It was an odd season.

For months, I began to have memories or visions randomly throughout the day of things that someone from my past did or said to me that I had blocked out of my mind for years.  Impressions that hurt my heart.  Memories that were so real, that in that brief moment they took me right back to that place of discomfort.  

They didn’t go away.  Instead, they increased in number, and I began to also have painful dreams.

I began to realize that the memories were revealing hurts that I had stuffed deep down into my soul.  I had buried them, but they were not lost, forgotten, or forgiven.  Each memory was tied to the person that had hurt me in some way, some big and some small.  

All these years I think I had completely misunderstood the entire concept of forgiveness.  Just because you still talk to someone or on the contrast are able to forget about someone, that does not mean that you have offered forgiveness.  

It is only forgiveness that will set you free, and I was most definitely not set free.  These memories had me bound in shackles.  

I began to start a new journey of asking God how to forgive.  Every time I had a memory or a dream, I would take that as an indicator of someone I might need to forgive.  I would tell God that I wanted to be released from that person.  I wanted to forgive them. 

Can you relate?  Do you have memories that make you feel tied to another person?  Disappointment, frustration, abuse, neglect, the sins of another person can damage us.  But when we don’t talk to God about that pain and ask him to take it, we are allowing ourselves to be shackled to the pain giver.  It’s time to be set free.