Forgiving What You Can't Forget: Discover How to Move On, Make Peace with Painful Memories, and Create a Life That’s Beautiful Again

by Lysa TerKeurst

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 don’t have to hand over what was precious and priceless to you and deem all the memories as hurtful.

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.

There’s been enough trauma. So, because I don’t want anything else ripped or stripped away, I need to decide what stays and what goes.

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.

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 my cooperation.

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.

The thing that comes to mind when I think of redemption when it comes to my marriage is the fact that, I have dreamed for years to be with Tyler, the man that I adore and love. For years we have been going through the roller coaster of my own childhood/adolescent trauma that now. I feel like God is bringing my marriage to the light to be able to be loved like I should have been my whole life. I fully believe that God has selected Tyler just for me.

Freedom from unforgiveness doesn’t mean instant healing for all the emotions involved. But it does mean those emotions will turn into eventual compassion rather than bitterness.

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.

We can’t live in an alternate reality and expect what’s right in front of us to get better. We can only heal what we’re willing to acknowledge is real.

Putting on a smiling face while filled with unhealed hurt inside is a set up for an eventual blow up.

“Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.”

Forgiveness is not adding on top of your pain a misery too great to bear. It is exchanging bound-up resentment for a life-giving freedom, thus making the mystery of the workings of God too great to deny.

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. That person or people who hurt you, who hurt me—they’ve caused enough pain. There’s been enough damage done. So, what do I do with my pain? Acknowledge it. And what do I need to do with the feelings resulting from the pain? Own them as mine to control. Yes, the hurt was caused by someone else, but the resulting feelings are mine to manage.

I want my reality to stop being defined by the hopeless pursuit of rewriting yesterday. I want to accept what happened—without letting it steal all my future possibilities—and learn to move on.

“In the gospel of John, there were only two recorded healing miracles of Jesus in Jerusalem. One showed us a new way to walk. The other showed us a new way to see.”

“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.”

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.

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.

Again, even when you’ve made the decision to forgive, triggers like these will remind you that there is also a process of forgiving them for the impact this has had on you.

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 facts affected you—the impact they created.

I’m better able to discern what the feeling is and what to do with it. I have a series of questions that help me sort through it. For example, if a wave of sadness hits me when I see a picture from our hard season, I’ll try and sort through what is true and what is not true about this picture. I’ll give myself a few moments to grieve what was lost.

“Don’t open your heart to men. Men steal hearts. You can only trust yourself to take care of yourself.”