I have been praying for God to bless me while simultaneously hoping He makes somebody else’s life a living hell.
And apparently, I thought that was perfectly reasonable.
Because in my mind, I wasn’t being bitter. I was being FAIR. I wasn’t holding a grudge. I just had an excellent memory and a very detailed understanding of what people deserved.
Which is interesting, considering I have spent a significant portion of my life surviving things I absolutely did not deserve.
Oh, the hypocrisy is LOUD this morning.
I opened my Bible to Jonah, fully prepared to learn something about obedience, and instead, God decided we were going to discuss my attitude.
Not my circumstances. Not the people who hurt me. Not even the things I’ve survived.
ME.
And I would like to formally request a different devotional.
Because Jonah wasn’t running from God because he was confused about his assignment. He was running because he understood exactly who God was.
Jonah 4:2 tells us that Jonah knew God was gracious, merciful, slow to anger, and abundant in steadfast love.
He knew God would potentially forgive Nineveh.
And he couldn’t stand it.
Now, before we start judging Jonah, I have a confession that makes his little boat ride look uncomfortably familiar.
When my mother died, my aunt and uncle refused to bury her. They disposed of her ashes. No proper burial. No dignity. No opportunity for the little girl who had already lost her mother to experience the closure she desperately needed.
And that wasn’t even the entirety of what I endured.
My uncle abused me for years. His words were cruel. His treatment was damaging. He planted things in me that I would spend adulthood trying to uproot.
Fear. Insecurity. Anger. The belief that I needed to protect myself because nobody else was coming.
And I learned to survive.
But survival has a funny way of convincing you that everything you developed to survive deserves to stay.
When my uncle died, I celebrated.
There. I said it again.
I wasn’t crying. I wasn’t mourning. I wasn’t wrestling with some complicated emotional response that I couldn’t explain.
I was GLAD.
And for years, I justified it because of what he had done to me.
I had been wounded, so surely my bitterness was warranted.
But here’s the part God confronted this morning.
Just because I’ve been done wrong doesn’t mean I have to respond wrong.
And just because I didn’t cause the injury doesn’t mean I’m not responsible for dealing with the infection.
Because an untreated wound doesn’t stop being dangerous simply because somebody else caused it.
I have spent years explaining my reactions by pointing to my experiences. And some of those explanations are absolutely valid. Trauma affects people. Abuse changes how we see safety, trust, and ourselves.
But at what point does my explanation become my permission slip?
At what point do I stop saying, “This is what happened to me,” and start asking, “What am I allowing it to produce in me?”
Because I have response-ability.
The ability to choose my response, even when I cannot change what happened.
And that conviction came with absolutely NO complimentary breakfast.
In Jonah 1:1-3, God tells Jonah to go to Nineveh, and Jonah boards a ship headed in the opposite direction.
Now, I have never purchased a ticket to Tarshish, but emotionally? Spiritually?
Frequent flyer miles.
Because how many times has God asked me to release something, and I’ve decided to take the scenic route through resentment instead?
I know what He said.
I just don’t particularly care for the destination.
And here’s something else that bothered me.
Jonah wasn’t some random man who accidentally stumbled into ministry. According to 2 Kings 14:25, he was a prophet.
He was seasoned. He was called. He had already been used by God.
And he was STILL capable of rebellion.
Which means being called doesn’t automatically mean I’m surrendered.
Being gifted doesn’t mean I’m healed.
And being effective doesn’t mean I’m emotionally healthy.
Lord, that last one was unnecessary.
Because Jonah was alive, chosen, and eventually effective, while still bitter.
And I wonder how many times I’ve confused God using me with God approving of everything happening inside me.
One of the most dangerous prayers I can pray is, “God, use me.”
Not because it’s wrong, but because I can become so focused on being useful that I forget to ask Him to make me whole.
I can serve people and secretly resent them.
Encourage people while internally keeping score.
Preach grace and privately believe certain people should be disqualified from receiving it.
And if we’re being completely transparent, sometimes I want God to be discriminatory with His mercy.
Give it to me.
Give it to the people I love.
But those people who hurt me?
Lord, surely You’ve reviewed their applications.
DENIED.
Except Jonah 3:10 tells us that when the people of Nineveh turned from their evil ways, God relented from the disaster He had threatened.
And Jonah was FURIOUS.
Not because the people hadn’t changed.
But because they had.
Their repentance meant God would show them mercy, and Jonah had already decided they deserved destruction.
And I had to ask myself something that made my stomach turn.
Have I ever been so committed to somebody receiving consequences that their transformation would actually disappoint me?
WHEW.
Because what if God is doing something in the life of someone who hurt me?
What if He’s extending mercy to somebody I decided was beyond redemption?
What if the grace that saved me is the very grace He’s offering them?
Do I rejoice?
Or do I become Jonah, sitting outside Nineveh, irritated that God didn’t consult me before forgiving somebody?
Now, let me be extremely clear.
My uncle’s abuse was wrong. What happened to my mother’s remains was wrong. None of that becomes acceptable because I’m choosing to release bitterness.
Forgiveness doesn’t require reconciliation. Mercy doesn’t eliminate accountability. And I don’t have to invite someone back into my life to stop allowing their actions to govern it.
But I do have to stop confusing my desire for justice with my desire for revenge.
And there’s a difference.
I thought about Set It Off this morning.
“What’s the procedure when you have a gun to your face?”
Because everybody knows the procedure until they’re the one staring down the barrel.
