Have you ever felt like a cloud has just hovered over you? Or like a weight is pressing down on you?

I felt that this week.

Which was odd because things for me are relatively really good right now compared to the last couple of years. As I've been on a healing journey (but this time healing in Jesus), I've been really peaceful. I've finally started to remember what it's like to be in the favor of the Lord and to feel REST. To feel content.

So it surprised me when the last couple of days I've felt overwhelmingly sad and heavy. My Spirit has been completely unsettled.

I decided to go to the gun range and let it all out before church tonight (before those of you who hate guns close out of this, let me at least share this story first) and yall.. I honestly did terrible. Like REALLY bad! I was all over the place. I was getting super frustrated because I may not be the best shooter in the world but I'm a relatively good shooter and have been going weekly to get better and stay on top of my shot. The funny thing was, I know myself and after a while, I recognized what was going on. Before the last year, I've practically had 15 years of bad habits when it comes to dealing with emotion and constantly burying problems, so it was pretty easy to recognize when my un-dealt with emotion was showing up in another area of my life.

In other words, I was clearly shooting from emotion which was evident by my target that had bullet holes on maybe every area of the page.

I remember getting in my car tonight and being like, "God, what in the world? What is wrong with me? Something has to be wrong because my emotions were clearly all over that page. Show me what's wrong, Lord. Show me what it is that I've been trying to bury."

Ha.

Any of you ever ask God to show you something? And then He did and you were like... "I wasn't readdyyy!" Haha, because that was me tonight.

I pull up to church, run inside and join in on the worship. I sit down and get out my notes. We greet all of our friends and we're really close with our pastor (s/o Chris Seidman he's the goat) (lol he's probably also reading this right now and totally knows where this is going because he definitely saw me during the sermon) so we all look up and smile excited to hear what he has to say. He then starts to dive into the second part of our series that is dealing with offense and being offended. Tonight we specifically started to talk about forgiveness. As he starts in I immediately think to myself, "Oh this doesn't have to do with me because I'm not in any argument or have any issues with anyone but it'll be a good little reminder, ya know, a nice light message."

Ha ha. 

He starts to get deeper into the message and all of the sudden he brings up what the Lord says about forgiving an offense that was deliberate and undeserved. He continued on to talk about the fact that forgiveness is not an emotion but a choice. That it's ok to forgive someone even though you don't feel like it.

In the midst of this, I started to feel a knot in my stomach and thought I was going to be sick. My spirit started stirring like crazy and I started fidgeting and couldn't sit still and I felt myself starting to shut down and my feelings literally sprinting to bury themselves while at the same time trying to figure out what the heck was going on with me.

My pastor then goes on to say, "Even when we don't feel like forgiving, sometimes we can forgive as an act of submission to the Lord."

And this stopped everything inside of me.

This hit me for 2 reasons:

1. This was important to me. Honoring the Lord with my actions is important to me. And He knows I definitely haven't always done a great job of it, but deep inside that has always been my greatest desire because He is fully and completely the only reason that I've made it this far in my life. There have been so many moments in my life where He has literally been my only strength, my only comfort, and my only hope.. He has shown me over and over again that He is there when no one else is, and for that, I will honor Him for the rest of my life.

2. But he used the word submission. And this caused the second reaction within me. This is a word that I've struggled with for many years. I've always recognized the importance of it especially as I've gotten older to where marriage is all around me and if you've grown up in church you've probably heard the verse about a wife submitting to her husband. I know it's biblical. But no matter how hard I try, that word sends a shiver down my spine. I've had a lot of men in my life, "God-fearing" "church going" well known and "adored in the community" men, want me to submit to them in ways that absolutely are not of the Lord. One specifically used that word multiple times in his dealings with me. And when I didn't submit and when I pushed back, one decided to manipulate me and beat me down emotionally over and over and over and over again until my heart was so broken and destroyed that I literally could not find the strength to fight him anymore.. and the other one who knew I wasn't going to budge drugged me so that I had absolutely no say about the submission of my body.

Now I don't say this to get you to feel sorry for me, trust me, I know people who have experienced much worse. But I say that so that you can fully understand the significance of this moment for me.

At that moment tonight at church, the Lord hit me hard. And if that wasn't enough, as I sat there frozen and unable to move, my pastor continued on about forgiveness and straight up said,

"All of the offenses...

the person that raped you...

the person that abused you..

the person that divorced you,

the person that .." and continued on down a list of offenses.

I lost it.

I felt naked. Like everything on the inside, all my emotions and all my scars were exposed and suddenly I realized.. this is it. This is what the Lord has been placing on my heart all week..

I haven't forgiven these people.

And I sure as hell don't want to. 

I left the church that night and just sat in my car for a moment, silent. Just listening to the rain come down on my windshield.

One of the last things my pastor said replayed in my head over and over again.

He said, "Jesus knows. The thing is you don't have to be alone in dealing with your pain of an offense. He's been there. He knows what it's like to be on the receiving end of a malicious attack for doing absolutely nothing wrong. He knows what it's like to be innocent and to be beaten down by those He loves. He knows what it feels like to be wounded, to be betrayed by His people. He knows."

I'm not sure what it was about him saying this, but something changed in me. This was not new information that I was hearing. But the Lord used him at that moment to pierce right through my soul.

