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

I want this for you too. However this translates within the context of your pain, those pictures, those memories, those times of togetherness . . . if they were a joy to you, they are yours to keep. Other memories that are excruciatingly painful are yours to release.

Those who cooperate most fully with forgiveness are those who dance most freely in the beauty of redemption.

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.

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.

“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.”

Processing through all of this takes time. So much time. But the secret to my own processing was threefold: pain, acceptance, and perspective. The pain was me expressing everything that happened and how it made me feel. This is what I did in collecting the dots. Acceptance was acknowledging that the permanent ink is now dry on those pages of my story. I cannot change what happened. This is what I did in connecting the dots. And from those connections, I started to see new perspectives, which helped me correct some of the dots. There are still new pages to be written in the story of my life, and my perceptions moving forward will determine how I carry the past into my future. Again, while I cannot change what happened, I get to choose what I now believe and how what happened changes me for better or worse.

Romans 5:3–5 reminds us, “We know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”

Grieving is dreaming in reverse.

1. FORGIVENESS IS MORE SATISFYING THAN REVENGE.

Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. (Ephesians 4:32)

I cannot control things out of my control. It’s easier to accept the fact that I can’t stop the rain.

“Hope is the melody of the future. Faith is dancing to that melody right now.”

Sometimes when there are trust issues with people, it leaves you in this weird place of suddenly wondering who else in your world is not telling you the complete story.

I need to remind myself to open my Bible before I open my mouth.