the insights you will glean here, adjust your expectations. What I am about to share has little value when applied to someone else. You must first apply it to yourself. I know, because it’s when I have applied it in my own life that I find great freedom as I interact with others.
Through my work as a pastoral counselor, I have watched people struggle with relational injuries day in and day out for the past thirty-three years. Some may even admit they carry offense and unforgiveness, but recognizing the problem and addressing the problem are two separate things. Most people simply can’t let go of their offended heart, so they trudge through life as if dragging a parachute into the wind. They are not the first people in history to do so.
The Offense of Cain
Many of us know the Sunday-school version of Cain and Abel’s story in Genesis 4. What people perhaps have not seen is that this is a perfect lesson in the anatomy of bitterness and gives us great insight in learning how to deal with an offense. Cain watches as the Lord rejects his offering. To make it worse, his younger brother, Abel, is respected by the Lord, and Abel’s offering is accepted. In a fit of rage, Cain murders his brother—but not before the Lord interrupts Cain to have a few words with him.
In a few short verses, God lays out a wise response when dealing with injustice or disappointment, whether perceived or real. God told Cain about the consequences that would follow, should Cain fail to heed this very personal warning. Cain obviously did not heed the counsel that the Lord gave him, and the consequences of his bitterness were literally deadly. The offense in his heart led to the first murder that humanity had known. We shall come back to this story throughout the following chapters and see the wisdom that God gave about how to escape the clutches of this enemy of the heart.
As we start this journey into better understanding this problem, I want you to give yourself permission to ask, “How does this apply to me?” Everybody deals with disappointment in some fashion, somewhere along the journey of life. Let me give you a few examples of events that might have happened in your life that were challenging to get over. Perhaps you feel you didn’t get the recognition you deserved in the workplace or the chance that everyone else had. It could be that your legitimate accomplishments were ignored or even mocked throughout your education. Perhaps you were overlooked for a ministry or church assignment due to poor leadership over you. Maybe someone who you had been very vulnerable with chose to use that information against you. Perhaps they lied to you; perhaps they defrauded you of money or opportunity, and as a result unrighteousness seemed to win in the moment. Perhaps you are dealing with family dysfunction and relational breakdown due to sin or sickness. Or, as with the case of Cain and Abel, someone actually died and you cannot bring yourself to forgive the one whom you believe is the perpetrator.
You tell your friends that it’s okay and you’re over it, but you think about it a lot more than you wish. Three weeks, six months, even years later, when you get near a similar situation, you are awash with emotions and frustrations that you have stuffed away for years, but are unable to pinpoint exactly why you’re upset.
We all deal with injustice and disappointment—from the deeply painful to the seemingly mundane. The injustices of life are not easily answered. This book is about how we handle the injustices, how we choose to navigate our hearts through the midst of them, and how we live free from their sting.
1
My Story
My journey was one of many ups and downs. I grew up a daughter of an Olympic boxer who later became a Golden Gloves champion. My father, Bobby Bickle, was a hero at the neighborhood’s corner bar. He told stories of his “glory days” as he bought drinks for all around. He was a man who wanted many sons and ended up with five girls and two boys. My sweet momma had six of us under the age of five when she was just twenty-four years old.
I was three years old when my father retired from his boxing career and became a professional house painter to support the family. My mother joined him. As the sixth of seven children, I was left much of the time to be raised by the “older” siblings in my family. Looking back, I can testify that nine- and ten-year-olds do not make the best of parents. Dad spent much of his free time training the boys to become athletes. We girls were encouraged to cheer them on. Our family moved around often in my childhood, which trained us young in the art of making friends.
Growing up in a large family had many good aspects but also brought its challenges. As our family aged, the stresses on my parents increased both emotionally and financially. One of the ways they chose to cope was to begin drinking alcohol, and they both soon became alcoholics. That left them with even less emotional energy to give toward parenting me. Their inability to give appropriate guidance marked me early in life, nor were they able to protect me as they should have. When I was still a young girl in my formative years a friend’s father sexually abused me. It was a secret I kept for many years to come. I thought I had done something wrong. It wasn’t until years later when I went into counseling that I realized it was not my fault—I was a victim, and the abuse had marked me with lies about myself.
When I was fourteen, my brother Pat broke his neck playing in a high school football game and became a quadriplegic. What little semblance of order we had in the household vanished. We lived in and out of hospitals. This added even more strain on our family system and financial well-being. I was left as a young teenager to figure out life alone, as my parents were understandably consumed with making sure Pat was well cared for, which became a full-time job. After that, I don’t remember a single conversation with my parents about my life, school, friends, situations I was dealing with, or any other normal things teenagers speak to their parents about. Our lives were going full tilt, and nothing was to ever be normal again.
Eight months after Pat’s injury, my father passed away in his sleep. The trauma on my little heart only increased. My sweet momma was left to navigate life alone with seven children, one of them a quadriplegic. Her broken heart was too much even for her, and she had no support system. Her drinking escalated. She spent much of her spare time in the bars, which is where she met her future husband.
My stepfather lacked the skill set to step into a family with the many broken facets that we had. He took his frustration and anger out on my mom for the next number of years, and I spent much of my high school career keeping them from harming each other in severe ways. This only added to the opportunity for my heart to grow in disappointment, pain, and bitterness. It was often overwhelming not knowing how to walk through it or where to find God in the midst of it.
I had become a believer at the age of ten when my older brother Mike became a Christian and introduced the family to Jesus. Joining a Young Life program helped me to maneuver through the chaos of my childhood yet left many holes in my understanding of how to process the negative things that happened to me. I was left with many small and large spaces in my heart. I found anger and bitterness gaining a foothold and growing within those spaces.
You would never have known it when you met me. I was the happy-go-lucky captain of the cheerleader squad who loved Jesus with all her heart type of girl. Yet there were things growing underground in my soul that I was unaware of.
While the details are unique, my story is not radically different from many others—especially in how it played itself out. Most people who struggle with bitterness in the present can trace the roots to the past. In my case, a dad with huge expectations and a pressing personality, accompanied by a physically present but almost emotionally absent mom, left me with plenty of space to grow angry and bitter.
I never anticipated that I would eventually face that fork in the road and be forced to choose either bitterness or forgiveness. I often tell people that by the age of twenty-two I was living the dream, in a sense. Perhaps it wasn’t the typical American dream of a big house and a lot of disposable income, but for a young woman who grew up in a rocky home, my life felt very safe and good.
I was married to a wonderful man who served as the church administrator for a church that he and my brother Mike had planted in Kansas City. The Lord was moving in a unique way. The church was growing, and my husband had great wisdom in the business end of the church. In that season of godly success, we felt the Lord