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

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.

I knew as a Christian I was supposed to forgive. I may have even whispered a faint prayer using the word forgiveness. But truly understanding how to forgive? I wasn’t sure. And isn’t it odd that, though forgiveness is a major part of the Christian faith, most of us have never been taught much about it? We know God commands us to do it. But how? Why? When? And are there exceptions? After more than one thousand hours of studying this topic in the Bible, I can’t say all my questions have been answered. Nor can I promise this is easy. But I can tell you the Bible offers the truth about forgiveness that our souls desperately need. And, best of all, God Himself modeled how to do this even when it feels so very impossible.

He came for us with forgiveness pulsing through the very blood He would one day shed. He wouldn’t allow forgiveness to be shoved away with human justifications. For in the very instance we think we have landed on the forgiveness limitation, Jesus blows it apart with His multiplication (seventy times seven) and His declaration that we must not entertain unforgiveness when we have been so very forgiven by God Himself. 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.

And what about that saying, Forgive and forget? That’s actually not in the Bible. You can still forgive even if you can’t forget. We are instructed to let go of what’s behind us so we can move forward without the weight of bitterness, resentment, anger, and unforgiveness. But forgetting? The only place that’s mentioned in the Bible is connected to God forgiving us of our sins: “For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more” (Hebrews 8:12 ESV).

I’ve taken an honest look at deep pain when unchangeable wounds feel so very unforgivable. I’ve wrestled through the unfairness. I’ve turned forgiveness inside out, examining it theologically, morally, ethically, relationally, rationally, and, maybe even best of all, through the irrational but infinitely beautiful actions of Jesus Himself.

Yes, consequences stay tied to the severity of the sin. And God’s mercy is not void of His justice. But the command for us to forgive rings too crystal clear to avoid or refuse.

Please know, though, as a soul who has resisted seeing forgiveness as possible while weeping in my own seat of suffering, I don’t say any of this lightly. I will not shame you for your struggle or blame you for your skepticism. One of the ways I learned to acknowledge what was holding me back from healing was letting a counselor talk to me about what she saw me doing to cope with

“And, Lysa, let’s talk about your coping mechanism.” I smiled, because I fully expected her to give me a pass on this round of therapy. She did not. Instead she said, “You hyperspiritualize what you’ve been through to the point where you deny your feelings rather than actually deal with your pain.” Ouch. No pass on this round. I wanted to glare at her and dismiss her. But honestly, she was right. Her statement peeled back all my posturing and positivity and pretending.

Eventually, here’s what I had to ask myself: Am I processing life through the lens of the way I want it to be or the way it actually is? 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. 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.

So my counselor wisely pointed out some hyperspiritual 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. •God will eventually make everything all right. •As a Christian, I know I should forgive, so I have. •What’s in the past is in the past. I’m just walking forward. No big deal. •There’s so much to be thankful for, so I’m just choosing to be grateful. •Who has the time or energy to unpack why this happened and how it affected me? Let’s just move on. •I’m mature enough to say, “It is what it is,” and get over it.

“Wait a minute . . . those statements aren’t bad.” Well, I agree, unless you are using them and they are keeping you stuck in a bad place. Putting on a smiling face while filled with unhealed hurt inside is a set up for an eventual blow up.

“Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.”

It seems if we have a pulse, we also have stories of when we’ve been injured, hurt, wronged, and brokenhearted by the choices of another. Unhealed hurt often becomes unleashed hurt spewed out on others. It’s so very common to be so very offended. Even with Christians. Even in churches. Even with friends who used to pray together. And even in families that have Bibles in every room of their houses. And even with me. When the pain is so deeply personal, it’s hard for my reactions to stay biblical. It’s hard not to eventually lose it when hurt just keeps getting added onto hurt.

Forgiveness is a complicated grace that uncomplicates my blinding pain and helps me see beautiful again.

Raw nerves are complicated with teeth and souls, and near to impossible to protect at all times. 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. Forgiveness is such a complicated grace, for sure. But how in the world does it uncomplicate my blinding pain so I can see beautiful again? Sometimes words sound so possible until the living of them feels impossible. Stupid rhetoric.

