Imagine tying the reins of your horse to a tree. Okay, back up a little. Imagine that you have a horse and then tie the reins to a tree. Now climb into the saddle and go for a ride.
How far did you get? Did you untie the horse before you climbed up, or did you get stuck when the reins grew taut?
Sometimes an event takes place that ties you to a moment. The consequences of that event and your life generally, now centre on and radiate from that new reference point. You are tied. You are stuck. Generations go on, your life continues, and those of your descendants, but this significant moment that anchors your story continues to influence your experience.
You talk about that event and your description colours the way your friends and family perceive what happened.
Does that mean the limitations that tie you to that past event dictate everyone else’s lives too?
No, and that can be frustrating for someone who is tied to the past. Others do not live with the same limits. If they haven’t been shaped by your view, they can have interpreted the same event through a completely different lens. When you hold on to your own view as the only perspective, you open the door to offence and misunderstandings that make your limitations more unbearable. You’ll add jealousy to the list and other emotions will tag on too. Remaining tied to the past prevents reconciliation, growth, change, and restoration.
I’ve recently been on another journey to Scandinavia and the United Kingdom where I’ve heard stories of the way that my ancestors impacted the lives of many. When confronted with the stories, I am aware that the impact of those stories still echo through current generations.
When you hear people share generational pain and suffering, can you hear how they have been limited to the injustices of yesterday?
As we travelled, we took opportunity to ask forgiveness for the wrongs our forefathers had committed and spoke restoration over the people and places that were wronged.
Why on earth would we do that?
Because the injustices of the past can bind generations without them even realising it.
By asking for forgiveness and releasing blessing, we invited these people and places to untie themselves from the events they had suffered. Not to forget, but to become free: free to start a conversation, free to reconcile, free to grow, free to change, free to restore, free to move into a new season.
There are so many levels of injustice: national, personal, within a community or an organisation. Most, if not all nations have injustice as part of their story. Communities, large and small, often sweep injustice aside, too uncomfortable to deal with the reality of it. But when we face injustice as a community and hear its effects at a personal level, when we compassionately listen to pain, we can seek forgiveness and reconciliation, leading to restoration and a renewed future.
Those who experience injustice need to be heard, not swept under the carpet.
It was just a few days ago that the wife of Charlie Kirk publicly forgave the man who killed her husband. This is a woman who understands the power of forgiveness. She has just lived through a life-defining moment, and she could have stayed tethered to the heartache indefinitely. Instead, she chose to untether herself.
Forgiving does not change what happened, it does not change the circumstance she must face, it probably doesn’t even change the feelings flooding through her. But what it does do is allow her the freedom to process her grief and move forward, in her own way and in her own timing, without being shackled by bitterness.
She chose to untie the reins. She chose to walk in freedom rather than getting stuck.
All of us experience injustice in some way. Your experience will be different to mine, but it is there. How do you allow that injustice to shape you? Do you hold on to the offence bitterly? Have you tied yourself to that thing? Or have you unleashed yourself from it through forgiveness.
Your family carries stories that shape how you operate. Take a look at those stories. Is there an attitude you have picked up through your family that is actually a reflection of something that happened generations ago?
We tend to pick up habits and cruise through life without noticing where our attitudes shape us. But where you have a bad attitude, stop, check it out. Are you tethered to something that is part of your family’s history? What might happen if you called that attitude out and chose to forgive the injustice that has impacted your family ever since?
Forgiving something that happened to you directly is one level of freedom, dealing with patterns that flow down the generations is another level of freedom that will affect more than just you.
We notice stuff and wish that someone else would deal with it. If we notice it, we’re probably the ones that need to deal with it. Others might be oblivious to that thing that now stands out to us.
My invitation to you this week is to unleash yourself.
Not the kind of unleashing that leads to mayhem and chaos, the kind that leads to freedom. Freedom to become more yourself. Freedom to change. Freedom to restore what has been stolen or absent. Freedom to grow and flourish. Freedom to forgive.
And it might not be only for yourself. Unleashing yourself might free up others in your family to explore new things that they couldn’t reach before. Perhaps they were limited too.
The reins of that horse might have stretched over the years as you have strived to make progress despite the anchor. But where might you go if you untie the horse and set out unhindered?
