{"id":"60016fcd6cee070006e8207d","slug":"forgiving-what-you-cant-forget-en","title":"Forgiving What You Can't Forget","audio_url":"https://hls.blinkist.io/bibs/60016fcd6cee070006e8207d/60016fcd6cee070006e8207f-T1610707137.m4a?Expires=1642613601&Signature=DbnDUEm1YYQOtdNRtd18q14Qs7QgcBDAqS6LQD9Jw03I0HJ5ROfMnpYh4N7x9fpsUo8Z32t5n7ToC-IhbVk8d-wYU5MNYXKxLw6WQwg7DVAjogzYqNCMe7CtiM4f2rZ9TsdA0F7JRCXRa~QKyTMrZehl3OgV679bSw55HfPojPPyz0ipMvBQ5q46VR83d7SKTm9iJ6WbO7VCbax8xgztqQ18KeOGEvWMrK7TJ5nl1-fmVMC-iPuKVdc46axhj57AOKg3omMMaMkkxCG-5CFCEzr0IWe9YZOHZITPrWWsDhDth1puipD6ZejK0Om-PsXIT--fJranWPrH09fzS6l2iA__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJXJM6BB7FFZXUB4A","chapters":[{"id":"60016fcd6cee070006e8207f","title":"In order to heal, you must first forgive.","text":"

Have you ever felt so heartbroken that you thought you would never heal?

This is how the author felt when she found out that her husband, Art, had been cheating on her.

For weeks and months after she found this out, she couldn’t help wishing she could be put under anesthetic – like a patient awaiting surgery in hospital. That way, she wouldn’t have to deal with the heartbreak and shock that had affected her life and the lives of her children.

However, after some time had passed, the author realized that holding on to her pain wasn’t getting her anywhere. To recover from the trauma, she had to learn how to forgive the man who had wronged her.

The key message here is: In order to heal, you must first forgive.

When the author was in the depths of despair, forgiveness seemed like the hardest thing to do. She thought that learning to forgive would be like fighting an everlasting battle on her own. But after a while, she realized that God would be there to help.

In the Bible, Ephesians 4:7 says that Jesus allows grace to flow freely through us – to help us learn how to forgive one another. The author interpreted the passage to mean this: our ability to forgive isn’t dependent on our own will, but on our ability to cooperate with the Lord.

As human beings, we find forgiveness tough. When people wrong us, our first reaction isn’t to bless them or offer them consolation. Instead, we sometimes use our hurt as an excuse to hurt them back.

God knew that humans couldn’t learn to forgive people all on their own. That’s why He made a way for us to forgive other people that wasn’t dependent on our own strength. When we’re hurting – and all we want to do is run and hide – God takes the wheel. He forgives the wrongs that we would never be strong enough to make right.

So forgiveness isn’t always about doing something for a human relationship. It’s about being obedient to what God has instructed us to do. When we cooperate most fully with God’s work of forgiveness, we give up the desire to make others suffer for what they’ve done – and in return, we get the freedom to move on.

So if you’re feeling like there’s no way out of your misery, take God’s hand. As the words of forgiveness are released from your lips, you’ll begin to walk the path to healing.

"},{"id":"60016fcd6cee070006e82080","title":"Waiting for the right moment to forgive only delays your healing.","text":"

A few months after her marriage hit this crisis, the author walked into a scheduled therapy session. It was clear she hadn’t been looking after herself.

Weeks of sleeplessness had left dark circles under her eyes. Her hair was tangled and laden with dry shampoo. And she couldn’t remember the last time she’d used deodorant.

Sitting down with her counselor, Jim, the author expressed how she couldn’t forgive her husband for what he’d done. And the emotional burden was weighing her down.

At that time, the author’s husband seemed to feel little remorse for what he’d done, and they endured a long separation. How could she possibly work on forgiveness when she didn’t feel like forgiving?

Here’s the key message: Waiting for the right moment to forgive only delays your healing.

During the therapy session, Jim asked the author whether she wanted to heal her past hurt.

Deep down, the author knew that this was exactly what she wanted. But before she could start the process of healing, she needed restitution – that is, she needed the people who had wronged her to realize they were wrong. If they did that, then maybe the situation would seem fairer, and she would be able to consider forgiving those who had hurt her.

