becomes highly restricted because most of our focus is on ourselves so we don't get hurt again. In our pain, we become disconnected and even selfish. And we are oblivious because we quickly transition from gospel-centered righteousness to self-righteousness. We have such a deep-rooted desire to be loved and accepted that we will often become everything but love the moment things get uncomfortable.

"Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth." (1 Corinthians 13:4-8)

The inability to let go - to genuinely and whole heartedly forgive those by whom we've been hurt - is ultimately what keeps us in bondage. And as long as we are stuck in that place, we are not able to operate in our full Christ-centered capacity. We ultimately end up becoming those same people who hurt us and placed heavy rocks in our backpacks - only now we are passing those heavy burdens on to other people and making them suffer the wrath of everyone who has ever hurt us in our lifetime.

Freedom comes with forgiveness and forgiveness comes from letting go, knowing that when we let go, we simply open up a space for Christ to fill. So, how do we do this? How do we break these chains that are holding us in captivity?

For me, it helps to consider that we are not alone in any of this. We are all broken people walking around with backpacks full of heavy of rocks. We've all been hurt and we've all hurt others. We share these things in common - every one of us.

If you want to experience freedom, consider this. We are all created in the likeness and image of God (Genesis 1:27). That means none of us are worth any more or any less than another. Secondly, we all fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). We are all sinners. We all make mistakes. And, all sin is equal with the penalty for sin being death (Romans 6:23). So in reality, we are all a hot mess!

But because God loves us all so much, even as sinners, He sent His son to die for us in order to pay the price for all our transgressions in full (John 3:16), (Romans 5:8). God's grace is sufficient for us (2 Cor. 12:9). Through God's grace, we receive forgiveness for our sins and because we were forgiven first, we are in a space where we can extend that same grace and forgiveness to others...because we know what it's like to be imperfect and still be loved. We know what it's like to fall short every single day and still be forgiven. If we truly operate in these truths, it is a very humbling experience and in this space God can work to soften our hearts so that we can leave our backpacks behind and find peace.

^"Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you." (Ephesians 4:32)


Please share your experiences of forgiveness and the freedom you experienced in it, as well as where you struggle with it. As I said, we are not alone in this and your comments can be a blessing to someone else...Remember, we all struggle with letting go, and we often struggle to even find what we are holding on to...