Been thinking about you. Yeah, you. The one who keeps functioning, keeps showing up, keeps smiling when you’re supposed to, then goes home and sits in the quiet and feels that old weight climb back on your shoulders like it never moved out.



And I keep circling this POW story, because it’s not “inspiring,” it’s sickening, it’s human, it’s the kind of thing that makes you say under your breath, no way, no way a person can live through that… and then you find out they did.

He wasn’t talking about “a damp cell” like some paperback description. He talked about the way the damp climbed into his skin until his skin felt wrong, like it didn’t fit, like it was going to split, like it was peeling off his bones one wet layer at a time, and he couldn’t scratch it because his wrists were chained and the iron rubbed the same raw spot again and again until the pain wasn’t even sharp anymore, it was just… there. Constant. Like breathing.

That metal had a smell, too. Not “rust,” not a word. A taste in the back of your throat. He said the chains were heavy enough that when they took them off he still walked like they were there, shoulders forward, steps short, like freedom was too big a step.

And the sound. The spoon. Tin bowl. Every day. Clink. He said you could hear the clink before you could see the food, and your stomach would start doing that desperate tightening thing, and you’d hate yourself for being hungry because hunger makes you feel like an animal, and then you’d hate yourself for hating yourself, and it just kept looping.

Then he got out. Somebody asked him, like it was a casual question at a coffee shop, “Do you still resent what they did to you?”

He didn’t act holy. He didn’t give a speech. He just said, “I don’t have time for wasted pain.”

That line is leadership, whether he meant it that way or not. Its growth. It’s somebody refusing to live under a lid.

And you know about lids. You can love God, you can have gifts, you can have a calling, you can have a heart for people, and still hit the same ceiling over and over because you’re dragging baggage you never put down. Bitterness is a lid. Unforgiveness is a lid. Wounded pride is a lid. It caps your life. It caps your influence. It caps your ability to see clearly and think clean and love wide and lead steady.

I probably shouldn’t say it this way, but some of us are anchored to a corpse. Old junk. Old hurt. Old “they did me wrong” receipts. You can be right about what happened and still be stuck. Being right isn’t the same thing as being free.

And the guts of the matter… wasted pain is a choice to keep paying a debt Jesus already paid. That’s the whole thing. That’s why it’s such a tragedy. You keep handing yesterday your future like a donation.

Right in the middle of my thoughts, I hear it

“Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice”

not later, not when it feels better, put away—and then, same breath, “And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.” For Christ’s sake. That phrase is the hinge. The forgiveness in you is supposed to come from the forgiveness over you. Not performance. Not “look how mature I am.” Grace. Covenant love. Finished work.

And you can pretend bitterness is contained, but it isn’t. It gets into everything. “Lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled.” Many. Not just you. You bring that root into your home, into your team, into your ministry, into your friendships, into your decisions, and you start calling it “discernment,” but it’s really just pain driving in a suit.

Wait, let me back up for a second. You don’t have to deny what happened. Nobody’s asking you to rewrite the past. You just can’t let the past keep writing your future.

Because leading people while you’re bleeding bitterness is like trying to steer a car with one hand on the wheel and the other hand clenched around a knife. You’ll swerve. You’ll cut people who didn’t cut you. You’ll call it “high standards,” but it’s really unhealed hurt.

Justice? Yes. Real question. Real need. But you’re not built to carry vengeance without becoming twisted by it. “Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves… Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.” God can carry that weight without it turning Him bitter. You can’t. And it keeps going, right there in the same stretch of Scripture—“Recompense to no man evil for evil… If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men… Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.” That’s not weakness. That’s a leader refusing to be managed by the last wound.

And the picture that refuses to leave me alone—Jesus, hanging there, and still, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” That’s not a soft man. That’s the strongest man who ever lived. That’s covenant love with blood on it. That’s what finished work sounds like while the pain is still happening.

Now you. Yeah, you again.

You can’t keep dragging the debt around and expect your lid to lift. It won’t. You’ll max out. You’ll plateau. You’ll lead out of fumes and frustration. Your words will get sharper. Your patience is shorter. Your joy thinner. Then you’ll start telling yourself you’re just “busy,” but it’s not busy, it’s bondage.

“This one thing I do” gets lodged in my mind—“forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark…” Press. Reach. Forward. That’s not denial. That’s direction. That’s growth on purpose.

And then Jesus with the blunt mercy: “For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” That verse isn’t there to scare you into being nice. It’s there to yank you out of the prison you keep calling “normal.”

New thing? God does new things. “Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing.” Not a patched thing. A new thing. And “all things work together for good to them that love God…” means even that mess, even that betrayal, even that season you still wish you could erase. God isn’t excusing it, He’s redeeming it, and you don’t get to see the redemption while you’re hugging the chain.

When the memory hits you, and it will, you don’t have to write a five-page prayer. You can just drop it. Ugly prayer. Short prayer. “Lord, I’m done paying this. I’m releasing the debt. You said, Vengeance is mine; I will repay. I’m giving it back.”

And if you feel trapped, like the chain is welded on, “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.” Indeed. Real. Not pretend.

I’ll say it the plain way. You can’t lead anyone else if you’re a slave to yesterday. You can’t lift people while you’re hauling a corpse. You can’t call others higher while bitterness keeps you under a lid.

So stop wasting your pain. Not because it wasn’t real. Because Christ already paid. And you’ve got too much life left and too many people watching your life to keep living capped.