But if the author had waited for things to feel fair, she could have waited forever. And even if the people who had hurt her repented of what they’d done, that wouldn’t undo what had happened.

Once the author realized this, she knew that she had to separate her healing from other people’s choices.

After she explained this revelation to Jim, he offered the author a stack of 3x5 cards. The idea was to write down the things for which she needed to forgive Art – one wound per card.

The author filled out dozens of these cards, pouring out all the things that had hurt her deeply. Jim then instructed her to place the cards on the floor in a long line, and handed her a stack of red felt squares.

He told her to declare her forgiveness verbally for the hurtful thing written on each card – and seal each declaration by placing a piece of red felt over the top of the card.

Doing this exercise helped the author to come to a new understanding of her situation. It made her see that her pain didn’t need to be validated by Art – or vindicated. It just needed to be spoken out loud, acknowledged, and recognized as real.

"},{"id":"60016fcd6cee070006e82081","title":"Coping mechanisms don’t help us cope in the long term.","text":"

When we’re hurting, there are many things we do to numb the pain.

Some of us may turn to alcohol, drugs, or casual sexual encounters. And some of us may act overwhelmingly positively – as if to convince ourselves that things are okay.

That’s what the author did. She would tell herself over and over again that things were fine – and that she had forgiven her husband for betraying her.

But her therapist thought differently. He told the author that she was hyper-spiritualizing her life to the point where she was denying her feelings. As a result, she wasn’t dealing with her pain.

This is the key message: Coping mechanisms don’t help us cope in the long term.

Coping strategies like being overly positive or taking substances to numb our feelings may help us cope in the short term. But in the long run, they don’t actually help us deal with our circumstances. Instead, these things keep us stuck in an alternative reality – one that covers up the pain we actually feel.

The thing is, we can’t live this way and expect our situations to improve. If we want to heal, we have to acknowledge and accept what is real. That way, we can better decide what parts of us still need healing, and eventually move on.

Going to a counselor really helped the author to begin this process. The counselor pointed out some of the hyper-spiritual statements the author was making – which were keeping her from healing. These included things like, “God will eventually make everything all right,” and “As a Christian, I know I should forgive, so I have.”

Identifying these things helped the author come to a second realization: not only was she skewing her reality to deal with the pain – she was also doing everything she could to avoid forgiving her husband. As a result, she was preventing herself from moving on.

It’s quite normal to resist forgiveness, so many of us do – and there are often legitimate reasons for doing that. Sometimes we fear that the person who hurt us will hurt us again. Sometimes we just don’t know how to start forgiving someone.

The author certainly didn’t know how to forgive. It was only when she started to unravel her past, understand the trauma she had experienced, and open herself up to the teachings of the Bible that she understood what she had to do to heal.

"},{"id":"60016fcd6cee070006e82082","title":"To learn to forgive in the present, we have to revisit the past.","text":"

When the author was writing her book on forgiveness, she was still in the process of dealing with her husband’s infidelity.

Every morning she would sit at the gray wooden table in her house, with only her tears and her Bible for comfort. Other days, she’d invite colleagues to come and sit with her. They all had their own experiences of pain – and many of them were still grappling with forgiveness.

These meetings at the gray table made all of them realize something: there were unforgiven things in their pasts that were still affecting them. For example, one woman’s ex-boyfriend had gotten engaged after she’d split up with him – and the thought of this happy couple being together still haunted her.

The key message here is: To learn to forgive in the present, we have to revisit the past.

All of us have things in our pasts – like relationship struggles, or even trauma in our childhoods – that shape the way we deal with grief or loss in the present. In order to heal hurt fully, we have to dig into these stories – to uncover things from long ago that still affect us. This is what the author’s therapist called collecting the dots.

The author identified things in her past that had shaped the way she viewed relationships in the present. For instance, the author grew up in a single-wide trailer, with her mom, her sister, and a mostly absent father. When she was a few years old, her dad walked out on the family.

Later on, when the author was nine, she was repeatedly abused by a babysitter who lived next door to her grandmother. Not only that, but the abuser told her that he would hurt her mother if she ever told a soul. So she was forced to keep it a secret.

