Recently I’ve been dealing with some junk. Some human junk. Because I’m human and we humans
So I have some junk.
Some of it is my own junk and some of it is junk that got tossed on me
from junky people that strolled through my life at some point. Recently in my counseling sessions I’ve had
to dig up and deal with some especially gross junk. This is junk that I had buried so deep and
had ignored for so long that it seriously stank up my world when I dragged it
out. Now, this particular junk is some
that I have because someone hurt me.
Someone I loved and trusted hurt me deeply.
This junk is especially cumbersome and the longer I hang on
to it the more it seems to spread and create mold and infection in other
otherwise junk free parts of my life. Now,
I could easily get rid of this junk. I’d
just have to, you know, forgive the person that has hurt me the most in my
life, no big deal, right? Wrong. There’s this war inside me where on one side
of the battlefield is this desperate desire for freedom and release from the
hurt of the memory and on the other side is this deep need for justice and
punishment for the hurter. And so I hold
tightly to my hatred and anger thinking that it somehow gives me control over the
junk.
Forgiveness is hard.
I think it’s the single hardest thing for us as humans to do. Why?
Because it requires us to relinquish our control. Not only that but quite honestly some part of
me believes that if I were to forgive that person for that thing I would be
saying that what they did was ok, that what they did is free from
punishment. This is a lie that I have subconsciously
and subtly bought into and while I grasp tightly to my control I am held
captive by it.
This week I was reading once again the account of Jesus’s crucifixion
in the gospels (Matthew 27, Mark 15, Luke, 23, and John 19). Crucifixion is still to this day considered
one of the most gruesome and torturous forms of execution and that’s just how
He died. Before Jesus even made it to
the cross he was extensively beaten to the edge of death, kept up for hours,
dehydrated and starved, mocked and stripped naked, and crowned with thorns (and
not little rose thorns either, big ole boys) that were beaten into His skull
with a rod. I mean no wonder they had to
have someone carry His cross for Him it’s amazing that He was even standing by
that point! Then after all that, that’s
when He faced the most excruciating form of death known to mankind.
One of my favorite verses is Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ, and it
is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So the life I now live in the
body, I live because of the faithfulness of the Son of God, who loved me and
gave himself for me.” I have often
been overwhelmed by the implications of this verse for me personally. That my screw ups, my sin, my failures, every
time I wasn’t enough to measure up to God’s perfect standard, were nailed to
that cross with Christ and that His perfection was credited to me—it’s
incredulous. When I think about that
verse this way I find myself heartbroken that Christ had to endure such
suffering on my behalf. That on its own
is an unfathomable love. But… this week
I had a new revelation.
As I read the verse again this week I found my mind
wandering back to my junk. Inside me surged
anger and hatred and bitterness and I began to think of all the things that
junky person deserved to have happen to them, including but not limited to: being
tortured, beaten, and having their reputation ruined. And then… I had a breakdown. I had a breakdown because a thought sneaked
through my mind and I’m sure it was God.
You mean like Christ
was tortured, beaten, and mocked?
It was then that I became truly aware, maybe for the first
time, that not only have I been crucified with Christ but so have the people
who have hurt me. I pictured that
person, that evil awful person who deserved punishment, there on that cross
dripping with blood limp and lifeless, and I wept. I wept not because I was sorry, but because
this was the first time I was happy to see Jesus hanging there on that
cross. My God… oh, my God, loved me so
much that He not only cleansed me of MY sin, but endured unimaginable pain so
that those who hurt me deeply would not go unpunished.
It doesn’t make sense.
I know. Then again, God’s never
really been One to do things how we would do them so I’m not surprised
much. So what does this mean for
us? Well, it means we are free to
forgive. It means that we can let go of
that hurt. It means that forgiving them doesn’t
mean they get away with it and Jesus has the scars to prove it. It means that God loves us more than people
hurt us and He’s willing to put it all on the line to prove that. It means that, once again, His grace is more dangerous
and extravagant than religion can contain.
I’m not going to lie to you and say that after this
realization all my junk is gone and I’ve completely forgiven the junk bringer
and life is all rainbows and unicorns now because that’s ridiculous. I’ve still got hurt to work through, but I’m
getting better at learning to rest and let Jesus do the work. A few weeks ago a friend of mine said to me, “People
talk about healing like it doesn’t leave scars.” Healing leaves scars. (Just ask doubting Thomas I hear he’s seen
some doosies). It’s ok to hurt. It’s ok to struggle. YOU ARE FREE TO STRUGGLE. But you are also free to have healing and wholeness
and Jesus has all that you could ever want or need. I know because I have a lot of junk and I
have a lot of Jesus and you know what?
Jesus is pretty great at junk clean up.
So may you hurt. May
you drag your junk out of that dark corner and be stunned by it’s stink. May you cry and breakdown and be empty. From that emptiness may you be overwhelmed by
Christ’s infinite fullness. May you experience
the audacity of Christ’s extreme forgiveness and love for you. And from it may you find the strength to
forgive those who have hurt you and find that it sets free in you more than you
thought was held captive.
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