This is a deeply personal post, but somehow I feel like God is leading me to publish it. Maybe he is trying to reach someone who reads this blog or maybe he just wants me to think about some things in my past.
Becoming a Christian does not make your life all sunshine and rainbows. Actually, your life gets harder. When you are unsaved, you are owned by our Enemy. He has you and he keeps you blind so that you will not see the Glory that God has nor will you see his unending love. When you become saved, you see the goodness and the bad becomes like a stain...you begin to feel convicted for the unconfessed sins you committed. This is one of the hardest things about becoming a Christian, but it is also one of the most uplifting, freeing feelings you can have.
I became a Christian about 10 years ago, but it was not until about 2003 or so that he started convicting me for being "Contemporary Christian"...one who talks the talk but does not walk the walk. As he was convicting me, I started to slowly make changes in the way I live life. The first thing I did was to stop hiding my faith at work. I am not saying that I witness to everyone who walks in my office I meet in the break room. I just simply started acting like what I believed in. It was scary at first, but now it is no sweat at all.
The next thing I did was removing the stuff out of my life that was causing me to stumble. I stopped watching most R-rated movies, I began to listen to much less secular music, and I cleaned up my rather foul language. While I did not constantly swear, I did have a bit of a bad habit of dropping 4 letter words when I was angry.
I also got rid of all my not-so-legal software (games, OS's, office suites, etc) and replaced them with either licensed or open source (freeware) versions. That story is a long and detailed one I will save for another time.
A Christian's walk is something that is never finished until he finally meets Jesus during Judgement. With that in mind, we have a lot of things we need to do to clean house before we meet him.
The two greatest commandments that our Lord and Savior gave us are:
1) Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul.
2) Love your neighbor as you love yourself.
It is very, VERY difficult to do either of these when you think about it, but if we work on the first, the second will become easier. That is where I am now, working on the second one.
You may (or may not) be aware that I was married once before. It started off bad and got progressively worse until we divorced in 1992. We were both young (21 and 18) and very immature. We had no idea how to act towards each other, no idea how a husband and wife should act. We did not know Christ, nor did we attend church. We were both very lost.
I had considered detailing our relationship, but that is just not fair. We both were at fault. We both made HUGE mistakes, and we both failed. We hurt those around us, those we loved, friends, family, co-workers. Friendships were splintered...some that have never been repaired. Others still show signs of the hurt.
I am writing this because even though my ex-wife hurt me and the kids (one was ours and one was hers), I forgive her. I forgive her for all the pain she caused. I forgive her for the long list of HORRIBLE things she did the entire time we were together (both dating and married).
But is does not stop there. I write this hoping that I can find a way to contact her and ask her to forgive me. While there is no doubt she was a horrible person then (she may have changed, I know I have grown up immensely), she does not deserve all the blame. I never once said she did. I also did many disrespectful things in that relationship. I could list them all if given enough time, but that is just airing dirty laundry. If and when I can get in contact with her, I will let her know my intentions. Will she forgive? Most likely not. She has told me several times (as recently as 5 years ago) that she will never forgive me. I can understand that. Until I became a Christian, I was not willing to forgive her either. It took a lot of prayer to get to that point.
In loving your neighbor, you have to also love your enemies. My ex-wife hates me (or at least she did 5 years ago). She has done many things to make my life less than rosy but I feel obligated to love her as I love myself. Your enemies will try time and time again to assault you, but giving all your pain and resentment to Christ will allow you to focus on other things. I can only hope that my ex-wife accepts Jesus as her personal savior, if she has not already done so. I know that will not erase the past, but it might just allow us to start the healing process.
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