A "Milk" Revelation

I love to write about faith. Right up there with parenting, my relationship with God is perhaps my favorite reflection.

I haven't written much on faith lately because I feel like I've been subsisting on a lot of "milk" in my quiet times. Sometimes as far as I get is, "I have Jesus in my heart, I'm not going to Hell," because there are about a million things I hope I do differently in 2015. If I could wake up January 1st a different person, that is acceptable progress to me.

Last night, the "milk" was no exception. This is a "milk revelation," I am sorry to inform you, but it substantially changed me.

I was praying for myself- if I'm honest. For HELP. God, I need so much grace. The other day in church I was worshiping and telling myself I'm pretty sure I'm not going to Hell. I reminded myself that there exists an entire slew of religious people that don't do half of the things I do to capture God's heart, which in itself is pretty religious, and again I feared eternal damnation. I hate religion.

Fast forward to last night I was having a discussion with God about my many failures, and I'm not saying that He was confirming them back to me but just a quiet Presence there to listen and if all goes well, offer me earth-shattering wisdom to conquer my personal setbacks. I was telling him about someone very special to me, someone that I desperately want to please and I find myself falling short time and time and time again. You can say that my single mission is to please God and not man, but if you are married you understand that part of serving God is serving your spouse- and not in a subservient way, let's not make mountains out of mole hills. Here I am, asking God to help me please be a better wife. Help me die to myself. Help me not live and die by my feelings. Help me not love him so much. Help me not hate him so much. Help me. Help me. Help me.

Paul and I are in a weird season. I don't have the paper space to go into it, but just know that we're not separating, but forging, rather. I think marrying and divorcing are opposite processes, but make no mistake, both can be painful. Neither of us are in an abusive situation so we choose the process that will not cost our children millions of dollars in therapy and generational setbacks, K?

Where were we? Oh, yes. HELP. God whispers, "Have you forgiven him?"

Forgiveness is the cornerstone of nearly every deliverance and since I have been through inner healing and shame healing several times, you can believe that I have forgiven a number of perpetrators who were downright careless with my hapless heart. The need to forgive has sometimes flowed from me like a rushing rapid, and other times I have held a "how to forgive" guide in my hands and trembled as I read word for word, "I FORGIVE {insert name}" When God asked if I had forgiven Paul, I immediately thought yes. I mean, of course. We have been through marriage counseling. We have been to marriage conferences. We have RIDDEN IN THIS RODEO. Then I heard God ask, "Did you forgive him this morning?"

That was it. All of the sudden the revelation just fell from the air in my quiet room and I could just feel God's eyes on me, searching my heart as I thought about my morning, and my day, and my week.

Did I forgive him this morning....I think the answer is, no. I'm going to go with, no. 

But I wasn't really mad at him this morning....except when he said "such and such" and it reminded me of something he said yesterday that hurt my feelings...which reminded me of this big, fat hairy problem that won't go away...that's leftover from 5 years ago, that I'm pretty sure I forgave him for last year. 

Kris Valloton has a one liner that goes like this, "Forgiveness restores the standard." That means, when you forgive someone, you have no right to judge them based on what you forgave them for. What I felt like God was showing me was that forgiveness is not a verbal one-liner. Forgiveness far surpasses a choice to read a paper that says "I forgive..." Sometimes that is all we can do, and I believe God honors it. What I also believe, while we are talking about "milk revelations," is that living a life of "meaty Christianity" is having a lifestyle of forgiveness, therefore an inability to operate out of offense. If you are feeling the weight of impossibility, just know that while God sympathizes with our humanity He is also deeply involved and interested in our process. We're going to need grace for this.

I heard Father whisper also "70 x 7" and then in my head at 11:30 pm I counted my fingers until I had the proper number, and decided that I have actually forgiven my husband that many times, at least. With all eyes on me, I realized that this is more than something we do, but a condition of the heart. Since I had heard 70 x 7, I was compelled to read the scripture today and saw that Jesus quotes it before referring to the "parable of the unforgiving servant." If you haven't read it (Matthew 18:23ish), basically a wealthy king forgives his servant of an outrageous debt and then the servant refuses to forgive one of his servants for a minuscule debt. Then it goes onto say...I know you don't want to hear it....but stay with me, the King sends the servant to be tortured until he can pay his debt back. So while I said that we need grace to live a lifestyle of forgiveness and that's true, the real secret is to understand the depths of depravity that we have been forgiven of. God has pardoned us far more than we will ever pardon another. Speaking of a lifestyle of forgiveness, that is the life Jesus lived towards His followers. That is in essence the prophetic ministry, to see others how God sees them. To forgive others, as God forgives them. Every morning, His mercies are new, and ours should be as well. I remember in Firestarters someone once said, "I am grateful for a second chance" and our teacher corrected this recovering drug addict, "You mean, you are grateful for another first chance?" That is God's heart. Oh, praise Him.

I made the decision to forgive Paul, not even for wronging me, but for being different than me. Once I did that, I realized that it wasn't even about him, but ME. Then I saw that learning to live a lifestyle of forgiveness is not going to be about the other person 99% of the time but what I choose to do in my own heart. After this, I rolled over in bed and wrapped my arms around-seriously- the greatest, earthly blessing in my life, and kissed, kissed, kissed his face all over, and apologized for being such a flop of a wife. He assured me I wasn't, and then apologized for being a flop of a husband. I assured him there was no way he could ever be that. Then we kissed some more. And I decided, again, that Jesus is pretty much, hands down, the smartest person I know.