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

The conversation that stunned you.

The remark that seems to now be branded on your soul.

But when there’s a person or people whose choices struck the match igniting the grief? It’s only natural to clench your jaw when you think of what happened.

And maybe it seems like you think of what happened all the time. Or at least so much of the time you wonder if you’ll ever, ever stop having that deep-aching, off-kilter feeling. That throbbing heartbreak bubbling with an equal mix of anxiety, unanswered questions, and suspicion

desperate to go back to that moment and warn your former self to redirect . . . change course . . . avoid . . . escape . . . turn . . . and maybe, maybe this wouldn’t have ever happened.

It’s about figuring out what to do when you can’t forget what happened and forgiveness feels like a dirty word.

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 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.

Bitterness masqueraded like a high court judge, making me believe I must protect the evidence against all those who hurt me so I could state and restate my airtight case and hear “guilty” proclaimed over them.

making me believe it was just fine to stay there, playing old movies of what happened over and over. And that, by doing so, I’d one day understand why it all happened. In reality, though, I was in a torture chamber, with each replay only ratcheting up the pain

but never providing the answers I kept thinking would come.

It’s hard to give. It’s amazing to get. But when we receive it freely from the Lord and refuse to give it, something heavy starts to form in our souls.

Cooperation is what I’ve been missing. God knew we couldn’t do it on our own.

And you and I can forgive, even if the relationship never gets restored. It’s so incredibly freeing to forgive and not have to wait on other people who may or may not ever want to or be willing to talk all of this through. 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.

Boundaries needed to be drawn. Hard conversations turned into silence that turned into the deafening reality of a friendship ending.

Your thoughts don’t need to be edited. Your soul’s need for truth will be tended to. And your resistance is understood.

And isn’t it odd that, though forgiveness is a major part of the Christian faith, most of us have never been taught much about it?

For in the very instance we think we have landed on the forgiveness limitation, Jesus blows it apart with His multiplication (seventy times seven) and His

declaration that we must not entertain unforgiveness when we have been so very forgiven by God Himself.

Forgiveness is a command. But it is not cruel. It is God’s divine mercy for human hearts that are so ...

You can still forgive even if you can’t forget. We are instructed to let go of what’s behind us so we can move forward without the weight of bitterness, resentment, anger, and unforgiveness. But forgetting? The only place that’s mentioned in the Bible is connected to God forgiving us of our sins: “For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more” (Hebrews 8:12 ESV).

Yes, consequences stay tied to the severity of the sin. And God’s mercy is not void of His justice. But the command for us to forgive rings too crystal clear to avoid or refuse.

Coping mechanisms, like being overly positive or hyperspiritual or using substances to numb out, may get us through the short term. But in the long run they don’t help us cope; they keep us stuck at the point of our unhealed pain.

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.

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

When you’ve been deeply wounded by another person, it’s only natural to be shocked by their utter lack of humanity. It’s understandable to wish your life would have never, ever intersected with theirs.

To feel haunted by a shadow version of the offender who caused this, and to almost feel like they are following you around while you replay their cruel act in your mind over and over and over.

All I’m asking is that you’d be willing to consider taking power away from the person who hurt you.

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.

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.

So might you dare to whisper along with me, Today is the day it stops. Say it with me. 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.

Empty has a heaviness to it that doesn’t exactly motivate one to care what they look like.

I thought everything needed to be settled. I thought those who did wrong things would first realize they were wrong. Or, at least some kind of justice would tilt my upside-down world back in place. And something about this would feel fair. Then, I would consider forgiveness. And then I could possibly heal.

Therefore, I had to separate my healing from their choices. My ability to heal cannot depend on anyone’s choices but my own.

but I very much know what it feels like to be unable to move forward without other people cooperating like I think they should cooperate.

“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.”

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.”

And I have to separate my healing from any of this being fair. My ability to heal cannot be conditional on the other person receiving adequate consequences for their disobedience but only on my obedience to trust God’s justice whether I ever see it or not.

When we don’t move forward, when we get stuck in our hurt, unable to escape the grip of that threatening pain, trauma takes root. When we keep reliving what happened in our mind over and over, we keep experiencing the trauma as if it’s happening in the present time.

We need to eventually get to the place where we stop replaying over and over what hurt us.

I can bring heaven to earth today by living in such a forgiving way that my choices line up with God.

Refusing to forgive is refusing the peace of God.

It just needed to be verbalized—spoken out loud, acknowledged, recognized as real—and brought out into the light.

Progress is hard to see when triggered feelings make our vision clouded with intense emotions.

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.

Or maybe we just said the words but never truly meant them deep inside our heart.

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.