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The day everything changed.
When we have personal marked moments in our own history it can feel like Before Crisis and After Devastation.
I’m so, so sorry for all that’s happened to you.
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.
“us.”
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.
But what if it’s possible to let go of what we must but still carry with us what is beautiful and meaningful and true to us? And maybe this less-severe version of moving on is what will ease us to a place of forgiveness. 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 was real and it was lovely. And I’m not willing to deny what I authentically experienced.
It is necessary for you not to let pain rewrite your memories. And it’s absolutely necessary not to let pain ruin your future.
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. In reality, though, it was a punishing sentence of isolation, out to starve my soul of life-giving relationships.
I want blessings for those who follow the rules of life and love. I want correction for those who break them. Is that too much to ask?
we are unable to see the beauty that awaits just beyond the parking lot.
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.
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).
If I only offered you grace, I would be shortchanging you on what it truly takes to heal. While the truth is sometimes hard to hear, God gives it to us because He knows what our hearts and souls really need. It is His truth that sets us free.
Forgiveness is possible, but it won’t always...
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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. Cooperation is what I’ve been missing. God knew we couldn’t do it on our own. He knew that full well, right from the very moment the crunch of the forbidden fruit became sin’s first sounds.
My first inclination is to do the very thing I’m so critical of them doing. I let my justifications for retaliation draw me in, and I make sure I hurt them the way they hurt me. And when sin is my choice, the cover of darkness is my preference. But make no mistake . . . it isn’t just what covers me. It’s also what hovers over me with that maddening heaviness.
Human hearts are so very prone to want to cover things up. We all have that place we run to where it is dark rather than risk what may come out in the light. We want freedom but are resistant to simply do what God says to do.
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.
Those who cooperate most fully with forgiveness are those who dance most freely in the beauty of redemption.
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.
the freedom to move on.
as the words of forgiveness are released from your lips, it’s like scattering seeds of beautiful flowers. The mud of the pit becomes fertile soil with potential. And before long you’ll be dancing through all that has blossomed and bloomed around you.
those who cooperate most fully with forgiveness really are those who dance most freely in the beauty of redemption.
Your soul’s need for truth will be tended to. And your resistance is understood.
I fear the offense will be repeated.
I can’t possibly forgive when I still feel so hostile toward the one who hurt me.
I still feel hurt.
It’s easier to ignore this person altogether than to try and figure out boundaries so they don’t keep hurting me.
When your heart has been shattered and reshaped into something that doesn’t quite feel normal inside your own chest yet, forgiveness feels a bit unrealistic.
as a Christian I was supposed to forgive.
Sinless Jesus, absolute divinity and complete humanity, was afflicted and rejected, beaten and humiliated, spit upon and devalued on every level. Enduring it all so we would never have to endure one minute of our suffering alone.
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.
Am I processing life through the lens of the way I want it to be or the way it actually is?
At some point we must stop: •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.
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.
Sometimes it seems easier to deny my pain than to do the hard work to deal with and heal what’s really there. C. S. Lewis wrote, “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.
It’s when you get to see with your physical eyes evidence of the Spirit of God as real as if you can touch it. It is a moment no one forgets.
forgiveness is the greatest evidence that the Truth of God lives in us.
Yes, the hurt was caused by someone else, but the resulting feelings are mine to manage.
I want to accept what happened—without letting it steal all my future possibilities—and learn to move on.
What we look for is what we will see. What we see determines our perspective. And our perspective becomes our reality.
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.” I have to place my healing in the Lord’s
We need to eventually get to the place where we stop replaying over and over what hurt us. “Brain and body are programmed to run for home, where safety can be restored and stress hormones can come to rest.”1
Refusing to forgive is refusing the peace of God. I was tired of refusing peace.
