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March 29 - March 30, 2025
Staying here, blaming them, and forever defining your life by what they did will only increase the pain. Worse, it will keep projecting out onto others. The more our pain consumes us, the more it will
control us. And sadly, it’s those who least deserve to be hurt whom our unresolved pain will hurt the most.
You can’t edit reality to try and force healing. You can’t fake yourself into being okay with what happened. But you can decide that the one who hurt you doesn’t get to decide what you do with your memories. Your life can be a graceful combination of beautiful and painful. You don’t have to put either definitive label on what once was. It can be both-and.
It is necessary for you not to let pain rewrite your memories. And it’s absolutely necessary not to let pain ruin your future.
The ability to see beautiful again is what I want for you and for me. Forgiveness is the weapon. Our choices moving forward are the battlefield. Moving on is the journey. Being released from that heavy feeling is the reward. Regaining the possibility of trust and closeness is the sweet victory. And walking confidently with the Lord from hurt to healing is the freedom that awaits.
After all, grace gives us the assurance that it’s safe enough to soften our fearful hearts, but it is the truth that will set us free (John 8:32). Grace and truth are kept together throughout Scripture (John 1:14, 17).
My ability to forgive others rises and falls, instead, on this: leaning into what Jesus has already done, which allows His grace for me to flow freely through me (Ephesians 4:7).
Forgiveness isn’t an act of my determination.
Forgiveness is only made possible by m...
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But please never confuse redemption with reunion. Reunion, or reconciliation, requires two people who are willing to do the hard work to come back together. Redemption is just between you and God. God can redeem your life, even if damaged human relationships don’t come back together.
Forgiveness isn’t always about doing something for a human relationship but rather about being obedient to what God has instructed us to do.
WHAT YOU GIVE UP: the right to demand that the one who hurt you pay you back or be made to suffer for what they’ve done. God will handle this. And even if you never see how God handles it, you know He will. WHAT YOU GET: the freedom to move on.
I fear the offense will be repeated.
Hanging on to a grudge gives me a sense of control in a situation that’s felt so unfair.
The pain I experienced altered ...
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yet no one has ever validated that what I went th...
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Forgiveness feels like it trivializes, minimizes, or, worse yet, makes wha...
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Forgiveness is a command. But it is not cruel. It is God’s divine mercy for human hearts that are so prone to turn hurt into hate.
“You hyperspiritualize what you’ve been through to the point where you deny your feelings rather than actually deal with your pain.”
Am I processing life through the lens of the way I want it to be or the way it actually is?
Replaying what happened over and over. •Taking what was actually terrible in the past and tricking ourselves into thinking it was better than it was. •Imagining the way things should be so much that we can’t acknowledge what is.
“Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.”1
Your heart is much too beautiful a place for unhealed pain. Your soul is much too deserving of freedom to stay stuck here.
Forgiveness is a complicated grace that uncomplicates my blinding pain and helps me see beautiful again.
Once pain has been inflicted, it’s impossible to remain unaffected. As I said before, the more our pain consumes us, the more it will control us.
Today is my day to stop the grim, hopeless pursuit of expecting the other person to
make this right so that I can receive the glorious hope-filled possibilities of this new day.
BC: Before Crisis. AD: After Devastation. Well, there’s a third line I’ve discovered. It’s RH: Resurrected Hope.
What we look for is what we will see. What we see determines our perspective. And our perspective becomes our reality.
And I wrote, “For me to move forward, for me to see beyond this current darkness, is between me and the Lord. I don’t need to wait on others to do anything or place blame or shame that won’t do anyone any good. I simply must obey whatever God is asking of me right now. God has given me a new way to walk. And God has given me a new way to see. It’s forgiveness. And it is beautiful.”
“Brain and body are programmed to run for home, where safety can be restored and stress hormones can come to rest.”
My ability to heal cannot be conditional on them wanting my forgiveness but only on my willingness to give it.
I can bring heaven to earth today by living in such a forgiving way that my choices line up with God. Think about the Lord’s Prayer: “[God’s] will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). My heart is most at home in the safety of God’s truth. Like the verse from Hebrews says, He will equip me with all I need to do this. He will empower me to do what He instructs. And so I run toward the forgiveness God commands. And only then will I find the healing peace He offers.
My pain didn’t need to be validated by Art or vindicated by anyone else. It just needed to be verbalized—spoken out loud, acknowledged, recognized as real—and brought out into the light. Just verbalizing all the pain in a list of facts brought a sense of dignity back into my world.
Otherwise, the two-steps-forward-one-step-back,
back, three-steps-forward-six-steps-back, five-steps-forward-one-step-back nature of healing would have made me doubt I was making much progress at all. If you do the math, you actually are moving more steps forward than backward. But emotional healing isn’t nearly as linear and tidy as a math problem. Progress is hard to see when triggered feelings
make our vision clouded with inte...
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Forgiveness is both a decision and a process. You make the decision to forgive the facts of what happened. But then you must also walk through the process of forgiveness for the impact those facts have had on you.
The decision to forgive doesn’t fix all the damaged emotions. It doesn’t automatically remove the anger, frustration, doubt, damaged trust, or fear.
To work on those emotions, we must now start the process of forgiving that person for the impact.
Remember, the decision to forgive acknowledges the facts of what happened. But the much longer journey of forgiveness is around all the many ways these f...
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“I forgive her for being insensitive about my pain and saying things that made me feel belittled and judged. I forgive her for the anxiety this keeps stirring up in my heart and for making me less able to trust other friends.”
That’s how forgiveness is both a decision and a process. Each offense requires a marked moment of releasing the unforgiveness that threatens to hold us hostage and hold us back from moving forward.
And I’m more convinced than ever, emotional trauma hits us with as much severity and impact as just about anything else.
“I forgive this person for how their actions back then are still impacting me now. And whatever my feelings don’t yet allow for, the blood of Jesus will surely cover.”
we talked about forgiveness, bitterness, and places of struggle in relationships, we noticed so many ties to our growing-up years. I started to recognize how much we write scripts to help us navigate life experiences based on our past experiences. And how much those scripts turn into belief systems that inform our actions.
