I just looked at the calendar this morning.  Four years, really, only four?  Four years ago today that my world changed forever?  Four years since the one who hurt me began to see…

The moment I begin to see the one who hurt me as broken is the very moment I am free from the responsibility of making them feel their offense.  When their healing becomes more important to me than justice, that is the very moment I begin to heal.

You see truth and grace are tied so very tightly together.  “We have seen His glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”  John 1:14

These are the two things that filled Jesus.  Grace – merciful kindness.  Truth – what actually is.  Jesus held this tension.  In grace, He saw and met and had compassion for the broken prostitute.  In truth, He told her to stop the life she was living.  In truth, He asked the Pharisees , “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil?”  In grace, He healed the man’s hand.  In truth, Jesus met Martha after her brother’s death with “I am the resurrection and the life.”  In grace, He met Mary with His tears.

You see, who am I to hold one more tightly than the other?  Who am I to get to choose?

Four years ago today, Grace and Truth won in our life.  My husband was far from God and angry and bitter and broken.  Our marriage inches from statistic.  Then in a moment, just a moment, everything changed.  He changed.  You see, I had spent months trying to fix him, trying to force him, trying to “truth” him into loving again.  But what it took was a moment of grace AND truth.  What I can spend years trying to do, God can do in an instant.  God opened his eyes.  I had held so tightly to truth, that I almost let go of my husband.

For months, everything in me wanted to make him feel as bad as he had made me feel.  I wanted him to see how his callousness, his detachment, his inability to care, had hurt me – had hurt our boys – and I wanted him to be sorry.  But then one January day, God did what only He can do.  He pealed the scales from my eyes and let me see.  God broke my already broken heart.  He broke my heart for the man who had broken my heart.  Grace and Truth.  Truth said that he had hurt me.  Grace said, “he is hurting”.   Truth said, “I have done all I can do.”  Grace said, “only God can do it.”  From that day on, I stopped trying to make him see the truth and began to show him grace while never letting go of the truth.

I had spent so much time working and praying and striving to make right, I almost missed the miracle.  When I saw him as hurting instead of the one who hurt me, I was released from making him “feel” it.  Oddly enough, this is exactly when I saw my part.  I could see how I was hurting him, and all of a sudden, his offenses started to dim.  When his healing became as important to me as mine, it somehow began to heal me.

Then on this day, four years ago…Heaven rushed in and healed his heart in an instant.

Grace AND truth.

What do you find yourself holding on to a little too tightly today?  Grace?  Truth?

Remember, they only work together.

Image by:  waterstreetphotography.com