The author grew into an unhappy teenager: she was bullied at school and felt misunderstood at home. As a result, she felt insecure, unloved, and unable to trust anyone – especially men.

Collecting the dots of her life brought the author to a realization: forgiveness isn’t just about what’s in front of us. Sometimes, a bigger part of the journey is uncovering the things from long ago that inform our lives now.

After collecting the dots, the next stage is to connect the dots – which involves understanding how past traumas influence our behavior in the present. We’ll take a look at that in the next blink.

"},{"id":"60016fcd6cee070006e82083","title":"Connecting the dots is about revising your belief systems.","text":"

Before the author met her husband, Art, she’d had a number of beliefs about men. These beliefs were tied to the men in her past who had devastated her – like her father, who’d abandoned his family.

Throughout her life, the author would tell herself that men were not to be trusted, and that she should keep all of them at a distance. The author eventually made an exception for Art – and for some time, she was glad she did. But then he betrayed her trust.

So what was the hardest part of forgiving her ex? Well, the author knew that to forgive Art, she would have to forgive the other men who had hurt her, too.

Here’s the key message: Connecting the dots is about revising your belief systems.

In order to heal from past experiences, we have to make connections between what happened in our pasts and how that affects the way we see the world today. This is what the author means when she refers to connecting the dots.

For example, the author realized she’d had a tough time believing the loving words Art would say to her during their marriage. She’d often find herself asking him, “Do you really mean what you’re saying?”

This was partially down to the author’s inherent distrust of men. But it was also down to Art’s inability to articulate his feelings. Let’s explain.

After the author found out about Art’s affair, she and her husband had an honest conversation. They discussed everything that had gone wrong in their relationship – and why.

The author discovered that she wasn’t the only one with unresolved pain. Art felt pain, too.

Art grew up in a house where feelings weren’t expressed – so he learned to never verbalize emotion. In contrast, the author grew up in a house where feelings were declared loudly.

This was a bad combination for their relationship. The author was looking for Art to speak the words of comfort and reassurance that other men had never said to her. But Art just didn’t know how to have these conversations.

After Art opened up about this, the author realized why their relationship had been fraught for so long. She was looking for his acceptance, while Art was looking to be acceptable to her. And neither of them was meeting the other’s needs.

For the author, connecting the dots wasn’t just about understanding what traumatic past events were influencing her in the present. It was also about acknowledging that Art needed to heal, too.

Eventually, the couple came back together and even renewed their marriage vows – all because they accepted each other’s hurt and decided to heal together.

"},{"id":"60016fce6cee070006e82084","title":"Correcting the dots helps you reframe your suffering and move forward in healthy ways.","text":"

Have you ever been around someone who takes everything as a personal attack? No matter what you say, he believes that others are out to get him, or that they think he’s not good enough.

Such people quickly assign wrong motives and negative interpretations to what is done and said to them. Why? Because they’re still dealing with unresolved pain. They haven’t connected the dots to understand who or what in the past truly needs to be forgiven.

The thing is, collecting and connecting the dots isn’t really enough. You also have to correct them. This means finding the beliefs you’ve formed – based on all you’ve been through – and ensuring they’re life-giving and positive.

This is the key message: Correcting the dots helps you reframe your suffering and move forward in healthy ways.

Once the author started connecting the dots of her life, she started to have a healthier interpretation of her circumstances. She’d expressed what had happened in her life and how it made her feel. And she’d accepted that she couldn’t change the past.

The next stage was learning how to move forward. Here’s a practical example of how she did this.

The author thought of the people in each of the stories from her life, and tried to figure out what negative things she was still carrying with her in relation to them.

To do this, she focused on her physical and emotional reactions to the mention of each person’s name. She asked herself questions like, Do I feel my pulse quicken, or my jaw clench? Do I secretly celebrate when I hear they’re having difficulties? Do I dream of the moment when they admit what they did was wrong?

If she answered yes to any of these questions, she would try to reframe them in a more positive way. The new set of questions included things like, How might I look at this differently? and, What good could come about if I forgave them?

