Allow the Thorns

I’m finally free. And do you know who was holding me hostage? Me.

Every Tuesday, one of my sisters hosts a devotion and prayer call for ladies. And this last one, I’m so glad I didn’t miss. I typically have to jump off before the call is over because my work devotion starts before we’re finished. This past week something was telling me that I’d need to stay on and skip the other. What I didn’t realize was that on the other side of our dialogue was a breakthrough I didn’t see coming.

The topic my sister discussed was moving on. And the question she posed to each of us was, “What’s the move?” Two scenarios in particular came to mind. As she sat there patiently allowing the silence to move us to speak, I finally broke. I shared the defeat I constantly felt in revisiting the past. The beauty of God growing us is that we get to see. We get to see our sin, our faults, our missteps. We get to see situations, relationships, and people with a new lens. I’ve appreciated my growth (however painful it was to get there). It often spurs godly remorse and repentance, which is good. But on the flipside, it creates a wrestle in my soul with the person I was and the actions I displayed that are more evident to me today than they were then.

Through this prayer call, I was coming face to face with that fact that I have been carrying the weight of other people’s choices. Where they are in life. What struggles and hangups they have because I think about what part I played in their story. What seeds or rather what weeds did I plant with my unfruitful words and actions. I not only feel pained for these things, but now I want to undo them. And the sad part is that I think I can.

Often this has looked like me calling that person to acknowledge what I’ve done and the impact and ask for their forgiveness. Not long ago, I remember I did this to a friend. And in his exasperation of me revisiting something he had already forgiven me for, he asked me how many times did the leper who had been healed come back to thank Jesus. I said once. Once. He said I didn’t need to keep apologizing to him. I told him it was a challenge for me because when I apologized the first (or second or tenth time) I was apologizing for what I knew then. Now that the Lord had shown me more, my offenses felt new and like they needed new recompense. Yet in my angst, I promised him that I would choose to believe that I was forgiven and not revisit our past again. And though I said those words, I continued to carry the weight of guilt on my shoulders each time a new revelation would come.

My sisters shared a lot of great wisdom during that call, including reminding me of two words the Lord had already given me: Be Still and Surrender. One said that I was stuck in the past; I wanted to save the world, but I needed to take my cape off and let God do what only He could do. I was exhorted to forgive myself and those who had wounded me. I had for the most part come to the school of thought that people can’t forgive themselves; they must learn to accept forgiveness, whether from others or primarily from God. In that moment, I realized that I was withholding forgiveness from myself… and when it had already been granted from the two people for whom could rightly offer it – my friend and my Savior.

Here is the thing that really freed me. My sister divulged her struggle with perfectionism (something we share in common) and stated she’s been learning how to not overprocess and overthink. She stated that she's "allow[ing] things to unfold without [her] hand being in the way.” I was typing all these wise words in my phone, and as I began to scribe hers, my autocorrect changed the word things to thorns. Thorns spoke loudly to me in that moment, and I was reminded of a truth I needed not only for my life but for the lives of others.

Paul said it best in 2 Corinthians 12:7b-10 NIV: “Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

As much as I hated to acknowledge it, I had been a thorn in so many people’s sides. What I had missed was the grace of God to meet them where I had left them wounded. Through my own walk and the truth unveiled in Scripture, we simply do not grow in faith, in intimacy with God, or in maturity without suffering. The faith and life I wanted for those I had hurt couldn’t come without them experiencing thorns… even if that thorn had to be me. My girlfriend comforted me by reminding me that I could take the load of what I felt I had done to Jesus every time and ask, “God, you got them?” And trust that He would respond, “I got them.” She said, “You feel hurt and sad when you know you’ve hurt someone you love. But even in all that God’s got them.”

And it was true. I didn’t’ need to be God anymore because He was good at being Himself. I would have never acknowledged that I was trying to be God, but that’s what it was. In so many relationships, I could see where I kept looking for the perfect key to get their life to change, for them to see and believe God. I believed that I just needed a key – this book, this sermon, this message, this program, this kind gesture, and so on that would change or save them. A sister on the call reminded us that the only thing that pleases God is faith. And I finally realized the key wasn’t the thing that I could present to those people. The key was believing in Jesus and me realizing that I can’t do that work in their hearts. Only God can.

I had to recognize what I wanted for a person may be different than what they wanted for themselves. Or I had to release my ideal of how the thing would happen that the person said they wanted but didn’t know how to achieve on their own. My girlfriend reminded me that my humility was needed. That I could want something so bad for another person, but I had to trust that God knew the roadmap to get them to the destination He desired for them. I had to recognize that He may have a different process and timetable than the one I had conjured in my mind… often selfishly. Because if this person would change, then our relationship could look and be like this.

I’m finally learning to be still and no longer revisit the past. To surrender what I’ve done and what God can do into His capable hands. And I’m allowing the thorns, for in the thickets, God can grow something good.