I’m grateful today to feature an essay by Jenny Price. Find her on Twitter here, Facebook here. Her business blog is Everyday Lifeline, and her personal blog is I woke up Yesterday. Hers is a message we all need to read. Enjoy!

Remember the one who shattered your heart, ruptured your purity, and severed your hope?
He’s lying on the ground, dead – breathless – heavy – and the chains of grief are tied around your ankles – and his hands.

Only you hold the key.

He is chained to you because you want him there – now you are in control. You won’t unlock the pain – you feel less injured keeping the thief this close to you.

You own the shadows of your past – like a tree owns its leaves – unable to release – unless the roots say so.
Letting go would make the past okay. Rooting in the rancor, you remain vindicated – sheltered – less broken.

If you let him go, that means you might be free. And what is freedom anyways?
Unfamiliar – even more dangerous than learned confinement.

Dragging a dead body around is strenuous, but you prevail as commander of your sorrow.

Holding resentments tucked in your back pocket, listing them daily on your to-do lists, and cradling them so comfortable in your arms – as if you had birthed them – this keeps you trapped.

And the one who did this to you barely even knows you’re there. The chains you hold so dear have no hold on him.

I forgave my abuser. I stopped holding him hostage – and in so doing, I let God open the prison doors for me. I let Him hold my heart and my pain, and gave him the key – finally.

Burying and blame look a lot like this: I put myself in the car with him that day, and I let him drive me to the park, and I let him touch me, and I touched him.

But I was not too blame. He’d chosen me. Won my trust. Manipulated my heart so he could perpetrate my body. Covering me with accolades of adoration just to slay my sexuality.

Victim I was.
But I traded His power for my prisons.
Victor I am today.

Past hurts resurface. They rise up and cry out – hold me again. Pick me up and nourish the pain.
Forgiveness if final. It is finished and He is enough. I receive it over this violation.

And yet I waiver in the everyday acts of absolution.

When my “sister” in Christ says one more cutting word about me.
When my adopted son pushes me away – assuring me we won’t be close today.
When the stranger cuts me off – in traffic, in my train of thought, in my joy.

It’s in the daily – I find my prisons reborn.
It’s in the moments – I choose again to re-chain the sorrow.
It’s in the breathing – I give up my freedom all over.

If it’s possible to forgive every time because of the accessible power of Christ – why do I resist?
If it’s true He finished on the cross what I could never begin to forgive even about my broken heart – my dirty choices – why fight?
If it’s the chains that keep us broken, locked up, alone – why return to them – over and over?

Remembering today how breaking free is not only optional – but optimal – I will choose His Very Best.
I will rest at the feet of The One Safe Place.

Remember the one who shattered your heart, ruptured your purity, and severed your hope?
He’s no longer safe. He’s no longer in control.

If you’ve been rescued by The King – live where Forgiveness is Final – where you no longer cradle your pain, but rather –
You are cradled by The One who holds you through your past, present – and future.