The Gift of Forgiveness

I grew up in a religious household. I was always performing and trying to do the right thing from childhood through my teenage years. I was famously known for being a goody two shoes. 

The funny thing about performance is the harder I tried, the more invisible I felt. 

By my college years, my home life had unraveled. I finally reached the point where I thought, If following all these rules to earn love feels like this, then I'm done. I walked away from a conditional god of striving.

After many poor decisions between the ages of 18 to 22, choices that still grieve me at times. I met Jesus at rock bottom, not through religion but through relationship.

For the first time in my life, I experienced true grace and mercy...things "good girls" never really experience in their aim of perfection. 

I still struggle with forgiving myself. Some times I look back and wonder, Who was that Ashley? But I also know I could never have experienced the freedom only Christ offers without first experiencing his grace. He undeservingly restored me back to my rightful place because of His love.

Today, I'm living a life more beautiful than I ever imagined, and it all flows from that place of grace and mercy.

As my relationship with the Lord grew, I began to see His commands differently.

They were no longer a checklist for becoming a "good girl." Instead, I realized His laws, boundaries, and commandments are expressions of a loving Father's heart. They're given for our protection and our flourishing, much like a parent creates boundaries to keep their children safe.

I stopped reading Scripture through the lens of earning God's love and began reading it through the lens of a Father who already loved me. His call to "be holy, because I am holy" wasn't an impossible standard to gain His approval. It was an invitation to become more like Him because I already belonged to Him.

Here I am now at 41, still learning the depths of God's love through forgiveness. 

Jesus tells us in Matthew 6:14–15 that if we forgive others, our Heavenly Father will forgive us.

For years, that passage felt like an ultimatum. If I don't forgive, then I can't be forgiven. If I can't be forgiven, then I won't go to heaven.

But I've come to believe it's so much more beautiful than that.

Jesus is giving us a gift, one that is double fold, 

                                                                 a gift of freedom.

Forgiveness isn't primarily for the person who hurt me. It's for me! It's choosing to no longer stay emotionally tied to the person or the pain that wounded me.

One of my biggest hurdles through trauma therapy has been forgiveness. I hold onto things tightly, almost believing that if I keep those grievances close, they'll somehow protect me from being hurt again.

But it's truly the opposite. 

Unforgiveness doesn't protect me.

It imprisons me.

Lack of forgiveness holds me back to living fully.

For a long time, I thought Christianity taught that forgiving someone meant turning the other cheek in the sense of becoming a doormat. That forgiveness meant allowing people to continue hurting me.

It's so far from truth.

I've been reading Forgive for Good by Dr. Fred Luskin, and he writes that forgiveness is "the decision to free ourselves from the personal offense and blame that keep us stuck in a cycle of suffering."

That definition changed something for me.

Forgiveness is not forgetting. In fact, we shouldn't forget what happened because wisdom learns from the past.

Forgiveness is also not reconciliation.

Reconciliation means rebuilding a relationship with someone who has hurt you. Forgiveness simply means making peace with the painful part of your past so it no longer controls your present. You can forgive someone completely and still decide that a relationship with them is no longer healthy.

The dictionary defines forgiveness as a conscious, voluntary choice to release resentment, bitterness, and the desire for revenge toward someone who has harmed you. It's an internal process that frees you from the grip of your past, not an excuse for someone else's behavior.

Look at what grows in the soil of unforgiveness: resentment, bitterness, malice. Those are very opposite of the fruit of the spirit. They quietly become stumbling blocks to our lives.

When forgiveness creates space in my heart, I have more capacity to love others well. I think more clearly. I feel lighter. I become more creative. I walk with greater confidence. I begin living as the woman God created me to be instead of the woman still carrying yesterday's wounds. 

Because He has forgiven us, we are able to forgive. We get to walk in His freedom.

Forgiveness isn't simply about escaping judgment someday.

It's an invitation to experience freedom today.

It allows us to become more fully who the Father already sees us to be.

This week, forgiveness has looked like setting new boundaries. Ironically, those boundaries have made forgiveness easier, not harder. Once I no longer felt responsible for protecting myself through resentment, I found I could finally let go.

The freedom that has followed has lifted so much fog from my life. I have more peace. More capacity to love. More room for community. More joy.

Maybe that's what Jesus was inviting us into all along.

Not another burden to carry or another rule to follow, but the freedom His perfect love can give.

The kind of freedom that lets us walk more fully into the people God created us to be.