Do you hold onto something? A past hurt from someone. Remarks made about you. Did someone hurt you? Do you have deep wounds that won’t heal? Some of us at times don’t even realize how much pain we drag around with us. I heard it explained like this before. Each past pain, regret, harm, mistake and sin you keep locked up inside of you is like a suitcase full of chickenheads. Each one of those pains are a chicken head and you stuff it away in a suitcase. You carry this suitcase with your wherever you go. But what happens to dead things left unburied? They rot. They smell. They fester.
So many times we think that we deserve to hold onto a certain sin or regret because after all, we’re the one that did it. We deserve the punishment of replaying it over and over in our minds. It’s our punishment. But if we serve a forgiving, loving God; why would He require it of us to hold onto these things? He doesn’t. What He did on the cross has covered and taken care of what we are holding onto. The only ones remembering it is us. God has forgotten it. Wiped it clean off the slate. So why keep dragging the suit case full of death and rotteness?
If we open that suitcase we will find that each chicken head are the things we won’t forgive ourselves for. God is not a punishing us. There is no pennance in a relationship with God. But we humans like to punish ourselves and even others at times.
I’ve recently asked God to reveal the things I can’t forgive myself for. And He did just that! It was over a course of a 2 week period, that each day something I did or was done to me, (by no fault of mine) would “pop” into my thoughts. I was instructed to stop and speak outloud these words…By Your grace and only by Your mercy and by Your blood do I forgive myself for….and I would fill in the blank. I release it to you in Jesus Name.
I can tell you that this does work. I am free of so much shame and you can be too! Be blessed!
A New Life 
I’m going to try this, because I’ve realized lately I still carry around a lot a shame. Most of the time it’s not a conscious thing, though. I’m just used to being a certain way, but it’s dawning on me that it’s a dampened down version of the real me, if that makes sense…
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Chicken heads!! I love that! It is such a perfect image for me to apply when I feel the shame creeping in again. Because for me too, it still does.
It also did really help me when someone told me that Jesus not only died on the cross for my sins, but also my shame. I had either never heard that before, or been deaf to what that really meant. The whole package. Not just my sinful behaviour, but all the shame that has followed me because of it. Freeing indeed!
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Me too! I never knew I had so much shame…just think of those who are under shame (saved or not) that van be freed!
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