Forgive and Forget.

So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
Romans 8:12-13 (ESV)

Translations. How many have we gone through and how many will there be? When I was in elementary school, we had the Good News Bible. I enjoyed the featureless faces of the illustrations. I remember the RSV and then I really learned to like the NIV and then I requested a special Bible as a gift and didn’t consider that it would be an ESV. Was there a choice? And I don’t care for it. I don’t like the language. I read a children’s version during Sunday School. The one that the lector read from in church on Sunday wasn’t the same as the one in the pew Bible. And sometimes in Bible Study, you just hope a certain someone doesn’t read because their translation is always different from everyone else’s. UGH!

Anyway, it was suggested I read Romans 8. I’ll just give in and complain. It’s so circular that it drives me nuts. Absolutely batty. If a person was speaking like this to me, I would turn the sound off. It’s like, “would you just get to the point already?”

I’ve got nothing.

I’m empty.

I’m going to tackle the last three together. And I suppose I could throw in a couple of others as well.

What it comes down to is abandonment. I felt abandoned. It pretty typical that children of divorce feel this way whether they can articulate it or not. How are you supposed to feel when the very people who are there to protect you, leave.

At some point you have to forgive them and accept that they are only human also. That they are hurting and simply trying to survive.

God has tried to show me time and time again that He is the One, the One and Only. I can depend upon Him and He will never leave me. He wants me to place my trust in Him. When everyone else fails, He is still there. Always.

And everyone else has failed. Failed. Sometimes the very people who should lead you to a closer relationship with God manage to drive a deep wedge in between instead.

There have been times when I have cried out and there have been times that I have lashed out. There have been times that I prayed and there have been times that I have been silent.

And I’m stuck. I’m not growing and it’s an uncomfortable place. Unfortunately, I keep turning elsewhere. To myself and my own intelligence. To my books. To my family or “friends”. To those that I’ve been raised to believe can lead me. But I need to go to God instead.

What I want to know is how does someone give themselves fully to Christ? How do you surrender? How does He become your one and only Love? How? I don’t get it? I don’t know what it looks like? I’m dying for someone to show me. And perhaps it simply looks different for different people.

I swear there is one person that looks and feels like the real thing. But it won’t look the same for me.

Yes, I’m angry and righteously so for the things that were done to me or happened to me that traumatized me. There are people who have suffered worse. It is sin. The sins of the father carried unto the future generations. The sins of centuries.

But they have been covered. Once for all. Time to move on.

“…go, and from now on sin no more.”
John 8:11b (ESV)