Now I wasn’t just the one who was hurt. Now I was the one causing hurt in others. And that’s what left me seething with the most painful of all lies hooked into my soul: They did this to me. They made me feel this way. They made me act this way. They have written into my life a script of horrific sorrow from which I’ll never escape, never truly heal from, and can’t ever possibly forgive.

It’s all so cruel. And seemingly impossible to get over. I’ve read the Bible verses. I know God’s instruction by heart—forgive and you will be forgiven. But I can’t process how to apply this right now. I’ve tried. I said the words of forgiveness I was supposed to say. So, why does this kind of anger still circle around in my heart, take over my best intentions, and fly out of my mouth? Forgiveness didn’t seem to work for me. So please don’t ask me to forgive like Jesus forgives. I’m not Jesus.

Regardless, if healing hasn’t been worked out and forgiveness hasn’t been walked out, chaos is what will continue to play out.

Maybe your hurt hasn’t hooked you with chaotic emotions. Maybe it plays out in numbing escapes like porn or pills or pretending to be perfect or playing games with that person secretly communicating with you through Facebook. Maybe it’s lingering about in your liquor or lackadaisical carelessness or a lack of self-awareness or by you labeling other people with all kinds of negativity. Maybe it’s poking around through pouting, sneaking out through the silent treatment, or manifesting in manipulations and all manners of controlling. Maybe it’s just hiding behind things that aren’t as easy to attach to unforgiveness. But pain projects. Hurt haunts. Seething never sits still. Something is there creeping up and playing out.

Once pain has been inflicted, it’s impossible to remain unaffected. As I said before, the more our pain consumes us, the more it will control us. That person or people who hurt you, who hurt me—they’ve caused enough pain. There’s been enough damage done. So, what do I do with my pain? Acknowledge it. And what do I need to do with the feelings resulting from the pain? Own them as mine to control. Yes, the hurt was caused by someone else, but the resulting feelings are mine to manage. And I can’t manage feelings I don’t own.

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.

Yes, there is a cause and effect here. 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. This is where my healing fell apart time and time again. Blame hands the power to change over to the person who hurt me. It says, as long as they refuse to acknowledge what they’ve done as wrong, I feel powerless to change. Or, even if they do acknowledge what they did as ...

So might you dare to whisper along with me, Today is the day it stops. Say it with me. Today is my day to stop the grim, hopeless pursuit of expecting the other person to make this right so that I can receive the glorious hope-filled possibilities of this new day.

Remember those markings of time? BC: Before Crisis. AD: After Devastation. Well, there’s a third line I’ve discovered. It’s RH: Resurrected Hope. Honestly, I wish that’s the way the history of time would be marked. After all, that’s such a truer reflection of where we are all living. Not 2020 after Christ’s death. The reality is that Jesus’ death only lasted three days, but His resurrected hope has carried us into the future.

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

In the case of hope, the more you see evidence of it, the more assured you’ll be that it’s there. When you are assured it’s there, a new perspective forms. And even better, this new perspective becomes a new reality. So, where do we begin? After all, seeing hope is not quite as defined as seeing a red car or a white SUV. The best place to begin looking for something is to go back to where it was lost.

don’t remember what Jim said to all of my resistance. I just remember we stayed the course, and what I learned about forgiveness that day changed my life. Jim didn’t seem a bit concerned that I didn’t have the desire to forgive or that my feelings weren’t cooperating. It almost seemed like the intensity of my resistance made doing this exercise on this day more appropriate in his estimation, not less. That confused me. I certainly didn’t want to add “forgiveness failure” on top of everything else I was beating myself up about in this season.

I did want to heal. I did want to start making my way out of this pit where everything felt dark and confusing and hopeless. But I thought in order to start healing, I needed to feel better than I did about my circumstances and about the people involved.

I thought everything needed to be settled. I thought those who did wrong things would first realize they were wrong. Or, at least some kind of justice would tilt my upside-down world back in place. And something about this would feel fair. Then, I would consider forgiveness. And then I could possibly heal. But, as my counselor kept talking, I started to realize I might never feel like things were fair. Even if every best-case scenario played out with the people who hurt me suddenly being utterly repentant and owning every bit of all they’d done, that wouldn’t undo what happened. That wouldn’t erase the damage. That wouldn’t take away the memories. That wouldn’t instantly heal me or make any of this feel right.

