Joyce Meyer recently preached about how silence feeds our fears, our regrets, and our sorrows. She said one of the best things we can do is talk to someone about our pain, get it out in the open, and not suffer silently and alone. For me personally, I need help with things in my life I wouldn’t dare tell anyone; rejection and judgement are too painful and all too familiar. So what do I do? I take a leap of faith and pray that love, trust, and acceptance will catch my fall.
I have come to the painful realization that I am allowing my past to eat at my soul. There’s no denying it or putting it off to deal with another day. I have tried to just “move on” from my past, but I have been unsuccessful, and my past has latched on to my present life for as long as I can remember, so my life never really changes for the better. At least not for long.
I am so ashamed and embarassed by things I have done–hurting enemies as well as those I love with my words and actions, allowing others to hurt me because I don’t have enough respect for myself, looking like a fool after one too many drinks one too many times, working and living below my potential because I don’t think I deserve any better–it all gets to be too much.
So I change everything around me. I exchange one boyfriend for another, I get new friends, I move from college to college and from city to city. But the one thing that I’ve never really tried to change, at least not consistently and long-term, is me. I can’t “move on” from me. At the end of every broken relationship, every family feud, and every drunken night, is me. I must find forgiveness for my past, contentment with my present, and high hopes for my future within myself. I don’t have the slightest idea of how to do this.
What I do know is this: the one person I can always go to, the one person who loves me unconditionally, no matter what I have done or have yet to do, is Jesus. So I go before him today and I boldly ask him for the grace and mercy that only he can provide. And I ask him to open my heart, bitter and broken, so that I may experience his wonderful grace and mercy. And I wait, expectantly.
