One of my favourite things about God is how he will gently and comically remind us of our... humanity... when pride starts blowing us up like a Pinata!
The other day I had an amazing experience. I struggle with forgiveness towards certain people. I am not talking about people who forget to pay me back that $20 I spotted them. I am talking about a handful of people who have really reached their hands into the core of my being and twisted my heart until it pumped tears. You know... THOSE people. We all have a couple of them.
One such couple completely changed my life. I was an extremely young Christian - I think I had known Him maybe 18 months. It had been a whirlwind ride! In that time I had been put into leadership within 6 months, had completely failed, tried again, and this time had experienced a mini revival with the youth. Somewhere in there my pastor's changed and the new pastor had a little bit of an agenda.
This pastor decided that I was possessed with around seven demons. I can't remember them all but two that spring to mind were the old favourite "Jezabel" and ... nope can't remember... something basically meaning rebellion. Anyway. In retrospect I think he probably just wanted me to leave his church but I of course decided I was called there and wasn't going to budge. I endured countless "counselling" sessions which were just weird and a little frightening. I would beg him to "cast out" the demons so I could get on with things but to no avail. It got to the point where I became very isolated. Church members would cross the street to avoid me, spit on the ground, yell abuse. Somebody I had actually led to the Lord did this which was particularly hard. My flatmate was told that he had to move out from us "heathens". I was banned from most church meetings, prayer meetings, home groups. The pastor would interrupt a preach from the platform to "pray against my demons". Crazy stuff. Yet I stoically and bravely remained thinking I was proving some sort of dumb point.
Eventually I managed to convince the hero in me that it was time to walk away and I peeled myself away from the church I had loved. I spent at least the next 10 years licking my wounds. It was almost like post traumatic stress syndrome. I lost all respect and trust for leadership, became a bit of a hermit and decided that ministry was NOT for me. Everytime I heard anyone preach on the demonic I would freeze up and get the shakes expecting them to waver a long bony finger at me any minute and blow my cover. I avoided prophets like the plague - what if I really had been possessed and they decided to say something?
I hated this pastoring couple with a passion. I raged with God - how could you let them do that to me? Can't you smite them or something? A little bit of pain... remove them from ministry. Anything really...
It must have been about five years later that I heard through the grapevine that the pastors wife had gone blind. I was horrified! Did I cause this? Was this God protecting me? Oops. I didn't mean it Lord. I felt terrible. Sure I hated them but I didn't really want them to suffer on my account. I started to beg God to NOT get revenge for me... or at least not to make it so serious... Just slap them a little perhaps or talk to them so that they work out what they did and apologise... but don't actually hurt them!
Finally I found some leadership that I trusted and who were very kind and understanding - Dave and Jen Von Blanckensee, who are like my Mum and Dad in Christ. They nursed me back to some semblance of health with a lot of patience and far too many abusive emails from me! I remember clearly them being quite surprised at the depth of my pain after so much time had passed - which kind of helped me wonder if it was time to move on.
So I began to try and forgive these people knowing to some extent that this was the key to my healing. I don't even know how many times I tried to forgive these people. It was certainly nothing I felt. It was just words out of obedience. But if I heard their names, or heard of their exploits all the old anger would rise up like a dragon inside of me. But I kept doing it and doing it and doing it. I found myself trusting Dave and Jen and trusting others and started to allow others to love me again.
Recently I had a very challenging experience - the final layer of forgiveness. My best friend whom I adore and only want good things for - rang me and told me she had been approached by her leadership who advised her that she had some spiritual nasties. My friend is amazing! There has not been one challenge that she hasn't overcome with a brilliant attitude. I admire her very much. I wanted to yell and scream at her to run for the hills - that her leadership were crazy people and that she needed to get as far away from them as possible. My silly friend was actually listening to them, examining her heart and willing to do anything to deal with anything that was interfering with her growth. Silly friend. Nell to the rescue - I would set that straight quick smart and thank God for my experience in this matter. But very quietly God told me to butt my nose out and that if I REALLY wanted good things for her - that I would shut up. Course I queried Him on that... That really you Lord? Don't you want me to warn her and rush in and save her? (Yep still a hero). The same quiet voice told me that I was too damaged and unstable in this area to be trusted to so much as whisper any form of advice. That the level of my bitterness was toxic and poison. I got out of the conversation as quick as I could and went and sulked.
A couple of weeks down the track and I have to admit that God was right.. sigh. Its funny - she rang me the other night and like a sparrow on glass egg shells she very gently tried to tell me how terrible what happened to me was, and that if I had better leadership around me... and while she is saying this God, in His incredibly loving way said to me...
"You know Nell... I need YOU to recognise YOU'RE wrong in this matter. You did NOT respond to them with an open heart, with a servants heart - with a heart that is willing to do anything to be closer to Me." This rang very true to me and I very quietly apologised to Him - and Boom.. the forgiveness finally came for this Pastor and his wife.
Twenty years I have held on to that bitterness. All this time I thought I had to forgive them. But I needed to face some stuff about myself and then forgive myself.
Now we get to the hypocrite thing. Hang in there if you have gotten this far! Now all the above is pretty cool and makes for a great blog! I must admit I was so elated over finally being able to forgive these people and how incredibly clever and open to God I was and how wonderful the blog would be! I felt pretty damn cool!
Hang in there. You need some background. Some of you may know I have a child with Autism. He struggles with friendships and has rarely gotten to go to school or formed relationships. A few years ago my neighbour, who happened to be an SSO, had a son around the same age and she encouraged Zech to come and play. It was wonderful and he loved this boy and spent many hours there. It was the first time he had really had a friend and I was elated. She talked us into letting Zech come to the school where she worked which I did. Not long after starting at school he had some pretty spectacular meltdowns - as kids with Autism do. She came to me and said that Zech could not be friends with her Josh anymore and was not welcome at her house. I was so hurting for my boy. He was devastated and could not understand and spiraled into depression. He felt ashamed, gave up on school and began watching endless hours of You-Tube where he would pretend the people were his friends.
I will be honest. Touch my kids and I will turn into a lioness. I wanted to shred this woman. I wanted to pour acid on her shiny car. I would spend many a sleepless nights dreaming of setting of fireworks in her backyard, or stealing her wheelie bin, or burying rotten meat where she couldn't find it. My bitterness affected the kids and my daughter ended up throwing eggs at her windows (shhhhh don't tell) which horrified me. But how could someone, worse someone who worked with kids with autism, be so horrible to someone with autism. It didn't make sense to me at all. We moved house as soon as I could yet its a small town and occasionally I still see her and rage.
Tonight I had a dream. In the dream all was forgiven and we were great friends again. I woke up and immediately pushed that feeling of forgiveness away and pictured pouring acid on her bonnet - which always helps me feel better. I was stopped in my tracks by a quiet chuckle from God. All my pride about my recent amazing 20 year forgiveness popped like a pinata at a 6 year old;s birthday party and I realised what a big fat pride filled hypocrite I am. LOL. Good thing that God loves me anyway!
Back to the drawing board!
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