Transparent Christian Magazine

It had a strangle hold on me. My life was full of bitterness, anger, and depression.

I remember the day that I gave it to Him and He loosed me. I was driving down the road. Almost fifteen years later, I can still remember almost the exact point where I was. I began to speak it out loud.

I started at the present and began to work into the past thirty years. I granted it to everyone from coworkers to close family to acquaintances to friends, from adult relationships to elementary school classmates. The load became lighter and lighter. The tears began to flow almost to the point that I had to pull over to the side of the road. But when I finished there was a freedom, a liberation, a freshness. The wounds from the years of carrying it began to heal.

At times I pick it up again, but He reminds me that it is not of Him and that it only weighs me down. I realize that I have been given much and in return I should give much. I hand it back to Him. Freedom comes again.

Unforgiveness was that weight around my neck. I clung to it like a child with his favorite toy. But the release of it brought instant relief.

“In your anger do not sin. Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry and do not give the devil a foothold.” Ephesians 4:26-27, NIV