Let it Go!

Are you a 10-gallon person with a 1-pint family?

On a YouTube video with Oprah Winfrey, Bishop T.D. Jakes says that some people have a 10-gallon capacity for love, but they grow up with 1-pint families. Your family may have given you all they had but maybe you feel like it was not enough.

“By holding onto your history, you could lose your destiny.”

Sometimes people experience pain caused by a parent and it still hurts many years later. Children understand things in their own way and often what doesn’t feel fair or right, can carry on into our adult lives.

Do any of these thoughts sound familiar?

• “He doesn’t care enough about me to even remember my birthday!”
• “What gives her the right to tell me what to do when she is an alcoholic?”
• “She gave me away and I can never forgive her.”
• “He made me feel useless and stupid.”

What feelings do you have when you think about your mother? Or your father?

If you feel pain, anger, hurt, or criticism, you can change your story right now. Maybe you don’t think that it matters whether you forgive or not. Did you know that forgiving is essential for your own growth and health? We are all trying to manage in a broken and hurting world and no one is perfect – including our parents.

Your parent is an ordinary person who also struggles with pain, disappointment, and rejection.

When you were a child, your friends might have seemed to have the perfect life; happy and encouraging parents, homemade lunches with chocolate chip cookies, parents who got up early to take them to sport practices. Those families had their unique challenges too. Life, for everyone, involves times of disappointment, betrayal, loss and, the difficulties of dealing with other people.

How would your life be different today, if you found a way to forgive people who hurt you in your past?

What if you could… just let it go and move on?

“Forgiveness is not necessarily admitting the other person was right.
And it’s not about letting the offender continue to reoffend.”

“…it cuts the chain that ties two souls together in painful memories;
to set yourself free to live your own life.”

You can make a deliberate choice to take your hands off what should happen to that person or how they should act.

One way to let go of the pain is by writing down all the things that hurt you. List everything. Give yourself permission to feel the pain. But don’t stay there. Read it through once more, then rip it into little pieces and throw it away.

Take a deep breath right now. Make a choice to let it go and then exhale slowly! Sometimes the hardest part is reminding yourself to not take back any of the painful feelings. Letting go, allows you to live your own life without carrying around the burden of the old wounds!

There is one more step. Tell someone.

The Bible says to “confess your sins” (James 5: 16). Find someone you trust to listen without giving you their sympathy. Another person’s sympathy will only reinforce your feelings of being wronged.

Tell your Pastor (or a friend) that you are sorry for carrying this heavy burden of pain for so long. This is called repentance. It is a deliberate action to turn those feelings over to God; to be set free.

Today, it is time to let it go!
You are a 10-gallon person with love to give and a big life to live. Don’t lose your destiny.

God is big enough to go with you and He will…every step of your adventurous, wonderful life.

Forgiveness is an important topic in my book, “Flourish in a World Full of People” as quoted above. For more stories and tips to learn how to forgive, let go and be free to pursue your destiny, click here to order a copy of my book. If you would like to leave a comment, please click in the review section on Amazon, to encourage others.