Forgiving What You Can't Forget Book Summary - Forgiving What You Can't Forget Book explained in key points

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Forgiving What You Can't Forget summary

Name: Forgiving What You Can't Forget
Rating: 3.7 (175 reviews)
Author: Lysa TerKeurst

Lysa TerKeurst

Discover How to Move On, Make Peace with Painful Memories, and Create a Life That’s Beautiful Again

3.7 (175 ratings)

25 mins

Brief summary

Forgiving What You Can't Forget by Lysa TerKeurst is a guide to help readers heal from pain, trauma and betrayal by offering practical steps to navigate the path towards forgiveness.

Topics

Self-Care Self-Help Trauma & Healing

Table of Contents

Forgiving What You Can't Forget
Summary of 8 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 8

What’s in it for me? Discover healthy ways to process your pain

Lysa TerKeurst thought her pain would never end.

When she discovered that her husband had been unfaithful to her, she tore down every happy picture of them as a couple and packed up all the mementos of their relationship. She tried to untangle her life from anything that reminded her of what had been – because, well, she didn’t know what else to do.

However, trying to eradicate any memory of her husband didn’t remove the pain she was feeling; it just made it worse.

Eventually, she realized that holding onto her hurt – and defining her life by what her husband had done to her – only prevented her from healing. She had to find a way to process her pain by opening up her heart to forgiveness. This saved her marriage – and taught her how to heal.

In these blinks, we’ll explore TerKeurst’s ideas and methods for using forgiveness to make peace with painful memories.

Along the way, you’ll learn

why accepting the past can stimulate the process of healing;
how our childhood experiences shape our belief systems; and
why there will never be a “right” moment to forgive.

In order to heal, you must first forgive.

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.

Waiting for the right moment to forgive only delays your healing.

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.

Coping mechanisms don’t help us cope in the long term.

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.

To learn to forgive in the present, we have to revisit the past.

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.

Connecting the dots is about revising your belief systems.

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.

Correcting the dots helps you reframe your suffering and move forward in healthy ways.

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.

Sometimes, the things that you cannot change are the hardest to forgive.

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.

Forgiveness isn’t a destination; it’s a process.

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.

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What is Forgiving What You Can't Forget about?

Forgiving What You Can’t Forget (2020) is a guide to healing from past hurt. Drawing from her experiences of abuse in her childhood and infidelity in her marriage, author Lysa TerKeurst offers up ways to make peace with painful memories through forgiveness.

Best quote from Forgiving What You Can't Forget

Pain projects, hurt haunts, seething never sits still.

—Lysa TerKeurst

Who should read Forgiving What You Can't Forget?

Anyone suffering from a broken heart
Christians seeking to feel closer to God
Those wanting to reframe their suffering as something positive

About the Author

Lysa TerKeurst is president of Proverbs 31 Ministries, a Christian ministry helping women enter into a relationship with God. She’s also the New York Times best-selling author of It’s Not Supposed to Be This Way (2018) and Uninvited (2016). Her favorite writing spot is her gray farm table in her house in North Carolina.

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