I have been struggling a lot lately as you know. Forgiveness is a difficult thing for me, and lack of it is one of the most prevalent sins in my life that keeps cropping up again and again. Call it pride, selfishness, whatever you want, I don’t want to forgive someone who has hurt me. Well, today I wasn’t feeling very well, so I stayed home when Travis went to worship. As I have written before, we haven’t been to our church since mid-November, but we’ve been worshiping at another church in the area whose pastor is a friend of Travis. I have been praying earnestly since last night and throughout the morning that God help me with this area of unforgiveness in my life. I’ve been struggling with not wanting to forgive people at church, not wanting to forgive my husband for the role he played in what happened, not wanting to forgive those in authority who do not seem to be protecting us in the way that I want to dictate for them. You see the hypocrisy in my assumptions here. I know it. And add to this the crushing weight of unforgiveness for just about every hurt that has occurred in eight years of marriage. Those of you who are married know what I mean by that – your spouse has the capacity to hurt you in ways that no one else can, and Satan is very good at inserting himself into our marriages and exacerbating those hurts. And I am very good at holding onto them. I’ve built a brick wall around my heart and I don’t let anyone in. That ends today, God willing. I’m terrified and feeling very unsafe, because that wall is what I’ve believed has kept me safe all of these years. It reminds me of the song “Rachel” by Lost and Found. Those of you who are long-time LCMSers will probably know it, especially if you’re part of the camp/university system.

But I don’t look at my situation as hopeless. God can tear down any wall He wants. When Jesus died, He tore the temple curtain in two. I read that this morning as I poured through Scripture. My parents bought us a Treasury of Daily Prayer last year and I have been sporadic in making use of it. It combines a daily set of Scripture readings with other Christian writings and also has other sections with various kinds of prayers and worship supplements. I pulled it out today and turned to the January 24th readings. Apparently today is the day for St. Timothy, and the readings included Psalm 131, Joel 3:1-21, and Romans 12:14-13:14. The Romans passage began with “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.” How is it that God always knows what we need to hear at any given time? It always amazes me how He can do that. Then there was a brief passage written by Valerius Herberger. I’ve never heard of this person but I’m sure a more learned theologian than me would know who he is. In the passage he wrote that “on the day of St. Timothy, the Gospel of John 15:9-16 is read.” Needless to say, I pulled out my Bible and turned there next.

⁹“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. ¹⁰If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love. ¹¹I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. ¹²My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. ¹³Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. ¹⁴You are my friends if you do what I command. ¹⁵I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. ¹⁶You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.” (Courtesy of Biblegateway.com)

I added the boldface to the two items that stood out for me. First, if you are a long-time reader of this blog (or guessed from the title of it), JOY is a big part of my life. Not the experience of it, per se, but learning to recognize it and experience it. It’s a lesson God has been teaching me in multiple ways. But then verse 13 nailed me. I’ve been so busy making sure that I don’t let other people hurt me that I forgot this truth: love is about self-sacrifice. I have been so unwilling to lay down my life for my husband, let alone anyone else. I know God forgives me for this. But I have been remiss in my duties as a wife in that I haven’t been willing to lay down my wants, my desires, my hurts and anger and even my needs for him. I spent more time thinking it over, how hard that is for me to do, and then God gently reminded me of what Jesus did on our behalf. He DIED. He went to a cross, suffering torment and anguish and DIED so that those who were beating him, mocking him, hurting him, could have life. They were essentially strangers, people that in his human walk he had no relationship with. Then think about the disciples who disowned him, from Peter to Judas and all through the ranks. Think about Paul, who persecuted and killed Christ’s followers. Think about you and me, who turn our backs on God every single day in our sinfulness. And yet Jesus still went through it all to die for every one of us. Who am I to withhold forgiveness, to build a wall of safety around my heart, to stay out of the mess of loving relationships, all in the name of self-preservation?

As I write this, I realize that I need to share all of this with my husband first. So if you see it, it won’t be immediately after I wrote it. I may not publish it at all. But I just had to write this down because of the profound wisdom that God has shared with me about all of this. I have no rights to being comfortable, being happy, having things my way or relishing my self-righteousness. I have the responsibility to lay down my life for my friend, my husband.