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I love the Lord and He knows that, but we've been in a bit of a rough patch recently. I talk to Him every day and spend time with Him but I've talked to Him many times recently about the fact that I can tell that my heart has walls up when it comes to Him.. and I didn't know why or what to do about it. I still spend time with Him but that passion and that fire haven't been there recently. He's been close but I've also felt myself keeping Him at a distance. I've struggled to fully connect with Him again.

And what do ya know,

The minute Chris said those words.. those walls immediately fell. And I felt the Lord's arms wrap around me and hold me tight for the first time in a long time. 

I had felt the Lord by my side in every other area of my life, but I hadn't felt Him when it came to this. But something about the fact that He knew.. He knew what I was feeling.. He's been here more times then I can count, all my walls disappeared.

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Towards the end of the sermon, we talked about pain being a sign from your body that something is wrong and that you need to address it. We also talked about how until you address it, you can't fully forgive. That forgiveness moves you towards healing.

I'm listening to all this and at one point in the midst of tears I couldn't help but laugh for a second because I was like, "L O L God, I get it! I hear you loud and clear. I asked you what I wasn't dealing with and you very clearly gave me an answer" as I shook my head.

I hadn't forgiven them.

And I honestly didn't even realize it. I also didn't realize that it's kept me in bondage. It's quite literally held me down and kept me from feeling the full presence of the Lord, from feeling the fullness of His joy.

For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. -Matthew 6:14-15

So watch yourselves. “If your brother or sister sins against you, rebuke them; and if they repent, forgive them. Even if they sin against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you saying ‘I repent,’ you must forgive them.” -Luke 17:3-4

Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord -Acts 3:19

I don't know about you but I definitely am

not

a fan of satan having any hold on my life.

I am also at a point in life that for the love of all that's good, I do not want to be anywhere that the Lord is not because I'm tired and life is just not worth going through without the presence of the Lord. Being out of the Lord's peace is just not something I care for right now.

So it was made VERY clear to me tonight that I need to forgive some people.

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But let me be honest with y'all..

I'm not entirely sure how I'm gonna do it..

It's going to be really hard.

Like really really hard.

I straight up looked like this in the middle of the sermon all night.

It's going to take some time. And it's going to be an act of waking up every morning and claiming out loud that I forgive this person, over and over, multiple times a day until I believe it.

It's going to have to be a choice that I make..

But not out of my feelings..

Because if it was based on my feelings, in all honesty, I'd want them to

suffer

. I'd want them to hurt and to pay for what they did.. To know what it's like to feel what they did to me. And I can honestly tell you that I have never once felt that way about someone before in my life..

It's going to have to come out of my love for the Lord.

------

As I was listening to the rain in my car, I remember thinking, "Lord no. I'm not gonna do that, I can't do that. I don't want to forgive them, I'm not ready to let them off the hook. You know what I went through, you know what they did, it was horrible, I beat myself up forever.."

And somewhere in my Spirit in the midst of my arguing with the Lord, I heard a still, small voice say,

"They're mine, too."

I truly believe that the Lord wept for me the days that these things happened to me.

I believe that He wept for me during all the nights I cried myself to sleep,

during all the triggers and the breakdowns,

during all the confusion and the self-hatred

during all the nightmares and attacks of fear..

I know He wept for me.

I also know that He has wept for you too.

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(I'm not sure what all of you are going through tonight.. but what I do know is that the pain you're going through was never meant to be carried alone. What I do know is that the Lord is there, with you right now, ready to hold you and love you and protect you. Please don't stay away from Him any longer.)

-------

I know that revenge is the Lord's.. I know that there will be righteous consequences for those who did these things.

But tonight I was reminded that revenge was not mine to take. And that, I can handle. If there's one thing that I know, it's that the Lord does not take these offenses against His children lightly. He has His own justice that will be served.

But I was also reminded of this:

The people that did this...

they're also God's children. 

They're also loved by Him. 

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” -Mark 12:30-31

This is

not

easy for me.

I've had a lot of tests in my life and this is honestly going to be one of the hardest ones. And that's coming from someone who literally has probably been TOO forgiving all of her life.

But what I do know is that I love the Lord.

I trust Him.

And I definitely trust His plan for my life way more than mine because we both know my plans can take me to ugly depths real quick! Haha.

In all honesty, I'm not really sure how I'm going to forgive these people.. 

I always want to be real with you guys so I'm going to be honest with you when I say that I truly don't know how I'm going to do it.

But I know that I will. 

Because God asked me to. 

And that man is a man worth dying for. 

So for those of you out there who are in a similar position, who are probably gritting your teeth and experiencing actual pain at the thought of forgiving a certain person (trust me - literally me for the last 3 hours).. I just want you to know that you're not alone. Not only because the Lord is right there with you, but also because I'm going through the exact same thing and I know that there are others out there as well. We're in this together.

With that being said, I leave you with this:

I challenge you to join me.

To take a step of faith and to forgive someone for the unforgivable. 

To love yourself enough to choose to forgive this person..

NOT because you feel like it

NOT because they deserve it

But because God has called us to. 

And that man.. that beautiful, wonderful, powerful man Jesus is the one person in the entire world who will guard and protect your heart at all costs! And because of that, you can be certain that He would never ask you to take a step of faith in a direction like this if it wasn't the absolute best thing for you.

Tonight we forgive.

Tonight we move closer to healing.

And tonight we kick satan out of our lives in the name of JESUS because we are children of GOD, of the KING! And satan's not gonna have any authority over this area or any area of our lives anymore!

I love you guys and I hope this blessed someone out there tonight.

Go in peace tonight..

Go show satan who's boss.