Big Steps Toward Healing

I achieved a milestone that I thought I would share.

Some of you may not be aware, but a few weeks ago I decided to resign as Children's Ministry Coordinator.  God's hand has been pressing on me to make this decision for months now...if not years.  My stubbornness and dislike of change (and unknown) kept me in my "safe" job.

Through a multitude of God-moments the last few months, I am 100% certain God has challenged me to step down.  Perhaps I will post another blog soon about that decision.  This blog, however, is not about that decision, but about one of the outcomes of making it.

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One of my first tasks was to clean up old files.

It may seem strange, but in the bottom, left-corner of my desktop, for the last (almost) three years, I have had a Word Document entitled, "Friends Lost."  When our church went through a difficult season nearly three years ago, I found myself daily receiving multiple e-mails from friends who had decided to leave the church.

Four weeks ago I re-opened that file that had been sitting on my desktop.  

I scrolled through six pages of single-spaced notes from friends who, at one point in time, served right along beside me in ministry.  I had included with each letter, the date and time I received them.  What a haunting experience to walk back through those very dark two weeks and the entire year that followed as notes continued and I was frequently afraid to open my e-mail to find yet another friend who was gone.

I wondered, as I sat in my office, why I had cut and pasted all these e-mails into this one very sad, long letter.

Three weeks ago I taught a class on "The Five Love Languages" to young mothers at my sister's church.  With the Love Languages fresh in my mind, God told me why I had saved all those letters.  I had never realized how much I crave words of affirmation.  For me, words are powerful.  They can make or break me.

While all of the e-mails were tremendously sad to read through, for most of them, the opening line of, "Thank you, Connie..." was the only verbal affirmation I would receive from people of whom I had given my heart.  What an unhealthy method of receiving words of affirmation!  So much garbage was piled on, in and around the affirmation.  I am sure this entire document put me way in the negative and did not build me up in any way.  Or perhaps I saved the e-mails to convince myself that all the time and energy I had spent really was worthy it.

Then something strange began to happen.

It was like the heart-strings that attached me to each of these sweet families began to snap.  I felt this overwhelming sense of release.  I've been holding onto memories and times past which has kept me from reaching forward to what God wants to do in the present and future.  While I will always have a special place in my heart for so many of these children and friends, I suddenly had this indignant feeling that they can no longer hold me back and have power over me.

I have always told people, and know very well, that when I refuse to forgive someone, I keep us handcuffed (in bondage) together.  I know this logically, but had never experienced the release of letting go.

I felt my heart racing as I began moving my cursor over the "Friends Lost" document on my desktop.  I was suddenly on a battlefield.  Am I going to save this file onto my flash drive to keep forever as a reminder of this season in my life, these "friends" and the memories associated with them?  Or am I going to let it go?

My decision: This file has kept me in bondage too long.

With great precision, I felt my ring-finger (the finger that signifies relationship btw) press on the right-click button on my mouse.  I scrolled up to the word, "cut."  I lingered for just a few short seconds and then...click.

The document was gone.

I am free.