How Do You Forgive When The Wound Is Still Open?Sample

Day Six: Dysfunction Does Not Have to Be Your Legacy (Victory is Always on the Table)

Having no example, I often struggled with my own mothering, wondering if I was doing it “right.” Mothering for me is a book of empty pages that I’m learning to fill with each step and misstep. What if I write the story wrong? Perhaps you relate in an area of your life that had dysfunction in it.

Perhaps right now you are reading this and you feel lost in the dark.

You think there is no way out, no way things could change, no way your tender heart could heal. Further, the very thought of forgiving and loving the person who hurt you the most sounds impossible. Some of you reading this right now are just sad—sad at what you missed out on, for what was taken from you, for the unfairness of it all. Your little-girl heart just wants to be loved by the person who was supposed to love you. It’s a deep and often private ache, I know. Some of you have decided that to hope is just to hurt, and so you’ve placed hope in the attic, letting it collect dust, only holding onto it because you haven’t wanted to bother with it. Hope is dangerous, and it’s best kept tucked away. 

Here's what I want you to know:

There are miracles and surprises and gifts even in the middle of the pain and the mess and complication of it all. 

Dysfunction does not have to be your legacy. You may have been born into it, married into it, or created it yourself, but it does not have to be your destiny or your identity. 

Victory is always on the table. It’s always been ours, we just have to believe it and walk in it. There will be struggle and pain, but there is hope and a way through because Jesus promises to bind up our wounds and heal our broken hearts. He promises that as we listen and follow Him, we will know the truth, and it will set us free. We may not ever get the happy ending we so long for on this earth, and we may have hard and heavy stories, but it doesn’t mean we are stuck in dysfunction and darkness. We get to be generational-bondage breakers, lighting up the dark places with our stories—the ones Satan meant for evil and destruction but what God will use for good! There may not be a tied-up bow, but there is a cross that offers freedom and healing and an ultimate happy ending.

Victory in Jesus is yours, right now. Will you walk in it?

Key Application: Dysfunction does not have to be our legacy. Choose now to believe that God is greater than your fears, your failures, and your figuring-it-out fumbles. You get to be a generational bondage-breaker, and you do this by believing God, surrendering to Him in all things, and telling of who He is and what He’s done.