SHREDDED

One by one I fed the papers through the shredder—all from a file folder representing sadness and disappointment. I tend to have a “helper” personality, but this backfired when I tried to help someone who was deflecting their unhappiness and anger onto me. I'd saved the negative paper trail, trying to make sense of it, Finally, I realized the files had to go in order to help me “let go” of this problem that only God could solve.

Shredding deed done, I sensed the hug of God and the reminder that He would handle this a lot better than I had. Accusations and lies had pummeled my spirit and eroded my health. But I knew God's way was to say “no” to revenge and leave it to Him (Romans 12:17-19). “Forgiving does not mean not facing a problem,” Dr. Henry Cloud wrote in Integrity: The Courage to Meet the Demands of Reality (Harper, 2006, p. 195). “It means facing it and then letting it go.”

In his pastoral role to early churches, Peter also had to deal with suffering believers. He urged them to take the high road—not repaying evil with evil, or insult with insult (1 Peter 4:9). Retaliation wasn't in God's plan. Instead, they were told (and here Peter quoted Psalm 34):

Whoever would love life and see good days must keep his tongue from evil and his lips from deceitful speech. He must turn from evil and do good; he must seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are attentive to their prayer. (1 Peter 4:10-12a)

Even though I destroyed that negative correspondence, I take comfort that God has kept a record of my wounds and neediness. In Psalm 56, David reflected on how beat-up he felt as he tried to escape King Saul and ended up in Gath, home to the giant he had killed. Talk about unfriendly escape routes! “All day long they twist my words,” he cried out (56:5). After listing some other afflictions, David affirmed his faith that God saw the bigger picture when these enemies would be turned back:

By this I will know that God is for me. In God, whose word I praise—in God I trust; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me? (56:10-11)

How ironic, that words which “cut” me emotionally got “cut” so thoroughly. As I threw the shreds in the garbage, this verse from my very favorite book of the Bible came to mind:

Forgetting what is behind [like that now-shredded correspondence] and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. (Phil. 3:14)