After that, the author would read verses from the Bible – to help her remember that God never wastes suffering. For example, the passage Romans 5:3–5 reminded her that suffering would produce perseverance, character, and hope – if she continued to put her faith in God.

With this in mind, the author then asked herself, What would a healthy version of me be empowered to do from here? She then jotted her answers down in a journal. Doing this regularly helped her make sense of herself – and corrected her perspectives as she sought to move on.

"},{"id":"60016fce6cee070006e82085","title":"Sometimes, the things that you cannot change are the hardest to forgive.","text":"

In an old black-and-white photo, the author, as a little girl, can be seen leaning against a tree. Her long brown hair hangs in messy ringlets around her face. And on her lips is a faint smile.

However, the author remembers feeling far from happy at that time. She was being abused by her grandmother’s neighbor – and, inside, she was screaming to be rescued.

Looking back on the situation now, the author realizes just how many things were stolen from her: youth, innocence, and her childlike imagination. Her abuser also yanked her into a pit of fear that she still fights to stay out of every day.

The key message here is: Sometimes, the things that you cannot change are the hardest to forgive.

When something unbelievably tragic happens in our lives, how do we position ourselves to forgive? This is exactly what the author asked herself when she started trying to process the abuse she’d experienced.

All her life, the author had felt like she wasn’t worthy of being loved. She feared that people would always use her and toss her aside. Even now, she finds herself assuming that the absolute worst might happen to her – and is constantly bracing for impact.

When we’re reeling from deep pain and hurt, forgiveness can seem impossible – especially when someone hasn’t just affected one season of our lives, but our whole lives. Hanging on to pain and anger, however, only prevents us from healing.

If you’re struggling to forgive the wrong that’s been done to you, here’s a key thing to remember: forgiveness is more satisfying than revenge.

It’s common to think that getting back at someone who’s hurt us will feel good. But in the long term, revenge is expensive, emotionally and spiritually. This is because revenge makes us pay for our hurt twice – once when the person wrongs us, and again when we trade in the peace and spiritual progress of forgiveness for the short-term win of retaliation.

Choosing to forgive someone isn’t about letting them off the hook. It’s about releasing to the Lord your need for the wrongdoer to be punished. In other words, it allows God to do the forgiving for you.

When the author surrendered her need to punish her abuser, her heart softened, and she reached a level of peace she never thought she’d experience. This doesn’t mean she ever forgot the hurt that was done to her; she just learned to see it as a single chapter in her continuing story.

"},{"id":"60016fce6cee070006e82086","title":"Forgiveness isn’t a destination; it’s a process.","text":"

If you’ve ever broken a tooth, you’ll know how painful it can be.

When part of a tooth breaks off and the nerves are exposed, chewing is unbearably painful. Sometimes it even hurts to breathe. The worst part? If you forget your tooth is broken, and attempt to, say, bite into an apple, a whole load of pain comes flooding back in.

This is what dealing with trauma is like. On the surface, you may be dealing with things quite well. But when something triggers you, you can find yourself dealing with unresolved pain.

If this happens to you, don’t think that all your progress has been wasted. Instead, see it as part of your journey to forgiveness.

This is the key message: Forgiveness isn’t a destination; it’s a process.

Every trauma we experience has an initial effect and a long-term impact.

In the author’s story, the initial effect was the discovery of Art’s affair. Though that season is over now, and many years have passed, there are still moments when she gets tripped up by a bad memory, or triggered by something someone says – and the pain hits her like a steam train. That’s the long-term impact.

The author has a strategy for moments when she gets triggered. Instead of letting the feeling derail her, she tries to discern what the feeling is and what to do with it. For example, if she sees a picture that reminds her of a hard time in her life, she gives herself a few moments to grieve what she lost.

She watches for any feelings of fear this stirs up. And she asks herself, Is this leftover fear from that time, or is there something I need to pay attention to for today?

She also gauges her sentiment toward the person involved on a scale from good to neutral to angry to wishing for retaliation. She then discerns whether she needs to process this out loud with someone, or just work through it in her journal.

This is all part of the process that the author calls ongoing forgiveness. There may never be a moment when you feel like you have forgiven everything that has happened to you. But just beginning the journey is what matters.

"}]}

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