Yeshua said in Matthew 18:7 - "Woe to the world because of its stumbling blocks! For it is inevitable that stumbling blocks come; but woe to that man through whom the stumbling block comes!

Forgiving those who have hurt us is sometimes an impossible job. But, for believers, it is imperative that we learn to forgive those who have hurt us. God WANTS us to forgive "seventy times seven".

Matthew 18: 21 Then Peter came and said to Him, "Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?" 22 Jesus said to him, "I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.

I believe what Yeshua meant by this verse was that we are to forgive constantly! Not only does "forgiving" free us from that demon of bondage which repeatedly uses the experience to taunt us, but it also allows Yeshua to use us as an example of what Godly living is supposed to be like -- not to mention that losing the anger is good for our health and well being!

Unfortunately for us humans, true forgiveness is one of the hardest things to do -- especially when someone hurts us deeply.

Here are some of the things that happened to me during my lifetime, and how I eventually managed to forgive those people:

1. In post-war Germany, December 1950, my mother gave me away to live with some very poor foster parents when I was only six weeks old. The foster home was a good one, despite the fact that my foster mother was slightly retarded, and my foster father was an alcoholic who once raped my foster mother in my presence.

2. My natural mother (an unhappy Jewish woman who did not try to hide the fact that she hated her own mother), after marrying an American soldier in 1959, yanked me unwillingly from my beloved foster home and brought me to America (because she could not leave Germany unless the three children she had given away were adopted). Since my foster family was on welfare, they could not adopt me, and so my mother was forced to take the easy way out and simply take me back into her home. She did not try to hide the fact that she didn't like me, and we never bonded.

3. Her new husband, a well-respected Army First Sergeant, began sexually abusing me almost every night when I was just 10. This went on until I was 14 when my mother divorced him. (She was married seven or eight times before she died in 1977 at age 45.) My father kept telling me that all women were whores and that I was to take care not to be a whore like my mother....

4. When I was 12, my adoptive father's 72 year old father lived with us for a few months, and he too, tried to abuse me sexually -- as did my mother's third husband, when I was 16.

5. My childhood ruined, I joined the Army upon graduation from high school in 1969. However, since I was officially "dysfunctional" now, I made the same mistakes my mother had made, and followed in her footsteps. I married several times, I drowned my sorrows in alcohol, and I was very promiscuous, never being truly able to give myself wholly to any man (because I never really trusted anybody). Furthermore, I never had children because I was afraid they would be sexually abused or end up hating me like I hated my own mother.

6. Without going into all the gory details, I always chose "bad" men -- drug addicts or alcoholics who abused me in one way or another. My life was in shambles until New Years Eve, 1994, when said a prayer to God (I didn't know God from Adam, but I did know -- thanks to my foster grandmother in Germany who told me about God when I was 4 or 5 -- that He was an Entity "out there somewhere" who created us and watched over us). Not knowing any better, and thinking that some man would be the key to my eternal happiness, I prayed, "God, if you're as tired of my lifestyle as I am, why don't You give me a good man for a change?" Then, on the spur of the moment I decided to add: "And for once, make me wise enough to know it." Well, the very next day, God brought a Christian man into my life who, to make the proverbial long story short, led me to Jesus just two weeks later. And my life has NOT been the same since! Jesus filled that "little hole in my soul" that no one else had ever been able to fill, and He helped me to see life from a completely different perspective.

Although I had finally "found" God, Satan kept trying to get me back on that perpetual merry-go-round that keeps us prisoners of our past. He kept taunting me with past "tapes", telling me that, even though I now belonged to God, I STILL wasn't a worthy person; I was STILL ugly and in need of another nose job; I was STILL unsucessful in life (even though I had a college education and a business college education, had made it to the rank of Sergeant Major in the Army, and had published a couple of children's books); I was STILL a "whore" because I would never be able to undo the fact that I had followed in my mother's footsteps. On and on....

One day, during a Sunday morning Bible study at church, it dawned on me that Jesus forgave ANYBODY for ANYTHING as long as they truly repented; and that He had given His life on the cross in order to provide us ALL that privilege. This thought shook me to the core because I realized that my adoptive father, the pedophile, had always told us kids that he was a Christian -- a fact confirmed by his third wife to whom he was married before his death in 1993. At first, this realization made me very angry, and I almost decided that if my adoptive father had gone to heaven, then I didn't want to be there....

But then I suddenly began to understand the depth of what Jesus had done. It was an overpowering, overwhelming feeling, one that brought tears to my eyes. Jesus allowed Himself to be killed for all of mankind 2,000 years ago, whether I chose to accept that fact, or not. He died for me; He died for my adoptive father. He died for my mother and for everyone else who had ever disappointed or hurt me. As God, He had decided to offer Himself as the Final Sacrifice so that the world of sinners could be forgiven....

In view of these facts, who was I to hold grudges??? Who was I to judge my father and mother, and all of my ex-husbands -- all of whom had been as "lost" as I, without God in their lives? Who was I to allow Satan, God's enemy, to continue ruling my life? What a slap in the face of my Savior!

No more! From that moment on, I decided to stop being a "fence straddler" -- to stop allowing my "carnal baggage" to weigh me down, and let ONLY Jesus rule my life. He was, after all, the ONLY reason I would be able to get into heaven someday....

I also realized one final thing which helped me to let go of all my past baggage: I realized that God gives us all choices -- the choice to either live life HIS way, or Satan's. There is no in-between! (My mother had chosen to hate her mother and thus, that hate was passed on to me. My adoptive father had chosen to be like his own father, both of whom were pedophiles. My ex-husbands had chosen to be abusive drug addicts, sex addicts, or alcoholics -- things they had learned from their own parents. I had followed in my mother's footsteps and thus managed to ruin my own life. None of us had known God or the Bible, nor did we have a personal relationship with Jesus. That's how Satan had pulled the wool over all our eyes!)

The thing is: We can blame ourselves, our parents, or some perpetrator for all our failures. But there comes a time in life when we have to take responsibility for our own actions and decide to MAKE a change. Choices is what it all boils down to. Choices, and the knowledge that, unfortunately, someone else' choice might impact you. When that happens, it is up to you to get yourself right with God and allow Him to heal you as only HE can. That is the ONLY place where TRUE healing comes from.

The Refiner's Fire