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

Grief is devastating no matter how it comes. 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 that really no one in the world is truly safe anymore.

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.

But completely sterilizing my life from the physical presence of reminders didn’t remove the pain. You can’t edit reality to try and force healing. You can’t fake yourself into being okay with what happened.

It is necessary for you not to let pain rewrite your memories. And it’s absolutely necessary not to let pain ruin your future.

And each night the only way I could sleep was to lie to myself that tomorrow would be better.

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. 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.

And, lastly, 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.

I am a soul who likes the concept of forgiveness . . . until I am a hurting soul who doesn’t.

Forgiveness is possible, but it won’t always feel possible.

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.

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.

WHAT YOU GET: the freedom to move on.

The scenery for your life should not be the pit of pain that person dragged you down into. There’s so much more to see and discover and experience. Let go of clawing your way through the muddy pit, hoping there’s some reward buried there. There’s not.

Our healing can’t rise or fall on their efforts, especially if they can’t or won’t change.

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.

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.

Sometimes it seems easier to deny my pain than to do the hard work to deal with and heal what’s really there.

So, when I got triggered and some raw, unresolved pain got poked, a venomous string of words shot out of my mouth. And in less time than it takes to snap my fingers, I was undone. Unwell. Unraveled. All the “progress” I thought I’d made seemed like such a sham.

I can’t wait for another person to do something to make me feel better about the situation. 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.

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.

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

My ability to heal cannot depend on anyone’s choices but my own.

I 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.

“Brain and body are programmed to run for home, where safety can be restored and stress hormones can come to rest.”1

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

The decision to forgive doesn’t fix all the damaged emotions. It doesn’t automatically remove the anger, frustration, doubt, damaged trust, or fear.

I think I cried more about what my dad didn’t do than I did about what the bad man did do.

Love needs depth to live. Love needs honesty to grow. Love needs trust to survive.

It becomes hard to pretend with others when we can no longer pretend with ourselves.

Grieving is such a deep work and a long process, it feels like we might not survive it.

It’s exhausting to be in a relationship where someone is personalizing everything. It can get so bad that it becomes damaging and sometimes even toxic. It makes the people around them soon feel so sick and tired of being misunderstood that they eventually become unresponsive.

We can easily assume bad things are caused by bad people causing bad realities that will never be anything but bad. That’s an oversimplification but an unfortunate trap of thinking I’ve been stuck in for years.

For many of the wrong things that were done to us we didn’t have a say in what happened. But we do have a say in how we move forward.

The proof doesn’t serve you; building a case won’t heal you. Holding on to all the hurt will only steal from you all that’s beautiful and possible for you. Let it go.

Grieving is dreaming in reverse.

when you are grieving over something or someone that was taken away, you wish you could go back in time. You dream in reverse. Instead of hoping for what will one day be, you long for a more innocent time when you lived more unaware of tragedy. But the griever knows they can’t go back in time. So healing feels impossible, because circumstances feel unchangeable.

Revenge is paying twice for a hurt that someone else did to you. You pay a price when they hurt you. You pay double when you carry that pain inside your heart and it causes you to say and do things you wouldn’t otherwise say and do. You may think getting back at them will make you feel better in the short term, but in the long term it will always cost you more emotionally and spiritually than you’d ever want to pay.

The one who causes pain is in pain.

Destructive choices always affect more people than just the one who makes them.

Trust me, the people who you think need to change the most will wind up changing the least when your efforts are greater than their own.

My counselor, Jim Cress, says, “I am enabling someone when I work harder on their issues than they are working. I am enabling someone when I allow them to violate my boundaries without any consequences. I enable a person when I cosign their unhealthy behavior by defending them, explaining for them, looking the other way, covering for them, lying for them, or keeping secrets for them. I enable a person by blaming other people or situations for their unhealthy or irresponsible behavior.” Remember, forgiveness shouldn’t be an open door for people to take advantage of us. Forgiveness releases our need for retaliation, not our need for boundaries.

As long as you are trying to control a person, you can’t truly forgive them. Part of this is because you are continuing to place yourself in real-time frustrations that short-circuit the forgiveness process.

Boundaries aren’t to push others away. They are to hold me together.

My counselor says, “Adults inform, children explain.” I will state my boundaries with compassion and clarity. But I will not negotiate excuses or navigate exceptions with lengthy explanations that wear me down emotionally.

Not forgiving someone isn’t teaching the other person a lesson, nor is it protecting you in any way. It’s making the choice to stay in pain. It’s ratcheting the already too-tight belt tighter and tighter with each remembrance. Undealt-with pain and a mind at peace cannot coexist.