Focus on the Family
Photographer: Fond Memories Photography, Jackie Hicks
FORGIVENESS THROUGH RELEASING THE PAIN by Chuntae Nicole
W
hen I asked God to show me what it looked like to have a prosperous soul, He began to show me…me. He put me in front of the mirror and began the journey of showing me my wounds. The wounds of my soul of which I am well acquainted, of which I am so familiar, the wounds of my soul that had been my incubator of pain, which I now had to face. God knew that these wounded places in me masked the person that He created me to be. So, in His infinite wisdom He showed me how to face the pain with Him, forgive and release the people I held hostage and trust that what He made when He made me was in fact good.
We all have heard over the years about forgiveness, and my response to forgiveness, as I am sure yours may have been as well, was based off of whether or not the person deserved it. We analyze and toil over whether the person is remorseful, weighing the circumstances to gain some sense of understanding. Some even try to find a way to empathize or relate to the individual as if to be in that person’s shoes would help. But, forgiveness is not a feeling, it’s a decision. It is a deliberate act of releasing the person that
16 The Love Nest Magazine Spring 2021
hurt or offended you regardless if the person ever deserves it or apologizes. My relationship with forgiveness used to be based off how I felt until God began to show me the benefit of releasing the pain. You see we hold on to the pain, because it is what we are use to. We hold on to the pain because we often have not received our due justice. Many of us never get those apologies and some of us don’t get the acknowledgement that what we’ve endured ever happened in the first place. So, there I was face to face with years of sexual abuse, abandonment by my father, and emotionally disconnected from my family. Not knowing how to
cope with the feelings of family members waking me up in the middle of the night and undressing me and touching me however they saw fit, not knowing how to cope with an absent father who partied more than he remembered that he had a home, I learned to survive. I survived by going so deep within myself that although my abusers were physically touching me, they couldn’t touch me mentally. I went into this shell and it became a way of life. And as grew older I attracted men that I would cling to hoping they would see my worth and love me but to no avail, they walked away too…just like my dad. So, still in that shell, that fortress that
