By Jessica Brodie
Have you ever arrived someplace, set down your suitcase, and felt an immediate sense of perfect relief?
There’s a scene in my novel, The Memory Garden, where the protagonist, Rebecca, walks inside her granny‘s home, the home in which she spent every summer as a teenager. She sets down her suitcase and turns in a circle, looking around as the memories swarm her senses, a balm for her weary, anguished heart.
That’s what setting down your suitcase of sin is like—walking in the door of the most peaceful home you’ve ever known and setting all that heavy, corroded baggage down, knowing everything is handled. Forgiven. Gone, not even a trace remaining.
Do you know what I mean by a suitcase of sin? It’s that load of guilt and shame many of us carry needlessly, sometimes for years and years. Long after we’ve repented and become new creations in Christ, we find ourselves lugging that baggage around, unable to set it down.
Perhaps we’re afraid if we set it down we’ll go back to old habits. Or we think setting it down means we don’t care about what happened, which means that deep down, maybe we don’t really feel bad about it. So we force ourselves to lug it around.
It becomes an unwanted, unneeded accessory for our new garments, garments bestowed upon us by Christ himself. Garments of forgiveness.
For a long time I carried around my suitcase of sin and shame. Even though I’d long repented and become a new creation in Christ, I felt like I wasn’t “allowed” to leave the past behind. I’d beat myself up remembering the wrongs I’d done. Would God actually forgive me? Had I repented “enough”? Did I believe “enough” for him to fully wash me clean?
Perhaps deep down I thought beating myself up on a daily basis meant I’d somehow be “worthy” of salvation. Except guess what? I’m not worthy of salvation—none of us are. Salvation is a free gift from God, period. There’s nothing we can do to earn it or be worthy of it. It’s God’s perfect love, generous and merciful, given to those of us who believe in his son, Jesus Christ.
Those feelings compelling me to carry around that suitcase? They’re lies from the evil one, because he’s the one who wants me to carry that suitcase around. After all, if my arms are busy carrying that heavy load, how can they carry what God wants me to carry? If my mind is occupied by fear or memories of darkness, how can it make room for what God wants it to think?
But I know what the truth is. Not only is it written throughout God’s word, the Bible, but it’s all around me—it’s in the air that I breathe, the perfect understanding deep in my soul, the whispers God sends, quiet and comforting like a blanket he’s laid upon me. And the truth really is that simple:
Every one of us, if we repent and believe, belong to him. We are forgiven! And in turn, we must go and forgive others. We’re not the judge or the jury, whether of ourselves or of others. Only the Lord is. It’s not for us to decide.
So that suitcase of sin and shame? I really can set it down. Those old grudges against people who did me wrong, circumstances I should never have been exposed to, things that happened to me or things I did … I can let all those grudges, all those regrets, all that anger go. I don’t have to hold onto them. In fact, I’m commanded to let go of them. I’m commanded to forgive myself and others, to walk in God fresh and new, reminiscent of the promise he gives us every single morning when dawn cracks through the darkness and brings the joy of the morning once more.
If you are holding onto that suitcase of sin and shame, past regrets and grudges, I urge you—set it all down. Instead, allow your hands and your heart to cling to what God wants you to hold onto: love.
Now and forevermore.
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Interested in reading The Memory Garden? Find it on Amazon here. Paperback, audiobook, and Kindle ebook.
Are you a reader? I write Christian contemporary fiction that addresses the authentic, real-life faith issues many of us struggle with—forgiveness, mental health, and how to embrace new life in Christ after years of sin and wandering. (They’re also both Amazon bestsellers!) I hope you’ll check them out. Available in paperback, ebook, or audiobook. Click here.
Thanks to my Patreon sponsors: Brian Black, Matt Brodie, Emily Dodd, Jane, Marcia Hatcher, Frances Nwobi, Kathleen Patella, Billy Robinson, Yancy Rose, and Lanny Turner.
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