Day 24: Surrendering
" I face death every day—yes, just as surely as I boast about you in Christ Jesus our Lord" 1Corinthian 15:31
Today, I give thanks for the surrendering to the perfect plan and will of God. A while ago, I got my heart shattered by someone who I called friend. Since I make it a point to accept people for who they are and where they are at, after years of friendship, having entered the intimate stage of friendship where our souls were connected, this person completely deceived me. Personally, i don't believe that deception should be in the ranks of a friendship at that stage. I won't put the person on complete blast by telling what was done but let's just say that the kind of deception that took place, was an offense that, in my mind, should be likened to treason and punishable by permanently dissolving the friendship. After nine long years of ride-or-die friendship, having some of the best memories and loving this person whole-heartedly, I walked away and symbolically put the sign of the cross on the relationship, indicating its death and it's lowering into a grave. I was done! I have a great deal of tolerance and patience for people (thanks to Lilah). Getting to the point of saying I am done with someone is usually because I have accepted and tolerated the maximum capacity of what I can and will tolerate. Additionally, I am a mind-over-matter person too and can successfully override the weight of the emotional component of most situations, although they affect me. Walking away from this relationship, I completely underestimated how I'd be affected emotionally. I needed more than a mind-over-matter resilience. I felt like I had multiple gun-shot wounds to my heart and was losing so much blood and life for months. This person was with whom I processed so much. I no longer had my "go-to" person and personal cheering section for the major accomplishments, as I was walking out my life. The person and I had so many mutual friends and I also consider many of the person's family members my family because I am so close with them. This meant having to still deal with this person at some point or cutting off all my friends and family too. The blow of the loss was really devastating to me and the emotional trauma was way more than expected. I cried more times than I could count. It was so crazy because this break up was worst than any break up that I had with actual lovers. I was not prepared at all for that! What made it even more devastating was that, as I was healing, I would get random texts or emails from this person stating how much they missed our friendship and how much I was loved. Those did not help! It was like having salt poured on an open wound. Those messages spiraled me back into the emotional devastation of the first moments of dissolving the friendship. I could not believe the emotional state in which I was. All I could think to myself was "what the hell, Melissa! Snap out of it! It's over and done with! Why are you still letting this affect you like this?" No matter how many personal pep talks I gave myself, I still had to feel and process the grief that came with letting go of my friend. The process sucked so bad and hurt like a mother-!!!??!. This loss and ex-friendship was one that went on the altar of God countless times. Until now, it still does because forgiveness is a hard process and not superficial or as immediate as we would like it to be. I also had to take time to really heal. At this stage of my life, I'm not tucking any more things in secret compartments of my heart for them to manifest as something else later. I choose the road of confrontation and dealing with the matter until my heart is completely healed, no matter how long it takes. One day as I was praying for the healing of my heart and laying this loss on the altar, I prayed and cried so hard that I fell to sleep. In my sleep, I had this vivid dream about the person that I remember so clearly to this day. When I woke up an hour or so later, God told me to contact the person and tell the person that I forgave and surrendered the situation. I literally asked God with my one eye-brow raised and my lips puckered, "Am I doing this out of obedience or because I really feel that way? Anyway, I don't even have the person's contact information anymore. Remember, I erased everything." I was trying to be slick and not be obedient because I didn't feel like I had really forgave or surrendered the situation. Additionally, God and I knew that I could contact the person. When I was erasing all of the person's information from my devices, the one thing I could not erase was the person's email address. It was in the cloud somewhere and I had no idea how to get to it. After multiple attempts of trying to erase it, I failed miserably, waved my white flag and just left it alone. SMH! God made sure I couldn't erase that email no matter how hard I tried. God, in his don't-play-with-me voice said "tell the person that you forgive and have surrendered it." As with every command from God, I obeyed this one too. I wrote an email to the person that literally had one line of two sentences. It said, "I forgive you. I surrendered it." I didn't even have a sign off of my name attached to it. Within seconds, the person emailed me back and said "I just woke up from a vivid dream about you and got your email." How crazy was it that the person and I were on two different continents having vivid dreams about each other? I woke to a command of obedience and the person woke to the receiving end of my obedience, a message of forgiveness. Though I declared the person forgiven in the email that day, honestly, I still had and have to do the work of completely forgiving the person. I have wrote a million forgiveness letters but am still stuck. To me, deceit is still treason, no matter what. Since the time of that email, I've come to realize that God's plan is one that desires reconciliation between me and the person. My plan only involves forgiveness! Obviously, there is a huge struggle and a breaking that has to occur for me to go from my plan to God's plan. It is not at all easy but I'm striving and working toward killing my stubbornness and pride and everything within me that opposes God's plan and His will. I could never see myself previously forgiving AND reconciling with this person without so much as a discussion of "why." However, in this situation, God is looking for me to reflect Him and throw everything into the sea of forgetfulness to remember NOTHING about the situation as if it never even happened. What?????!!!!!! Can you imagine being hurt like I was hurt, going through all of that emotional devastation and turmoil and God saying I want you to erase it as if it never occurred? WHAT?????!!!! That is what God did and what He always does for us. He wipes the slate completely clean and lets us start over anew every time we mess up and ask for forgiveness. Am I willing to trust God and His plan this time around too? Take this writing as my personal declaration of "Yes, Lord. I surrender to your plan." Still hurting, still feeling betrayed, still processing forgiveness, I'm willing to work towards complete forgiveness, reconciliation, and total erasure in my mind, heart, and soul of the offense that occurred. "I completely abandon my will, Lord, and accept yours. Help me to do it right this time. I surrender." Today as I give thanks for surrendering, I invite you to grieve that hurt, process your emotions, forgive those people, and ask God to help you to surrender it ALL to Him." Love Ya Have a great day of thanks! Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android