Breathe Grace

Have you ever had someone you count on make a promise and then break it? How about a close friend who takes a deep secret that you shared in confidence and tells somebody else? Maybe you had someone who was entrusted to care for you but instead hurt you in one of the deepest ways imaginable by abusing you physically or sexually? A business partner gains your trust and then exploits it? How about an ex-spouse who took the love you had for one another and ruined it by cheating on you?

If you live long enough, chances are you’ll be hurt or betrayed by someone.

Betrayal is not just being hurt by somebody; it’s being hurt by someone you thought you could count on.

Betrayal is always a violation of trust and a breaking of a promise. It comes at the hand of a friend, spouse, coworker, or boss. And like a sucker punch, it always comes as a shock.

The crippling reality is that if we don’t do something with that hurt or betrayal, it will assault us every time it comes to our mind. It will keep us prisoner of our past because that hurt will impact everything we touch.

Some of you have somehow convinced yourself that you can manage the hurt from your past without offering forgiveness. In fact, maybe you even tell yourself that you can hardly remember the pain. But unfortunately, the pains we dare not remember are often the most dangerous pains of all. We fear these particular hurts so much that we stuff them deep into our heart and past. But they always come back. Usually disguised, but they always come back.

Bitterness contaminates everything. It doesn’t isolate to the source of bitterness; it spreads to all of your relationships. And left unchecked, it will ruin everything that is important to you.

Sometimes you don’t forgive someone for their sake; you do it for your own freedom.

I met Gerry and his wife, Brenda, several years ago at church. Gerry is quite a bit older than I am, but there was a certain kind of peace this man radiated that made me want to get to know him better.

I took them to lunch one day to hear their story and hung on to his every word over the next hour and a half. Gerry and Brenda had a baby girl and named her Annie, which meant “blessed by grace.” You can imagine how heartbroken they were when during Annie’s freshman year of college, her life began to unravel. Annie dropped out of college and was living with some friends over two hundred miles away from home. Eventually Gerry and Brenda discovered that their daughter’s problems were being fueled by a heavy drug addiction.

During her freshman year of college, Annie had gotten mixed up with the wrong group of people, mainly, a guy named Kyle. He introduced her to drugs, and the rest was downhill from there. She lived with Kyle in a drug-induced stupor for the next two years. There were weeks they would disappear and nobody would know where they were or hear from them. Brenda and Gerry spent many nights crying and praying, fearing that she was dead in some heroin house.

As Gerry recalled, “I blamed this guy. I had tried several times to drive up to Indiana to get her, to rescue her, but she would never come with me. I was convinced that Kyle was manipulating her. I was convinced that if it wasn’t for him my daughter would not be doing drugs and not be in the shape she was. For the first time in my life, I allowed my hatred to take me to a dark place.

I began daydreaming about how I could kill Kyle. I thought about how I would do it and how I would cover it up. I convinced myself it was the only thing I could do to get my daughter back. I planted a seed of hate in my heart that night, and the root of bitterness began to grow. It was fertilized daily by my thoughts of getting rid of Kyle.”

by Pete Wilson, from Let Hope In