The Hardest Thing To Give Away

Before I came to know Christ, I did not understand the concept of grace and forgiveness.

Growing up, I was very independent. I knew how to think for myself and how to become resourceful in almost every circumstance. When I was in college, I had just returned from traveling when a couple friends invited me to hang out for the night. Now, I was pretty level headed and knew to stay out of trouble. That evening, however, I put my guard down and allowed myself to try something new...within a couple hours I was extremely intoxicated and had lost all control. Without skipping a beat someone decided to take advantage of the situation that night and raped me over and over. Now, for someone who thought she could mend everything herself, this was the breaking point. I turned to every temporary fix I could find just feel that I still had control. I was buried in guilt and shame, thinking that I had done something to deserve it. I didn't understand why this God who people claimed to love me so much would have sat back and allowed something so awful, so I avoided Him at all costs. A couple months passed by and I was still sitting deep with the pain. It was late at night and I was having a conversation with a friend. She informed me of a study date she was about to have with someone in the library. I felt something urging me to tell her part of what happened and sure enough she was about to meet with the same guy. Without giving it a second thought, I headed straight to the library. I needed to see him. My mind felt completely blank but before I knew it, I was face to face with my assaulter. I will never forget the sheer terror that struck his face as I told him we needed to talk. He knew exactly what he had done. I didn't know what to say, but I felt a peace come over me and I began talking to him, but I knew that I wasn't the one speaking. I started to study the person in front of me. He was nothing but a broken man in need of the same healing that I did. I was looking through the eyes of grace. In that moment, I wanted nothing more than to see him standing behind the gates of heaven than rotting behind the bars of a prison cell.

God showed me the beauty of grace and for the first time I decided to accept forgiveness of the guilt and shame in my life.

I caught just a glimpse of the depth of God's love and understood the significance of the cross and what that meant for my life.

After sitting in silence for a while, I found the words to tell my assaulter how God had changed my heart. I told him that it was by grace I was able to forgive him and then walked away without looking back. That is exactly how God looks at it. I don't deserve any of the blessings that He's given me, but I don't get a say in how He loves or who He loves.

I am confident in knowing where I will be spending the rest of eternity because of His amazing grace and forgiveness.