This month has been hard. I’ve been wrestling with a lot of things, career decisions, relationships, wounds, viruses, and just a general sense of the Lord piling on for a reason.
Get close, Nicole. Don’t go closing yourself off from me. I have a plan.
I was blessed to go to Holy Thursday Adoration at the prompting of my daughter (because honestly I would’ve forgotten; that’s how preoccupied my headspace is). I opened my prayer journal. I hadn’t written in it since November. It was a reminder of what I had prioritized lately—not all bad things, but not all ordered rightly either.
As I move into Easter, I have been thinking a lot about those first few Easters, imagining the apostles recounting the moments when Jesus was suddenly there in the upper room with them, on the beach with them. Was it still mind blowing? Did it still recall all of those initial feelings of relief, glory, victory like they could have never imagined in a million years. Jesus didn’t conquer a human army. He conquered death. He conquered the end of human life.
I met with a friend this morning, and she said something like, you know, God will move mountains. You will not even think twice. You will be with the person who used to evoke feelings in you of self-protection or control and you will feel nothing but love. You just have to forgive constantly. You will see like Mary sees—their wounds that draw them into patterns in their behavior.
I’m not going to lie. This feels like a mountain—impossible– and yet, I can feel deep down: I want it. This unforgiveness I carry expecting the worst in certain people—it’s a gift to let God show me how He can move mountains, how he can soften my hard heart, and how he can free me from longtime burdens. He will show me the power of His love for those who desperately want to forgive, but whose humanity clings to safety.
In reflecting on all this, I started thinking of John, the lone apostle who stayed by the cross, how he didn’t let that taint how he wrote about Peter. John showed us both Peter’s weaknesses as well as his great faith. He didn’t emphasize how even though he had fallen asleep with Peter and the others during Jesus’ agony in the garden that he made up for it by outlasting them during the crucifixion. John simply and quietly reminds us of all that matters…John represents the universal truths of how Jesus feels about us…that he was the one whom Jesus loved and that John had a mother, Mary.
This is all that should matter to us. We can claim the same as John: that we are the one whom Jesus loves and that He gave us Mary as His mother, at the end of the day everything else is forgiven or not that important. We learn this from Paul as well: love and spiritual adoption—it’s all we need to break open God’s power in our life. If we lean into it, we will watch it knock us off our high horses, move mountains and draw us to places we never imagined.
We must remember though that the gift of unforgiveness requires a peeling back, time to understand your hurts, open them up. Breaking these things out of the secure packaging they’ve been bundled into. This takes time. This takes tools and God’s power to release whatever is wrapped up inside of you. You can only use it if you set it free. Can you imagine trying to drink from a cup still in the box or cut with a knife still zip tied to its cardboard mounting. No. It’s the same with the box of unforgiveness. There’s something in there God is intending for us to use. Don’t just think about it. Do something about it. That’s what I am doing this Easter season—unwrapping what I haven’t been able to forgive in order to use it.
“…because you will not abandon my soul to the netherworld, nor will you suffer your holy one to see corruption.” Acts 2:27 NABRE
May we allow His all-powerful glory to restore the dead, wounded or broken parts of us in order to be a living witness on this earth of how His love restores and gives us new life.
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