Forgiving What You Can't Forget Quotes

“I now know what the “more” was that seemed missing. I now know it, because we now have it. Vulnerability. We have to be vulnerable to look at the realities of our life and make some of the connections we’re talking about. But we also gain even more vulnerability as a result of increased self-awareness. It becomes hard to pretend with others when we can no longer pretend with ourselves. And, sister, if that’s one of the only connections and corrections we make in these chapters, it was well worth the work.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Forgiving What You Can't Forget: Discover How to Move On, Make Peace with Painful Memories, and Create a Life That’s Beautiful Again

“people who are quiet are sometimes the ones in the most pain. It’s just that their screams are silent. Or, they are acting out in secret.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Forgiving What You Can't Forget: Discover How to Move On, Make Peace with Painful Memories, and Create a Life That’s Beautiful Again

“I’ve heard it said that people fall in love. I wish the expression was more like, “We found love, and then we chose it over and over together.” I much prefer that to falling.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Forgiving What You Can't Forget: Discover How to Move On, Make Peace with Painful Memories, and Create a Life That’s Beautiful Again

“Being taught to stuff feelings early in life can sometimes mean you never learn how to properly understand feelings later in life. Feelings serve a purpose. Feelings inform us of issues that need to be addressed. They also help us empathize with others, bond with others, and know when we need to give and receive emotional support.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Forgiving What You Can't Forget: Discover How to Move On, Make Peace with Painful Memories, and Create a Life That’s Beautiful Again

“It’s important to start making these connections between what happened in our growing-up years and the reasons we do some of the things we do, say some of the things we say, and believe some of the things we believe right now.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Forgiving What You Can't Forget: Discover How to Move On, Make Peace with Painful Memories, and Create a Life That’s Beautiful Again

“What we experience all throughout life impacts the perceptions we carry. The longer we carry those perceptions, the more they become the truths we believe, live by, operate under, and use to help us navigate life today.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Forgiving What You Can't Forget: Discover How to Move On, Make Peace with Painful Memories, and Create a Life That’s Beautiful Again

“There’s an amazing person I want to make sure you don’t miss truly meeting. The one and only glorious you that you look at each day in the mirror . . . full of the most interesting experiences, delightful quirks, honest hurt, inspiring resilience, hilarious family oddities, and absolutely astonishing reflections of our heavenly Father. I’ve never been so honored to meet someone. Hello, beautiful, beautiful you.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Forgiving What You Can't Forget: Discover How to Move On, Make Peace with Painful Memories, and Create a Life That’s Beautiful Again

“I try not to personalize what other people say or do, but it’s really hard when I’m a deep feeler. I get hurt. And sadly, though I never want to hurt others, I do. Even when I do everything I know to do to make things better . . . sometimes things don’t get better. Some relationships don’t survive in the long run. Sometimes we never really know why.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Forgiving What You Can't Forget: Discover How to Move On, Make Peace with Painful Memories, and Create a Life That’s Beautiful Again

“What I really feared I would never escape was being me. The common denominator of all the pain was that I was in the center of it. The greatest hell a human can experience here on earth is not suffering. It’s feeling like the suffering is pointless and it will never get any better.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Forgiving What You Can't Forget: Discover How to Move On, Make Peace with Painful Memories, and Create a Life That’s Beautiful Again

“Forgiveness isn’t just about what’s in front of us. Sometimes, a bigger part of the journey is uncovering what is informing us from long ago. Woven throughout our experiences is a connecting thread that pulls the beliefs we formed from our past into the very present moments of today.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Forgiving What You Can't Forget: Discover How to Move On, Make Peace with Painful Memories, and Create a Life That’s Beautiful Again

“emotional trauma hits us with as much severity and impact as just about anything else.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Forgiving What You Can't Forget: Discover How to Move On, Make Peace with Painful Memories, and Create a Life That’s Beautiful Again

“Progress is hard to see when triggered feelings make our vision clouded with intense emotions.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Forgiving What You Can't Forget: Discover How to Move On, Make Peace with Painful Memories, and Create a Life That’s Beautiful Again

