It Wasn’t My Sin That Held Him There, It Was Love.

Friday, April 18, 2025 Today is my first Good Friday as a Catholic.

And my heart feels like it’s breaking and healing all at once.

Last year (March 31, 2024), at the Easter Vigil, I stepped into the waters of baptism. I was washed. Anointed. Claimed. I remember coming up from that font as if I were gasping for the first breath of a new life. I felt radiant, weightless, as though the light of Heaven itself had reached down and made its home in me.

But the beginning of that transformation, my resurrection, started even before that night.

It happened the first time I knelt in front of a crucifix and surrendered. Truly surrendered.

I didn’t have the words. I didn’t even really know what I was doing.

But I fell to my knees and gave Him everything, every ache, every secret, every shattered piece of my heart.

And there, before the broken, bleeding body of Christ, something sacred cracked open inside me.

The darkness I had grown so used to began to flee.

The hopelessness that had rooted itself in me loosened.

The ache I carried, the loneliness, the weight I couldn’t name, suddenly it was being lifted.

And in its place, His love poured in.

Fierce. Gentle. Relentless.

That day, I gave Him my life, just as He once gave up His for me.

And I will never be the same.

I truly believe Jesus was nailed to the Cross because of me.

Because of my sin.

Because of every failure, every selfish choice, every time I turned my back on love.

I thought I was the reason for the nails.

That my sin drove the hammer.

And I wept.

Not just because He suffered, but because I believed I was the reason He had to.

But now that I have stood beneath that Cross with open hands and an open heart, I see it differently.

Yes, my sin is real.

Yes, I needed saving.

But that’s not why He stayed there.

It wasn’t my sin that held Him there.

It was love.

Love that bled.

Love that didn’t run.

Love that saw me in the pit and chose the nails to pull me out.

It was the love of a God who whispered, “I’d rather die than live without you.”

A love that doesn’t flinch at wounds or scars.

A love that looked at the very worst in me and still said, “You’re worth it.”

I used to see the Cross as a place of shame.

Now, I see it as the place where shame goes to die.

I used to keep my head low, crushed beneath the weight of guilt.

But now, I look up and see mercy looking right back at me.

This Holy Week, as I remember the wounds in His hands and feet, I also remember how He met me in mine.

He didn’t just die for a faceless world.

He died for me.

Personally. Intimately. Willingly.

And that truth splits my heart wide open.

So no, it wasn’t my sin that held Him there.

It was love.

And now,

That love holds me.

And I will never let go. Justine Wisdom | Made For Battle