When you’re wounded, forgiveness is one of the last things you’re excited about doing. You might want to heal your wounded heart, but forgive?
Instead, anger surfaces. Indignation appears. Outrage over what’s happened takes center stage. Or, you hide and tuck yourself away while tears fill your days.
May I share a piece of encouragement here? It might surprise you, but I hope you’ll keep reading.
Forgiveness may not be the thing to do.
Just yet.
Feeling the burden to do what’s “supposed” to be done can cripple us from experiencing freedom for what can be done, over time.
Forgiveness as a Gift
As powerful, necessary, freeing, and beautiful as forgiveness is, the process is often messy and happens in stages.
Consider holding the beautify of forgiveness in one hand, as a gift to open, while also attending to the reality of your emotions, healing journey, and current circumstances in the other. The tension might not feel great, but it may also provide a path for healing.
In the midst of damaging circumstances, the pressure to forgive because it’s the right thing to do, might keep you from truthfully facing what’s hard to see. When someone is actively harming you, or you’re in the middle of a situation where wrong needs acknowledgment, admit what’s true about current patterns.
Identify and address what’s going on first. Speak up where needed. Let forgiveness come later. The gift of forgiveness waits for you.
Sometimes, our rush to forgive becomes more about being a good Christian and getting it right than about seeing God bring the breakthrough and healing. As a result, we might miss the power of letting anger move us to right wrongs that need addressing.
Ultimately, the outcome of every injustice is in God’s hands. We need to trust that. But rushing to forgiveness might keep us from experiencing His righteousness at work.
Receive So You Can Forgive
Forgiveness is powerful. It’s needed. It’s biblical. It’s given to us, freely and in abundance. Out of what we’ve received, we can give to others. But sometimes, it’s hard to take it in. What God’s already provided doesn’t sink in.
Maybe, that’s where forgiveness starts? By receiving His healing touch, His compassion, His care, and His guidance in the places where hurt happened.
A wounded heart can’t give what they don’t have.
If you’re struggling with forgiveness, ask God what He wants you to receive.
Start there.
Ask and You Shall Receive
“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. ~ Matthew 7:7-8
We might not even know what to ask, beyond the retribution we seek and God-fixes for what we’ve experienced.
Reflective questions help us explore our hearts and God’s heart for us. They provide room for receiving.
What’s He saying to you today? Is there something He wants you to know about your present situation? About your current challenges, the past that may impact the present. Or about your future hope?
Asking God to speak, and making space to hear from Him opens up our hearts to hear what He has to say. About who we are. Who He is. And here’s the tricky, sometimes gut-twisting truth we need to consider too. He might reveal truth about who others are, including those who’ve harmed us.
Facing How God Sees You, Him, and Others
If God values us as His creation, designed to reflect His image, He’s designed others that way too. They may not be living out of that design right now. Distortions may have taken over the way they see the world and you, but that doesn’t mean you have to see things that way too.
You don’t have to engage in relationship with someone who doesn’t acknowledge and change their destructive ways, but it is possible to see them differently so their destruction doesn’t continue in you.
As you press in to God, and seek His voice speaking into your life, He may speak to you about how you view the one who’s wronged you. Or, how you view yourself. Even, how you view Him.
Revelations here may be scary and hard to face. Real or perceived wrongs have a way of sticking with us and the enemy will do all he can to twist our views so that all we see is the wrong. Not the one who is Righteous.
Facing how God sees all, including how he sees us and others, may open the door to forgiveness.
Choosing to Forgive When It’s Hard to Do
The wounds pounding ferociously inside of you may have begun long ago. Long before the person did what they did. Or the circumstances fell when and where they did. Let the emotions that surface work their way through so they don’t get stuck inside.
Forgiving others is a process that may take time. Especially when someone invalidates hurts and long-standing pain fills your heart. Allow space within you to hold forgiveness as a gift, and unwrap the layers as God brings them before you.
If you’re declaring that you’ll never forgive someone, may a share another word of encouragement? How about declaring your need for God to show you what step you can take today. Let the coming days unfold as He leads.
Choosing forgiveness takes courage. It requires humility to let God be God and manage how justice unfolds.
What does your forgiveness journey look like, dear one? Where ever you’re at, I’m praying for courage today.
For more on forgiveness, what it is and what it isn’t, please click below for the article on iBelieve.
