Struggling with Grace

What do you do when someone hurts you?

Forgive, that's what Jesus asks of us. Love anyway. But it's not easy.

I struggle with hurt and love, bitterness and grace.

I know I am a sinner saved by grace, just as I know I should love others because God loves them.

But extending grace to others - remembering that they, too, are crippled just like I am crippled; that they have wounds just like I do - that's difficult to put into practice when the people you care for seem to work so hard to hurt you.

What do you do when someone you love derives a perverse pleasure in making you bleed?

So hard to remember that I was once damned, and lost, and living in darkness. So easy to feel indignant, and betrayed.

So easy to close my eyes to my own part in scarring and hurting, to choose to believe that I'm the innocent victim.

I am still struggling with this concept of grace.