With God's Help

I liked what Amy said about forgiveness. It is very difficult or rather impossible for us to forgive without God. Earlier this year I had the ultimate challenge in forgiveness; my now ex-husband asked me for a divorce. That in itself was very difficult to swallow. The next day he told me he'd been seeing someone for some time in the previous month. That someone was a woman I thought was becoming a very good friend of mine. I told him straight off that I forgave him, but the actual forgivness took some time. In addition to giving up control in order to let forgiveness happen, I had another challenge. Part of me wanted to be mad, shout, holler, throw things, but by grace I was governed by another part that reminded me "in your anger do not sin." I had to let go of all those hurts, all the sins against me, all the anger, and all my "rights" to be mad. I went to a divorce support group and most of the people in there were very angry, and I did not want to be. I'm sure others would understand if I was angry, or if I talked bad about Floyd, or if I did stupid things out of anger, but I didn't want to be that girl in the country songs. I wanted to deal with the situation the way God would have me deal with it. So, I took the punches, I shed the tears, I was on my knees and in His Word every night and every morning and throughout the day when I had time. God carried me through that time, and if I had not given Him control, I would probably still be face down in my pillow in tears every night. I am not denying that I was angry, I never denied my anger, I gave it to God.