Read the full article on iBelieve, “9 Things You Need to Know About Forgiveness”
Also, don’t miss this powerful article on forgiveness when you’ve experienced trauma and/or betrayal. It’s written by Dr. Sherri Keffer, a counselor and betrayal trauma specialist.
Untangling Grief, Trauma, and Forgiveness by Dr. Sherri Keffer
Additional Resources:
- 9 Things You Need to Know About Forgiveness on iBelieve
- Untangling Grief, Triggers, and Forgiveness article by Dr. Sherri Keffer
- Are Christians Supposed to Forgive Abusers? on Sojo
- When Forgiveness is Exhausting on (in)Courage
- What is Forgiveness? – Patrick Doyle, Dove TV [VIDEO on YouTube]
- Learning to Forgive – Patrick Doyle, Dove TV [VIDEO on YouTube]
- How Reconciliation Works – Patrick Doyle, Dove TV [VIDEO on YouTube]
- Forgiving What You Can’t Forget book by Dr. David Stoop
- Forgiving Our Fathers and Mothers by Leslie Leyland Fields and Dr. Jill Hubbard
- Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves book by Dr. David Stoop
Loved what Sherri had to say. So many applications to everyone who has suffered trauma of any type. Thanks for this,
Bob
Hers was a powerful post, wasn’t it?! I’m so glad you enjoyed it.
Jolene, hi!
I’m appreciating your tender wisdom these days. I shared your recent post on shame over at my monthly e-zine this week …
http://www.lindastoll.net/2019/05/loose-ends-may-2019.html
Such powerful words. Thank you for building into my life … and the lives of those in my community.
Hi, Linda,
Thank you for your kind words and for sharing my post with your readers. We’re better together. 😉
Forgiveness….I struggle daily, my mother who all my life has deliberately hurt me, and tried in every way to sabbatoge every happy moment of my life, I could write a book of the physical abuse, verbal abuse and mental abuse….that continues to this day….a half sister, that is so bitter and consumed with hatred that lies, and just recently posted on face book vile lies again….shes 65 years old!! Back story…mom is a alcoholic and was raised in a abused home…..sister has always had issues..her biological mother rejected her….Im 54…..the abuse and campaign against me dosnt stop…..Im very close to my father..we have a beautiful relationship ( parents..long divorced)…he has alziemhers …the attacks and lies and attempts to bring me down by these 2 women in my life is to much. My sister, who has always been bitter about my brother and I actually told family i took money from my father….and continues to lie…some family dosnt even speak to me ….I want to post on facebook…I want to call people and defend my self!! I have proof…and with my fathers condition, he cant even defend me….I feel like Ive been waiting my whole life for God to defend me…why dosnt He??? I have tried a million times, with both of them to be kind, have them in my home, be good to them, to love them…..it allpays out like a bad movie…if I didnt have text messages and saved facebook posts I think people wouldnt even believe me, its like a made up story. Why am I attacked so brutally by people that were supposed to love me and how do I forgive, when its deliberate, and dosnt stop!! I take care of my dad every day off from work and that even gets attacked….the trauma as well, especially from my mother…the beatings, the verbal abuse…words I still hear from when I was a child, the time she made me drop my kitten off on the side of a country road and drove away…..the hurt is unbearable….I just want them both gone…to just leave me alone…I try to forgive…and bam its another attack .
Jodi, I am so very sorry for the pain you’ve gone through. I imagine it’s very challenging facing continued attacks. It’s understandable that you feel the need to defend yourself, most people would. At the same time, it takes a great deal of courage to not defend. When you choose to let God work in you, rather than defend yourself to others, you make a mature and healthy decision.
One of the things God had to help me with was to keep resting in what He says as is true. Also, that he sees the truth and it is enough. If I believe that, the next step for me is to ask Him what I can do with the reality of what I face today. How can I move forward when I can’t fix my circumstances or change what others do?
I always have His love available. His love is always available to YOU, where ever you are. No matter what you face.
That may not mean much right now. It may be hard to believe it, and that’s understandable.
It sounds like you have some very unhealthy, even damaging, situations with people who are in your family. You may need to set very strong limits and get support from others to help you do so. No one is expected to heal WHILE damage is happening.
What’s one choice you can make today to limit the damage and seek healing and wholeness for you?
I am praying now.
After years of meaness by a sister in law, it is long past, botherbdied of Parkinsons, try to forgive her in my mind, but still feel anger at her, hard to forgive