Pick up the broken pieces and forgive

Many find it difficult to pick up the broken pieces of their soul after it’s been broken by people. It’s painful when the people who were supposed to love you cause you pain and those who were called to build you up broke you down. This can lead to the soul (mind, will, emotions) being in a broken and undeveloped state.

Often, we can identify when our soul is broken and many of you know when you’re not as emotionally healthy as you should be. You notice that past hurts have left you feeling emotionally paralysed; unable to live a joyful and fulfilled life. You have trust issues surrounding building new relationships and are trapped by unforgiveness and bitterness. You don’t enjoy being stuck in this place but there’s a mindset that often stops people from healing and this is the mindset I want to challenge in this blog post. It’s the mindset that you won’t begin your healing process until those that hurt you apologise first. This mindset tells you that if you were to pursue forgiveness before that point, you would be letting your abusers “win”.

Who’s the winner?

This mindset teaches you that you must become the ultimate evidence for the pain you suffered, to show others how real your affliction was. This occurs especially when something terrible has happened to you and those around you have failed to react. In these cases, it seems like there’s nothing besides your words and theirs’ to verify the degree of what occurred, so in order to be right, you decide that the state of your soul will be proof.

To that, I say I’m deeply sorry that your pain was never acknowledged and I’m sorry that those that hurt you never apologised. For those on the outside looking in, waiting for an apology may seem petty but for those who have been hurt it can be a powerful thing. Despite this, you can no longer refuse to become whole in order to embody what a person without a father ends up looking like, a person who has been painfully heartbroken, or a person who has been through abuse. Picking up the pieces is for you as you have the right to be whole and you don’t have to remain broken. There comes a point in life where you have to bend down and pick up the pieces of your mind, joy and future that was shattered. Picking up pieces is all about taking responsibility and ownership. This takes a killing of pride and ego because it wasn’t in your hands that your soul was shattered. Regardless, it is a job that must be done to live a life fulfilled.

Previously, I went through multiple painful situations with an individual. Years went and I saw this person prospering and I thought “no, I can’t heal and move on, that’ll mean that they’ve gotten away with their actions”. I became obsessed with proving the extent to which I was hurt by using my own soul has the proof. More years went by and one season it dawned on me that I may never receive the sorry that I felt paralleled the pain I experienced. The truth is, they can’t undue their actions to me but despite this, I have a purpose and I can’t leave my soul desolate to evidence the things they did. That’s when I made the decision to begin my healing process, not for their sake but for mine. I realised that Jesus is the one seated on the judgement seat and He will account for all things in time. To judge is not my role, my role is to invite God in and let Him heal me.

You win by picking up the pieces

You will always lose with the mindset that healing makes you a fool. Healing makes you a victor and besides, how will putting your life on pause benefit you? Will you allow 10 years to go by waiting for that friend to admit that they betrayed you or 20 years to go by waiting for that person to take responsibility for how they hurt you? Do you know you might be waiting a lifetime for that? You might never receive an apology and how unfortunate would it be to live life half lived waiting on another’s apology.

Do your future, your soul and your destiny a favour and allow God to pick up the pieces. Take responsibility of where you are and where you are going in life. You didn’t deserve what happened to you and but it is not fair on yourself for you to remain hurt. There’s a future beyond what happened to you but you must let bitterness and unforgiveness go. You must bend down and bring each broken piece to God. Be transparent with Him in prayer, give him each memory and emotion. It’s a process, and it won’t happen overnight but as you walk this journey with God you will walk closer and closer to overcoming. Those who caused you pain don’t win by you staying broken, you win by being brave enough to move on ❤