I know the Scriptures. I know what forgiveness means. I know what grace looks like when I’m the one receiving it.
But when I’m the one wounded?
Suddenly, I’m Cleo, and we’re about to have a VERY different conversation.
Because it’s easy to talk about mercy when it costs me nothing.
It’s much harder when mercy is being extended to somebody who cost me something.
And then I got to Jonah 1:17.
God appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah.
Now, we tend to talk about that fish like it was punishment. But the more I sat with it, the more I realized that the fish was also provision.
Jonah was thrown into the sea because of his own disobedience, and God still made a way to preserve his life.
The water could have been his ending.
The fish became his rescue.
And I started thinking about all the times God preserved me when I was making decisions out of pain, anger, fear, and survival.
All the times He gave me another opportunity when my attitude was absolutely not worthy of one.
All the times I needed grace because I was still figuring out how to be a person who wasn’t constantly preparing for the next injury.
God didn’t wait until Jonah had a perfect attitude to rescue him.
And He didn’t wait for me either.
So how can I celebrate the whale that saved me while hoping somebody else drowns?
MY GOD.
And here’s another thing.
Jonah’s disobedience didn’t just affect Jonah.
In Jonah 1:4-5, the sailors were terrified by the storm, throwing their cargo into the sea to save their lives.
Their valuables. Their livelihood. Their possessions.
All because a man on their ship was running from an assignment that had absolutely nothing to do with them.
And where was Jonah?
SLEEP.
Sir.
You have these people throwing their entire inventory overboard, and you’re downstairs taking a NAP?
But before I get too comfortable laughing at Jonah, I have to ask myself how many people have been affected by storms I refused to acknowledge.
How many times has my husband experienced the sharpness of a wound he didn’t create?
How many times have people who genuinely love me encountered my defensiveness because somebody else taught me that love wasn’t safe?
How many times have I called it sensitivity when, if I’m being truthful, I was reacting from an old injury?
My hyper-independence might have been born out of survival, but other people can still experience the fruit of it.
And that doesn’t make me a terrible person.
It makes me responsible for examining what I’m carrying.
Because sometimes the storm isn’t happening TO me.
Sometimes I’m contributing to it.
And God has given me dominion over more than my environment.
He has also given me the responsibility to govern myself.
I experience impulses. I experience anger. I experience the desire to defend myself, retaliate, withdraw, or have the last word.
But I do not have to be governed by every feeling that shows up demanding a microphone.
And let’s be clear, some of my feelings have been hosting entire press conferences without authorization.
Then I reached Jonah 4:4, where God asks Jonah whether he has good reason to be angry.
And I felt that.
Because my anger had a history.
My bitterness had receipts.
My pain had witnesses.
But none of those things gave me authority over God’s mercy.
Hebrews 12:15 warns us about a root of bitterness springing up and causing trouble, defiling many.
And roots are interesting because they grow where nobody can see them.
I know what was planted in me.
I know who planted it.
But I also have to ask what I’ve been watering.
Because someone can give me a temporary scar, and I can turn it into a lifetime subscription.
And I am tired of paying for something I never ordered.
This morning, I repented.
Not for being abused. Not for grieving my mother. Not for feeling relief when someone who hurt me could no longer hurt me.
I repented for the resentment I had continued to nurture.
For the times I wanted God to withhold mercy because I believed someone was undeserving.
For the ways I allowed old wounds to influence new relationships.
For the moments I was more interested in being vindicated than being transformed.
And I had to reframe something.
Genesis 50:20 reminds me that what others intended for evil, God can use for good.
That doesn’t mean I have to call evil good.
It means evil doesn’t get to determine the ending of my story.
And if God is going to keep certain people in this world, I have to trust Him to govern what happens in their lives without appointing myself His assistant.
I have to release my desire to control outcomes.
I have to stop treating forgiveness like an admission that the offense wasn’t serious.
And I have to remember that repentance isn’t simply feeling bad about what I’ve done.
It’s a change of mind that produces a change in direction.
So today, I’m changing direction.
I’m no longer interested in being blessed and bitter.
I’m no longer interested in surviving a fire only to spend the rest of my life carrying the smoke.
And I’m no longer asking God to heal me while secretly hoping He refuses to heal somebody else.
Because sometimes my purpose is the picture of my life, not merely the words coming out of my mouth.
The three Hebrew boys didn’t just survive the furnace. Daniel 3:27 tells us that the fire hadn’t harmed their bodies, their hair wasn’t singed, and they didn’t even smell like fire.
And THAT is what I want.
Not just to survive what happened to me.
Not just to be able to tell the story without crying.
But to stop carrying the smell of what tried to destroy me into every room God calls me to enter.
I may not be responsible for my wounds, but I am responsible for pursuing my recovery.
And the question I walked away with this morning wasn’t simply, “Who am I in Christ?”
It was, “Who am I in crisis?”
Who am I when the people who wounded me appear to be winning?
Who am I when God extends mercy I wouldn’t have offered?
Who am I when my anger feels justified but my response is still my responsibility?
Because I don’t want to be a woman who can recognize God’s grace in her own survival but resents it in somebody else’s redemption.
I don’t want to be Jonah.
Alive. Called. Chosen. Effective.
And still sitting outside Nineveh angry that God is good.
I spent years waiting for God to deal with the people who hurt me, only to discover that this morning, He wanted to deal with what the hurt had done inside me.
And for once, I didn’t run.
I repented.