Sylvia had no idea that committing her life to Christ would mean confronting her deep unforgiveness toward her father, who had rejected her and abused her in childhood. Her shattered start to life resulted in years of reckless behaviour and bitter attitudes, including an inability to love and accept herself.
Her new life in Christ took an unexpected twist when the God she perceived as being remote and ‘out there’, abruptly broke into her day to day awareness. Standing at her sink up to her elbows in dishwashing suds was the last place she expected to encounter the reality of God, yet there He was. She had no way of knowing that this intrusion into her consciousness by a God she had barely met, was, His grace preparing her for the Goliath who was about to confront her.
Suddenly the Holy Spirit’s penetrating light exposed her Goliath, a mountain of toxic emotions erupted at the thought of forgiving her father. Consumed by a range of contradictory emotions, Sylvia still chose to be guided by God and in her obedience, discovered His miraculous capacity to make a way where there seemed to be no way.
Realising there were two choices, to return to the toxicity of simply surviving as she had always done, or tenaciously refuse to abandon the journey of God’s grace and recovery He had begun to lead her on – her choice was clear.
Knowing she couldn’t overcome her bitterness by herself, so began a tough journey with her Abba Father to find freedom from unforgiveness. Sylvia found that as a new Christian with a head full of new concepts and good intentions, she couldn’t move forward with unresolved anger inside her and she could not move forward without support and wise counsel. Yet that would require humility and trust she had perceived to be a sign of both weakness, dependence and neediness, three things she believed in her foolish thinking were the enemies of her soul.
With God’s leading and supportive, trustworthy others, she found that only when you confess your sin and own it, can you learn to love as Christ did (see 1 John 1:9). Step by step over the years an ever-deepening relationship with her ‘Abba Father’ has allowed her to put off the old toxic thinking with its painful memories, by putting on the identity of the ‘new creation’ which is hers, as a beloved daughter of ‘The Most High’. This was only made possible because, as she came to see, our Father God had already given us the greatest example of forgiving others through the life, death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.
‘Freedom of the Soul’ is so much more than one person’s life story, it is like the pulling apart and re-assembling of one of the most challenging and often difficult human behaviours, that of forgiving another person who has harmed us. And yet through Sylvia’s eyes, and the events of Sylvia’s life journey into forgiveness, we see forgiveness (perhaps for the first time) with simplicity, clarity and achievability! For anybody struggling and battling to forgive another person, it’s an absolute must-read!
