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

People are all around you at work, in the coffee shop, at your kid’s school, and even at church just trying to live their lives, completely unaware that at any moment there could be a triggered memory so painful you’ll feel as though the world has no more oxygen to breathe.

Maybe that’s part of what’s hard about moving on: the letting go. 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?

It is necessary for you not to let pain rewrite your memories.

And it’s absolutely necessary not to let pain ruin your future.

I wanted to rip those forgiveness words out of my journal while saying things you don’t find in the Bible.

I’m not asking you to sign up for forgiveness. Not yet. I couldn’t start there, so I won’t ask you to either. All I’m asking is that you’d be willing to consider taking power away from the person who hurt you.

What we look for is what we will see. What we see determines our perspective. And our perspective becomes our reality.

We don’t need to be ruled by our feelings. But we also don’t want to be actors playing out scripts that perform with emotion just when it is required or potentially rewarded.

Sometimes worst-case scenarios do happen.

I cried so they could hear me. I shut cabinets and doors with extra force. I could feel the bitterness settling in as I planned all the “I told you so” scripts that would make me feel so very justified when this thing bombed. I sat down in front of my journal and wrote the word confused. And almost immediately a phrase flashed across my mind: This investment is an answered prayer. What?! There was no way that what I was looking at was part of God’s answer to me. I refused to acknowledge the statement. But, I also couldn’t unhear it. Now, every time the investment was mentioned, I heard that same statement, This is an answered prayer.

But if God isn’t giving His provision to us in the way we expect right now, then we must trust there’s something God knows that we don’t know.