THE RELEASE
Forgiveness is not void of offense.
____________________________
I heard the unmistakable sound of a truck laying down rubber. Only this truck wasn’t burning pavement. It was throwing dirt. Not just any dirt, but a piece of our twelve acres that stretched beyond the sunset views from our windows. A patch of land where the boys often explored and played.
When the speeding truck finally stopped just three feet from where I blocked its path, the feral hint of a young man insisted he hadn’t known this was private land. I made certain he would never forget.
It would be easy to blame my vigilance on the protective instincts of a new mother. In truth, I have always been this way—
The defender in me is strong. Something I have held as a sacred aspect of my personhood since rescuing butterflies from the barn cats as a girl.
I have carried that defender inside of me right up until this last week—
She is the one who has held me through hurt and offense.
She is the one who has quietly whispered, “you can handle this.”
She has affirmed my reactions when they felt immediate and harsh.
She has cradled me in the wee hours when the disappointment of being maligned or misunderstood became too much.
More than being there through all the unspoken small and great offenses, she has met me, strong and self-assured when a Stage IV cancer diagnosis did its best to reshape my hope.
The defender in me had become enormous and impressive—
She is not the tenderness in me that I revere the most.
But she is not my enemy.
She has kept me alive.
She fortified a little girl.
She protected a wife.
She emboldened a mother.
She shielded a woman with Stage IV cancer.
She deserves gratitude, not to be vilified.
—Until a recent conversation with my Heavenly Father asked me to see her in a fresh way.
Forgiveness is not void of offense.
Take a bite of these six words.
I could literally taste them as He spoke them.
Like something never before savored:
Freedom from defense.
Until these words I had misunderstood that forgiveness meant surrendering my right to be made whole—
As if it never happened.
As if I had been the cause.
As if I somehow deserved what had transpired.
As if the truth would never be known.
Forgiveness is not void of offense.
It’s very nature assumes there is another side.
And in that moment my Creator assured me:
He sees it all:
I am your Defender. The only one who can make the wrong of it right.
Your job is to forgive. Mine is dealing with the rest of it in the way only I can.
Forgiveness, until this moment, was to me an erasure of offense.
But what if forgiveness isn’t hurt unresolved or unacknowledged,
but a handing over to an omniscient Judge who sees the truth of every situation from every side.
It has been a long six years from diagnosis. The strength of me has been admired. Sometimes, even by me.
I have watched this woman meet every “next step” with confidence. But what of her need to let down her guard? Her need for letting go, leaning on, the simple luxury of rest?
For the first time in decades [maybe the first time ever] I have felt release—
A mindful one of giving over justice to a loving Father.
A physical one that feels like healing is finally reaching places in me that defense never could.
NOTES:
A Soul Map
Some landscapes are crossed with our feet.
Others are crossed with our lives.
This map is for the second kind.
Over the past year, we've traveled through many landscapes together.
Some marked by illness.
Some by waiting.
Some by hope.
Some by the ache of becoming honest.
At the time, each felt like its own destination.
I'm beginning to wonder if they were never separate at all.
Perhaps every journey has been leading toward the same release.
This week...
it's defense.
REFLECTION
What changes when you realize forgiveness is not the denial of an offense—but God's acknowledgment that one exists?
If God asks us to forgive, He is not asking us to overlook the offense.
These go hand-in-hand.
He is asking us to release the burden of making it right.
What offense are you still carrying that God has already asked you to place in His hands?
You are here.
The grounding of these words in unfamiliar territory is profound.
Some maps can be studied before the journey begins.
Others can only be understood after walking it out—Janene Kraft
IMAGE: Prague. 2018. I am almost unrecognizable to myself. I chose this image because it reminds me that revelation rarely arrives all at once. It’s gathered over miles. The hard and beautiful woven together. The defender in me learning to release.
Postscript:
This Journal entry started with dirt and ended with healing.
Between these two images is—burning rubber, throwing dirt, butterflies, holding, cradling, tasting, burden, letting go, physical release.