Forgiveness??

One very difficult thing about relationships is the mistakes you make. I made mistakes in relationships before Kyle, and he made mistakes in relationships before me. And we both made mistakes in our relationship with each other. Forgiveness can be hard. Even though we love each other when I feel like he has wronged me I can and sometimes will hold a grudge. I am not proud of my behavior, and am trying to better myself in that regard but it is not an overnight process. Learning how to love properly takes time. When you love someone you don’t need to bring up past arguments or situations to prove a point. You have to leave the past in the past.  Forgive your others and forgive yourself. When we sin God doesn’t list the amount of times we committed that same sin against him and then badger us with questions like, when are you going to learn? He forgives us and shows us grace. It is so crazy how we want people to forgive us and not bring up our past mistakes but lack forgiveness in our hearts for others and even ourselves. Every day we wake up in the morning it’s a new opportunity to leave our past in our past and live for today.

No matter how hard I try I will never be able to erase the mistakes I’ve made. I have often caught myself trying to earn peoples forgiveness and most importantly God’s, but I can’t. Just like I can’t earn the love God freely gives me I also can’t earn his forgiveness. When we get stuck in past events it becomes very difficult for us to move forward. And when we lack the ability to move forward we become angry, depressed, discouraged, and so many other things. I know because there are so many things in my past that I am not proud of. One day when I was sitting in my own self-pity after reflecting on some poor decisions I made God spoke to me. He said, “No one has to accept you past but you. You’ve asked me for forgiveness and I have gracefully given it to you. Be relieved for I have rescued you and I love you just as much now as I did before despite of your sins against me. Nothing can separate you from my love.” I was in tears. God has forgiven me, but I am still very much on the journey to forgiving myself. Do not allow your past to dictate your future. Don’t hold grudges in your heart towards others when God has freely forgiven you. Allow God to heal the wounds that may still be open in your heart.

My prayer for you is that you will be free from whatever is in your past that still haunts you and hurts you. That whatever you have not forgiven yourself for that God will bless you to see yourself as He sees you. That you will be able to freely forgive others as Christ freely forgives us.  I pray you won’t look at your past the same way. And I pray that you will be able to openly share your story of redemption to others.

Two Imperfect People

My fiancé and I are not perfect people, and in no way do we want to present ourselves as perfect through the internet. Perfection is something we will never obtain and I don’t want to present to you a picture perfect couple. We have disagreements, we don’t always understand each other’s point of view, and we express our love in different ways. It’s the differences that we share that make us unique. It’s a brand new month and I want August to be all about transparency. I want my readers to know where my fiancé and I have fell short, so they can see God’s strength prevail through our weakness. I don’t want this blog or any of my social media outlets to paint a perfect picture of two imperfect people. I want you to know that we desperately need God in every area of our lives. He is our strength and our shield (Psalms 28:7). Don’t look to us but look through us to see Christ. By covering up our weakness we are not showing people where God has worked in our life. Replaying nothing but the highlights of our relationship won’t necessarily challenge you to grow in your relationship with Christ. How can we truly help and minister to people without relating to them, and allowing them to hear about our weaknesses, our defeats, and our trials. The saying God has brought me a mighty long way is not detailed enough to lift anyone’s spirits who might be going through trials similar to mine.

So let’s dig in! I am blessed to be engaged at such a young age. Not everyone I meet is super happy to hear I am in such a serious relationship at the tender age of 20. I usually brush it off and say they are just concerned for me. Recently I went home for a visit and while I was looking for wedding venues and seeing family and friends I ran into more negative comments then I initially expected. I prayed about it and tried to carry on with a cheerful attitude for the rest of my trip. I didn’t want the comments to affect me, but they did. The devil began creeping into my thoughts and started having me question my relationship. Kyle and I had a disagreement about something totally ridiculous and I started to think oh no is this going to work out. I started to question God’s intentions for blessing us to come together. I started to questions myself and ask if I was ready (because that was what everyone was asking me) and before you know it I was confused. The devil had got me in a mental and emotional funk. Kyle was so persistent on getting me to see that everything was ok and I was overreacting. I made several mistakes, BUT God stopped me from sabotaging my relationship based on the opinions of others. Listen here folks;

1 What God has for you is for you. Not everyone is going to understand God’s plan for your life and that is ok because it is His plan for Your life.

2. Don’t let people’s opinion cause you to question yourself! Put your trust in God and leave it there.

3. Love people anyway! People will be negative but you have to love them anyway if they were hard on Jesus they will be hard on you sweetie!

4. God’s timing is the best timing. He knows when to bless you with a man, a car, a job, a house, or anything else you desire. Wait on the Lord!

5.  Do not compare yourself to anyone else. God made you unique, He made you beautiful, and He made you with a specific purpose in mind. Love yourself enough to know that you don’t need to be anyone else besides who God made you to be.

Those are something’s I learned and I hope you can take something away from this blog. Please share it because you never know who needs this. Stay tuned for more blogs this month.