Feb. 17, 2020
I had no idea how sorely needed this subject was until the arrival of Comments and emails.
“This post {Being Kind} reminds me of how our stuckness affects others and how others stuckness affects us-and how that can create even more entrenched stuckness. It is especially hard when we think if we change, it will pull support from someone that needs it. It takes some courage to break out of that cycle, and it is a very good reminder that our stuckness cycles could be shifted into growth cycles.”
The comment above reveals the positive results of becoming unstuck and progressing into emotional growth. However, the following emails are cries for help from another Blogger reader responding to the Being Kind blog.
“In bed saying prayers and it hit me the similarity of the lady who took into her home the lone woman compared to who and what I let into my heart and have never totally shaken loose.
“I was praying for strength to get myself more healthy....lose weight try and get muscles functioning so my hip and leg won't ache so badly. It takes discipline on my part to rise above my husband's issues, old wounds from my one >sorry< cousin up here, other relationships I get to thinking I am responsible for. Then maybe I will stand my ground on diet, sleep, hobbies, passions, exercise and not lose all of me before I am laid down.
“Not obligating you to fix me. But it's interesting your testimony and writings are reaching my soul and working my brain - I Know I have one - rescuing me from my drowning self” Cool!!!
Wow, friend, I'm glad your stored experiences--abuses, whatever has caused your heavy burdens--are being loosened so they can be discarded. Tell me a little more so I can help relieve your mind and heart and minister to others who don't have the courage to clean out their mental closets.
“Forgiveness. I am a big proponent. Difficult, when one doesn't really want to. But it's easier to try to rollback feelings to a nicer time than trying to figure how to, say, at a function, be grown up and civil to a person than be nice to some and ignore the person who has wronged you.
”It's hard for me to choose between a mood, behavior than just riding the wave of my gut feeling. Not that that is always the case, but my spirit leads that direction more often than not. Naive? I hope just kind enough to extend what has been given to me....patience, grace, understanding, respect, a look from the other side of human nature.
“I don't forget, but I try to forgive to move forward. To breathe. After the 2nd divorce from my first husband, I was a mess, but couldn't see it at the time. A dear friend showed the grace I needed to heal. To get unstuck.”
Forgiveness: An excerpt from How To Get Along With Everyone on pg 112 fits here: “The only way to heal the pain that will not heal itself is to forgive the person who hurt you. Forgiving stops the reruns of pain…Forgiving heals your memory because it changes your memory’s vision. When you release the wrongdoer from the wrong, you cut a malignant tumor out of your inner life. You set a prisoner free. When you do, you will discover that the real prisoner was yourself:” Unfortunately, many teach that if you still remember what someone said or did, you haven’t forgiven adequately. Simply, not true.
A minister friend of mine describes forgiveness as the garbage disposal built into one’s spiritual life. We flush out the resentments by forgiving. When you no longer need to talk about someone’s offense, this is a sign that forgiveness has taken place. A twinge of anger as you recall the circumstances becomes a warning that can both prevent the wrong from happening to you again and initiate some long-overdue forgiveness on your part. That’s called positive progress.
Romans 15:13 encourages: May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” (NIV)
Coupled with that verse is: “Even to your old age and gray hairs, I am he who will sustain you. I will sustain you and I will rescue you.” Isa. 46:14 (NIV)
We are in good hands in His care.