Ever been dealing with resentment, lack of forgiveness, or bitterness?
![](https://abikristi.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/373B0A96-BF90-44E8-B28F-13C860368C82-1.jpg)
Heartbroken for my cat who had just disappeared
I am aggravated by the feeling of being robbed inadvertently. I am currently living in a so-called third-world country where some people have the terrible habit of eating cats during the end-of-year and new year holidays.
2nd day into the new year, day of our traditional family dinner. As we were all getting ready to gather around the table, the person who was helping us around the house, approached me to let me know that the mother of our kittens was suddenly missing. I responded: “Ah, she’s probably somewhere out there, or in the house. We’ll find her soon”… Then I added: “To be honest, I just don’t want to deal with the thought that she’s missing right now”.
We focused on finishing everything, we dressed the table, got ourselves ready. Then the family sat and we passed the dishes to each other and enjoyed our moment together. We had a great time. The next time the cat popped up in the back of my mind was when we were clearing the table and leftovers, and I silently hoped that she was just hiding somewhere and would appear again soon.
A few moments later, we were looking for her, calling her at every place she could have been. Nothing.
2 hours later, it was time to feed them, but still no sign of her. Since she was breastfeeding multiple times a day, she was usually the first to come to get fed (we also have a male cat, they made 4 kittens together). She would never go out in the neighborhood, even less now that she had her little ones to care for. But she’s very affectionate and isn’t afraid of strangers. While we were all busy chatting, cooking, and baking inside, had someone dared to come close to our apartment and signal to pet her, she would have gone to that person.
Another hour later…
I got out on the front porch and saw the little kittens piled together to warm themselves. The mother still not there. My heart sank. They stole my cat, and worse, to eat her. I felt as hurt as infuriated. I raised one arm up to the sky: “Father, see! They stole our cat. May that be the last cat this person will ever steal or eat”. I felt so pissed off and hurt at the thought that my beautiful cat, that we had been taking care of for so long, and that just had kittens, was gone, taken from us, probably tied somewhere, or killed already.
My usual first reaction to any kind of injustice is anger, but I have been on a journey to learn that “human’s anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires”. And I get it: because no one is perfect. While you’re mad at someone else’s mistreatment of you or of another person, you probably have your own unconscious baggage to check on as well. But when people do you wrong, it still stings your heart and feels as it is: just wrong! Anger is one of our natural responses to those cases of abuse. In my mind, I was fuming: “I’ll get my Father to deal with them. If we were some voodoo practitioners, they wouldn’t dare touch what’s ours, but since we mean good, and serve God, they think they can always take advantage of us without consequences. May it be the last cat they would ever steal”. I quickly added “Father, you know I don’t mean for you to kill them or anything like that over my cat, You forbid. But somehow, you see how wrong that is, and it hurts us. The cat was like a family member. Make them repent in such a way that they would never steal any people’s property again.”
Later, at our usual devotional time, I went internally on a personal rant with God. I couldn’t deny how it hurt and disturbed me. Some of us were trying to stay positive and still hoped that she would return, the rest of us were just sad, me included. Just because it was time to pray together, I couldn’t pretend that I was not grieving the cat. I couldn’t pretend that I didn’t want that person to be punished “in-some-way-that-they-would-LEARNNNNNN⚡️!”
HOWEVER☝️! That freshly gone year, I learned a very deep life lesson about the end rope of resentment, bitterness, and lack of forgiveness. I witnessed how they can eat your bones up if you don’t properly deal with them. So I went to God aware of the resentment mixed with grief and anger in my heart, and started venting to the Almighty, whom I also know to be our loving, understanding and helpful Heavenly Father, about how difficult it was to keep our hearts clean in such a world.
Compared to other cases of evil going on, that could be considered as a minor among the minors. But the real matter was that it still affected our hearts, so I was confident to bring it up to Him. In fact, I am always confident to go to God whenever and wherever, with or without any case whatsoever; and that is only because of the way that He loves us, and because in Christ we’re always accepted. So I brought it up, but my anger, though legitimate, started to feel inappropriate as I was thinking: “He is our Shepherd. If someone has stolen from us, it was certainly under His watch. So He let that happen”. Then I remembered, “Vengeance and payback are mine, says the Lord”. I kind of sighed. “Then I let it all in your hands, Father… But we, in this house, are hurt, so please take care of our hearts.”
Again, images from that hard lesson about bitterness and lack of forgiveness I learned last year came back. I didn’t want these consequences of bitterness which I saw, to happen to me… I sighed again: “I forgive those people because that’s what you want me to do”. Yet again the same images, stubbornly big on my mind. Oh well, I just really didn’t want to end up with a resentful or bitter heart. Heads up: undealt bitterness in our soul, with time, may show up in our body. Not only that it’s obviously not good, but, according to what I’ve witnessed, it won’t look good on you either. And I am 200% sure that I would never want to end up looking that way, so I repeated “I forgive them”. Then I started thinking that by greeting my neighbors on my way out for work the next day morning, I could unknowingly be greeting my cat’s thieves among them. Then I thought I’d greet them with my head, instead of actually speaking to them… Yet again the same morbid image from that life lesson… At that moment, I knew that I needed to ask: “Help me forgive for real whoever did that”… I had to forgive them, that was God’s way if I wanted Him to take over that matter, and if I didn’t want to have a resentful and bitter heart. Although I also have the freedom to change of environment, to ease my letting-go process… (right, God?). One thing for sure, I could no longer wish any harm to that person, if I was forgiving them for real.
However, I’ll just let a word for the cat thieves club.
Whatever we do on earth never really leaves our lives, that’s why it is smart to do good. Intelligence, or having understanding, is to depart from evil (Job 28:28). (If we want a bad seed to be released from our life, we’ll have to humbly bring the deed to God asking for the forgiveness that He provided through Jesus’ blood, and for the ability to stop doing that to overcome it). That’s also why sons and daughters often have the same traits as their parents because life is in the blood and everything is constantly being recorded there. It is as much spiritual as scientific. Every little thing we do in our lifetime, our blood remembers it and we pass all that information on to our next generation who gets to amplify it. For instance, when we, humans, rob others, we’re obviously robbing ourselves even more by attaching that curse to our lives and bloodlines. More practically, robbing others shows that we’re operating from a low mindset, a mindset of lack, a place of self-limitation, greed and envy. If we would agree with Dr Joseph Murphy who stated that there cannot be real success, or real happiness without peace of mind, we’d deduce that such can never be achieved when we act fraudulently.
I finally felt a little bit of compassion for the thief and prayed for that person, but I am still grieving and it’s okay until I stop. I’ll probably continue to pray for our hearts in the house, and plead that case a little more because I can’t pretend that it is just okay now, and that I will go hihi-haha with the neighbors who killed and ate my cat. But I will trust God on this and want to forgive. Complete honesty with God has been the key to His help in my areas of weakness anyway. That’s what works for me.
We shouldn’t pretend with God anyway; that would have been the dumbest thing ever. He already knows it all.
Okay bye now, 2:40 am.
Until next time!
![cute kitty](https://abikristi.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/74479230_169453177757433_8996666468752518101_n-300x254.jpg)