Let it Go.

Something I've struggled a lot with is forgiveness. 

 I get hurt quite easily and I guess you could say I am a very sensitive person. That's not to say that some of my pain isn't 'real'. I've been through a lot in 19 years. A lot of people have hurt me deeply.  The thing is, I almost never confront the person who has hurt me. I just bury it deep inside and push those emotions away.  I'll never forget how that person hurt me; I'll never just let it go because of fear that it will happen again.

I hold onto that hurt and I feel like I'm a prisoner to my own pain.  

I just need to let it go.

I've heard it plenty of times.

"Come on, it was a simple misunderstanding, just forget about it"

"Amber, Just  GET OVER IT already!"

So I begin to think..."

"That person really hurt me. How can I ever forgive them?"

Then, I'd hear it again. This time it's in my head:

"Just let it go."

"but how? How can I just let something like that go? I get letting the simple things go, but those deep dark emotions of fear and abandonment? How can I ever forget let alone forgive that?"

Then, an email arrived in my mailbox. 

My daily devotional email from Joel Osteen read :

Everyone has been hurt, offended, betrayed and mistreated at some point. Sometimes those wounds are small and easy to move past, but other times, they are deep and take time to heal. The important thing is that we choose to forgive so that we can open the door to God’s forgiveness and healing in our own lives. Forgiveness is such a powerful tool. Forgiveness sets you free and draws you closer to your heavenly Father. One of the first things my mother did when she found out that she had stage four cancer of the liver was to ask the Lord to search her heart for any unforgiveness. She didn’t want anything to block her prayers for God’s healing. And now more than twenty years later, she still has a perfectly clean bill of health.

Whenever you pray, invite the Lord to search your heart. Choose to forgive anyone that has hurt you. As you walk in forgiveness, you’ll experience His hand of blessing in ways you never thought possible, and you will move forward in the abundant life He has in store for you

God can be blunt sometimes, can't he?

That's when it all clicked. 

I was holding to my pain, and I had all of this negativity within me. It was holding me back. In fact, it was stopping me from developing friendships and relationships. It was preventing me from truly moving forward with my life because I was still stuck in the past. 

 I still wanted vengeance, but it wasn't mine.

"Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you."
-Ephesians 4:31-32