Jesus had compassion. Jesus had the power. Jesus didn’t make healing contingent on other people doing or owning anything.

Standing in Jerusalem that day, my guide continued: “In the gospel of John, there were only two recorded healing miracles of Jesus in Jerusalem. 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 hands. I need to focus on what I can do to step toward Him in obedience. And forgiveness is what He’s asking of me.

I must separate my healing from others’ repentance or lack thereof. My ability to heal cannot be conditional on them wanting my forgiveness...

And I have to separate my healing from any of this being fair. My ability to heal cannot be conditional on the other person receiving adequate consequences for their disobedience but only on my obedien...

My healing is my choice. I can heal. I can forgive. I can trust God. And none of those beautiful realities are held hostage by another person. Healing will take time. But I must move forward toward it if I ever hope to get there. And forgiveness is...

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. Time comes to a screeching halt, our hearts race with wildly unpredictable and terrifyingly uncontrollable pulses, and our brains keep sounding internal alarms that we are no longer safe. This is helpful for a time, as we need to get ourselves out of immediate danger, but remaining in this mode long term is definitely not healthy. We need to eventually move toward a state of healing, of rest. We need to eventually get to ...

My ability to heal cannot be conditional on them wanting my forgiveness but only on my willingness to give it.

While I can look forward to eternity one day, I don’t have to wait to live out my heavenly citizenship. I can bring heaven to earth today by living in such a forgiving way that my choices line up with God. Think about the Lord’s Prayer: “[God’s] will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). My heart is most at home in the safety of God’s truth. Like the verse from Hebrews says, He will equip me with all I need to do this. He will empower me to do what He instructs. And so I run toward the forgiveness God commands. And only then will I find the healing peace He offers.

Refusing to forgive is refusing the peace of God.

Hurt feelings sometimes don’t want to cooperate with holy instructions. That’s why I have to add some of what Jesus did on the cross into this process. The cross was the most holy act of forgiveness that ever took place. And it was His blood shed for our sins that was the redemptive ingredient that accomplished a forgiveness we could never have obtained or earned for ourselves. (See endnote for more explanation.)2 It only makes sense that I include Jesus’ shed blood into my act of forgiveness when accomplishing it on my own feels so hard . . . maybe even impossible. Jesus makes it possible.

Card after card, I had a marked moment of forgiveness, emptying my heart of all the heavy facts of what happened. It’s not that all these were erased from my memory—we’ll get to that in just a minute. But doing this one fact at a time freed me from carrying all those unspoken facts, which had become tangled up into one huge mess that felt way too big to forgive. One by one, I acknowledged all the pieces and parts of what felt like such an overwhelming nightmare. And, as I verbalized what happened, I finally felt like I had a voice in the midst of the chaos.

My pain didn’t need to be validated by Art or vindicated by anyone else. It just needed to be verbalized—spoken out loud, acknowledged, recognized as real—and brought out into the light.

Just verbalizing all the pain in a list of facts brought a sense of dignity back into my world. And I realized what it meant to cooperate with the forgiveness of Jesus. It meant to see myself as Jesus sees me—broken but still chosen and worth forgiveness. It meant seeing Art as Jesus sees him—broken but still chosen and worth forgiveness. And most of all, it took the pressure off of me “feeling” my way to f...

I only needed to bring my willingness to forgive, not the fullness of all my restored feelings. For whatever my feelings didn’t allow, the work of Jesus on the cross could cover.

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.

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

The journey with Art was long and brutal. There were years that it very much felt like divorce was imminent, and no one was more stunned than me that there was an eventual reconciliation. There was a slow bringing back together what had been massively damaged. There was repentance. There was forgiveness. There was an acceptance that, just because something wasn’t right for a long time, it doesn’t mean it can’t be made right over time. There was some healing we both did individually. And then there was the decision that it was time to heal together.

I didn’t have any 3×5 cards with me at the time, or the squares of red felt that my counselor had available in his office back when we walked through this exercise together. So, I just closed my eyes and walked through the exercise in my mind. And I finished by praying, “And whatever my feelings don’t yet allow for, the blood of Jesus will surely cover. Amen.”

But if you’re still struggling with unresolved feelings, that’s understandable. As my counselor has explained to me, 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.