Picking Up With God's Help

MissSharon2013

Sometimes, we are wondering where our help really is? It's a cold, cruel world sometimes. When my mother was killed in a car accident; my niece (who was 11, and was in the car also) was fighting for her life...I was angry. I was in a hostile place. I was in the hospital on the pediatric floor, with my niece hooked up to every tube under the sun, her frail, small frame swollen and unresponsive. Mom was dead. It was a cold, hard fact there was no escape from. But our precious Alhanna was still living. There were layers of heartache that penetrated my soul. I got on the floor of the bathroom and I begged God, "Please don't let my niece die. You said you'd never give us more than we can bear! Well! This is too much!" My first husband had died just two years before of a sudden illness; surely, God would not be this cruel. Then I heard an audible voice from within my head, a cold, cruel voice that mocked me and said, "She will die too." I was crushed. I knew this was true. I missed the opportunity to say, "Whatever happens, God will take care of me!" Instead, I grew angrier. I was a ball of seething anger and hatred for the man who killed my loved ones and walked away with only two broken ribs!

I wanted him to be dead too. I thought of him as a murderer. I wanted him to pay! How can you get so careless as to fall asleep??? And kill my precious mother and niece? I was so angry, I wanted to look him up, scream at him! Look him in the eye and force him to recognize how he had destroyed the lives of a very close family.

I was so angry that God had to take my voice away! Literally, I could not speak by the time the funeral was scheduled to begin. I was to read a poem in honor of my mother; but I couldn't speak to read it! I would wake up on dad's beautiful property in the country with the sun streaming through the window and think, "How lovely it is here. How peaceful and serene..." Away from the hectic screams of sirens and people walking on the sidewalk all through the night; a bottle clinking as it was thrown. Here, there was only peace. And then the reality would crash in in my thoughts, "Mom is dead. Alhanna is dead. Chuck is dead. Where do I begin to make sense if this."

It would take a long time for me to get past it. I thank God that in His grace, in His love and perfect will; I had the time to understand. I thank God that He gave me the time. I married a Godly man and began a new journey. I began to search in my heart for the forgiveness I needed to heal. And then I found it. It was not some grand epiphany. Some great eye-opening experience. But rather, it was a quiet intercession. One day I realized I no longer had this bitterness. One day, I thought, "He was a young man with small children. He did not wake up that morning saying to himself, "Today, I am going to kill two people; one of them a small child for absolutely no reason at all."

I let go. I know that if I saw him today, and if he asked forgiveness, I would forgive Him because I have. Jesus has forgiven me of so much more. My walk with Him is so much more meaningful. Thank God that Jesus doesn't hold a grudge. Try forgiving someone. You will heal in your heart. Or if you can't forgive, ask God to help you. It may be gradual as mine was, but you will get there; and you will find the peace far outweighs holding onto the anger.