Stitches and Forgiveness
Someone I know hurt me with her words and I felt tossed aside and grace-robbed. I quietly began to tend my gaping wound. I begged God to put stitches in it, and He did. But before He could finish, I took the needle and thread from His hands. I kept stitching on my own and created a woolly, heavy scarf.
I stopped stitching my wound for healing and started stitching for self-protection and to justify my anger. She hurt me! So every time I remembered that wound, I slipped on another stitch. My scarf is unnecessarily immense and I keep gleefully adding stitches, simply for the sake of knitting and not for practicality. Here’s the thing about scarves: they’re good for winter, for protection from cold. But in summer, they are stifling and can put us in danger of strangulation.
God is helping me see the absurdity of wearing a scarf year-round. He’s asking me to allow Him to unravel some stitches by showing me what forgiveness looks like. At first, I bristled at the idea of forgiveness. Wouldn’t that make what she did right?
No. Forgiveness doesn’t invalidate my hurt or sanction the attack on me! Forgiveness won’t unravel and erase my hurt. But God is asking me to allow Him to make this garment into a shield of protection for me instead of a scarf that strangles.
Very intentionally, through prayer and submission, I asked God to take the needle and thread from my hands. I asked Him to transform my scarf into a simple scar. A scar reminds me wounds are real, but a scar won’t choke me like a scarf could.
Stitches are for wounds and garments. The healing my heart needs is the kind that comes from Light shining in my darkness, not the healing that comes from a needle and thread.
“Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.’ And the soldiers gambled for his clothes by throwing dice.” (Luke 23:34 NLT)