More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
May 18 - June 25, 2025
When we have personal marked moments in our own history it can feel like Before Crisis and After Devastation.
Some part of what you loved about your life exploded in that moment and marked you with this unwanted reference point of before and after.
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.
It is necessary for you not to let pain rewrite your memories. And it’s absolutely necessary not to let pain ruin your future.
A heaviness settled in that I couldn’t explain or pinpoint exactly. I’m not sure how to properly describe it, except to say on different days it crept up with varying personas that seemed to hold me together and rip me apart simultaneously.
Resentment cloaked itself in a banner marked with the word vindication, making me believe that the only way to get free of my pain was to make sure those who caused it hurt as badly as I did.
Delay snuck in like a theater attendant, offering popcorn and a comfy chair made of my sorrow and sadness, making me believe it was just fine to stay there, playing old movies of what happened over and over.
trust issues disguised themselves as private investigators on stealth missions, making me believe they would help me catch everyone out to hurt me and prove no one was truly honest. In reality, trust issues were toxic gas that, instead of keeping away the few who shouldn’t be trusted, choked the life out of everyone who got close to me.
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.
Forgiveness often feels like one of the most maddening instructions from the Lord. It’s a double-edged word, isn’t it? 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.
Forgiveness isn’t something hard we have the option to do or not do. Forgiveness is something hard won that we have the opportunity to participate in.
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.
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.
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.
those who cooperate most fully with forgiveness really are those who dance most freely in...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
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.
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.
I’m both terrified of the stripped-down version of my reality and slightly intrigued by the uncluttered nature of being able to see what’s really there.
statements I’ve made to give the appearance that my heart is more healed than it actually is:
•I’m good. I’m fine. I’ve just decided to move on. •Their loss for walking away from me.
•I’m mature enough to say, “It is what it is,” and get over it.
Putting on a smiling face while filled with unhealed hurt inside is a set up for an eventual blow up.
Your heart is much too beautiful a place for unhealed pain. Your soul is much too deserving of freedom to stay stuck here.
I let the triggered emotion settle in and become a bad mood for the rest of the day. And all the people around me who didn’t deserve to catch the brunt of my chaos felt the completely unsettled state of my heart.
All I’m asking is that you’d be willing to consider taking power away from the person who hurt you.
I can’t take away your hurt. But I can help you remove the unfair hold the hurt has on you. Those who injured you are the last people in the world to whom you want to hand over the controls of your life, so that’s where we will start.
if healing hasn’t been worked out and forgiveness hasn’t been walked out, chaos is what will continue to play out.
If I need another person to make things right before I move toward change, I might stay unhealed for a very long time. I will paralyze my progress waiting for something that may or may not ever happen.
That person who hurt me may be the cause of the pain. But they are not capable of being the healer of my pain. Or the restorer of my life.
What we look for is what we will see. What we see determines our perspective. And our perspective becomes our reality.
They are off just enjoying the mess out of life. And here I am sitting in a counselor’s office so full of hurt feelings that I wonder if it’s possible for me to drown in my own tears. How can I possibly work on forgiveness when not one ounce of me feels like forgiving? I don’t want to do this. I may be a total wreck right now, but one thing I’m not is fake.”
“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.”
must separate my healing from others’ repentance or lack thereof. My ability to heal cannot be conditional on them wanting my forgiveness but only on my willingness to give it.
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 move toward a state of healing, of rest. 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.”
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.
Though that season is over and many healing years have passed, there are still moments when I get tripped up by a bad memory. Or triggered by a statement made and overwhelmed by an unexpected wave of pain. Or assaulted by fear that stirs up all kinds of anxiety and irrational thoughts.
When triggers occur, the day of the original trauma will feel extremely present all over again.
The decision to forgive doesn’t fix all the damaged emotions. It doesn’t automatically remove the anger, frustration, doubt, damaged trust, or fear.
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.
your decision to forgive the facts of what happened is done in a specific moment in time. But the process of working through all the emotions from the impact of what happened will likely happen over time.
They can still make me want to cry, shut down, or feel afraid or threatened. But now I’ve gotten so much better about sitting in the space between the feeling and the reaction.