“Remember, the decision to forgive acknowledges the facts of what happened. But the much longer journey of forgiveness is around all the many ways these facts affected you—the impact they created.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Forgiving What You Can't Forget: Discover How to Move On, Make Peace with Painful Memories, and Create a Life That’s Beautiful Again

“Healing will take time. But I must move forward toward it if I ever hope to get there. And forgiveness is a good step in the right direction. Not just good, but necessary. 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 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.”1”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Forgiving What You Can't Forget: Discover How to Move On, Make Peace with Painful Memories, and Create a Life That’s Beautiful Again

“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.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Forgiving What You Can't Forget: Discover How to Move On, Make Peace with Painful Memories, and Create a Life That’s Beautiful Again

“Once pain has been inflicted, it’s impossible to remain unaffected.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Forgiving What You Can't Forget: Discover How to Move On, Make Peace with Painful Memories, and Create a Life That’s Beautiful Again

“wish I could say I turned it all around after that. I didn’t. 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.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Forgiving What You Can't Forget: Discover How to Move On, Make Peace with Painful Memories, and Create a Life That’s Beautiful Again

“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.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Forgiving What You Can't Forget: Discover How to Move On, Make Peace with Painful Memories, and Create a Life That’s Beautiful Again

“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.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Forgiving What You Can't Forget: Discover How to Move On, Make Peace with Painful Memories, and Create a Life That’s Beautiful Again

“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.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Forgiving What You Can't Forget: Discover How to Move On, Make Peace with Painful Memories, and Create a Life That’s Beautiful Again

“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.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Forgiving What You Can't Forget: Discover How to Move On, Make Peace with Painful Memories, and Create a Life That’s Beautiful Again

“What we look for is what we will see. What we see determines our perspective. And our perspective becomes our reality. That’s the multiplying effect of making the choice to look for something—you’ll start to see it more and more.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Forgiving What You Can't Forget: Discover How to Move On, Make Peace with Painful Memories, and Create a Life That’s Beautiful Again

“I just want peace. The peace from forgiveness is more satisfying than revenge.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Forgiving What You Can't Forget: Discover How to Move On, Make Peace with Painful Memories, and Create a Life That’s Beautiful Again

“And though it’s been excruciatingly painful to learn this kind of vulnerability, it’s been the most life-giving part of our healing. Isn’t it strange that sometimes it’s the very thing we fear the most that winds up paving a road to freedom?”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Forgiving What You Can't Forget: Discover How to Move On, Make Peace with Painful Memories, and Create a Life That’s Beautiful Again

“The greatest hell a human can experience here on earth is not suffering. It’s feeling like the suffering is pointless and it will never get any better. The playground never felt safe again after that. I didn’t blame the teacher. She was actually a lovely woman. But there were things going on she never saw. The rules were different out on the playground. Instead of be nice and play fair, it was a game of survival. People who said or did mean things were protected by the others in the popular group. It seemed they could get away with anything. They were the cool ones, the strong ones, the ones in charge. No one said they were sorry. And the only”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Forgiving What You Can't Forget: Discover How to Move On, Make Peace with Painful Memories, and Create a Life That’s Beautiful Again

“forgiveness is the greatest evidence that the Truth of God lives in us.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Forgiving What You Can't Forget: Discover How to Move On, Make Peace with Painful Memories, and Create a Life That’s Beautiful Again

“While the truth is sometimes hard to hear, God gives it to us because He knows what our hearts and souls really need. It is His truth that sets us free.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Forgiving What You Can't Forget: Discover How to Move On, Make Peace with Painful Memories, and Create a Life That’s Beautiful Again

“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.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Forgiving What You Can't Forget: Discover How to Move On, Make Peace with Painful Memories, and Create a Life That’s Beautiful Again

“And walking confidently with the Lord from hurt to healing is the freedom that awaits.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Forgiving What You Can't Forget: Discover How to Move On, Make Peace with Painful Memories, and Create a Life That’s Beautiful Again

“We can only heal what we’re willing to acknowledge is real.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, Forgiving What You Can't Forget: Discover How to Move On, Make Peace with Painful Memories, and Create a Life That’s Beautiful Again