We’ve all been there. Emotions high, temper raging, the adrenaline pumping, and it takes everything in us not to explode in word – or even action when someone we love has been hurt. Once someone we love has been the target of unkind words, gossip, taunting or even cruel teasing, we begin to imagine the things we could say or do (legal and otherwise) to those responsible. As we witness the shattering agony of what has been done to them we want to react. And when it is a child of ours who has been in the line of fire – the Momma Bear comes out, ready to protect, ready to fight, ready to take down the offender.When one of my children was in middle school, she had a falling out with her best friend that got ugly – very ugly. I was enraged by the pain that was inflicted on my daughter by this girl. This girl, this child, who had been in our home, who had been loved by our family, how could she turn on my daughter? It took all of my strength and perhaps some divine strength as well, not to drive to her home and rip her face off– er I mean, not to confront her. I was livid by her cruelty and I wanted my daughter as far away from her as possible. But by the end of the school year, she and my daughter had made up. They were friends again – maybe not the best friends they once were, but friends none the less. Me? Not so much. It was years before I could look at her and not be struck by the Momma Bear emotions in me. It wasn’t my pain that caused me to be slow in my forgiveness – it was the hurt she wreaked upon my child that I struggled to forgive.
Shanda from A Pause on the Path, writes in her blog post Why Love Hurts
He loved so much that He sent his only Son to earth. We rejected, tortured and killed Him. How God’s parent heart had to be tearing apart: slowly tortured with every physical stab that touched His Son. How did God withstand that pain? How could He hold back His protective power to let us do that to His loved one?
I was struck by this – God’s parent heart. As I read that post, my mind jumped back in time to that event. That season in my life where I labored to forgive someone, not because of what they had done to me, but because of what they had done to my child. And I was reminded of how profound God's love is -of how He has not only forgiven us for the pain we have committed against Him – but He has also willingly, unselfishly, and instantaneously, forgiven us for the sins we committed against His son – His child. And He did it by His own expense, by His own suffering, by His own choice to love us.
– What amazing love.
