1장
When Forgiveness Seems Impossible: A Journey Through Pain to Freedom
Have you ever found yourself staring at a birthday card, pen in hand, unable to write a simple message because the recipient has wounded you so deeply? Or perhaps you've lain awake at night, replaying painful memories on an endless loop, wondering if you'll ever feel whole again? You're not alone. In Lysa TerKeurst's raw and revelatory book "Forgiving What You Can't Forget," she invites readers into her own devastating journey through betrayal, heartbreak, and eventual healing. This book has become a lifeline for those struggling with seemingly unforgivable hurts, with Louie and Shelley Giglio calling it "a courageous telling of Lysa and Art's journey to freedom." Endorsed by prominent Christian leaders like Craig Groeschel and Jennie Allen, and embraced by readers across the spectrum of pain, TerKeurst's work doesn't just theorize about forgiveness-it shows us how to live it when every instinct screams for justice instead.
2장
The Double-Edged Sword of Forgiveness
Forgiveness is perhaps the most challenging spiritual practice we encounter-simultaneously the most beautiful gift to receive and the most difficult to give. When we accept God's forgiveness but refuse to extend it to others, something heavy forms in our souls, creating a blockage in the natural flow of grace.
For years, I misunderstood forgiveness as something requiring my determination and gritted teeth, when in reality, it's about my cooperation with what Jesus has already accomplished. His grace must flow freely through me, not just to me. When sin enters our lives-whether our own or others' offenses against us-our instinct is to hide in darkness. But God made a way not dependent on our strength: Jesus' outstretched arms, bloody from crucifixion and dripping with redemption.
Forgiveness isn't about waiting for others to make things right; it's about being obedient to God regardless of others' responses. We can forgive even if relationships aren't restored, because redemption is between us and God, while reconciliation requires two willing participants. This crucial distinction liberates us from the impossible burden of trying to force others to change.
The exchange of forgiveness means surrendering our right to demand payment from those who hurt us, trusting God to handle justice. In return, we gain freedom to move forward without the crushing weight of bitterness. Though tears may still come-forgiveness doesn't erase pain overnight-our emotions will eventually transform from bitterness to compassion.
Have you noticed how those who cooperate most fully with forgiveness seem to dance most freely in life? Their faces shine with a lightness that comes only from laying down heavy burdens. They've discovered the paradoxical truth that releasing others from debt actually liberates themselves.
3장
When Your Life Splits Into Before and After
Some wounds still bring me to tears, even years later. The pain hasn't disappeared, but I've found a way forward through forgiveness that doesn't deny my hurt. There's something particularly devastating about defining life by "before" and "after" the deep hurt-whether from betrayal, loss, or trauma. Those marked moments can feel like "Before Crisis and After Devastation," splitting open your memory bank and defiling it.
How do you move forward when memories trigger overwhelming pain, when you're gasping for air while everyone else seems unaffected? Having experienced my husband's affair and years of heartbreak, I've learned that completely sterilizing my life from reminders didn't remove the pain. Instead, I've discovered that life can be a graceful combination of both beautiful and painful memories-you get to decide what stays and what goes.
Think about those wedding photos or family vacations. You can treasure the genuine joy captured in those moments while releasing what's excruciatingly painful. This approach is necessary to prevent pain from rewriting your memories and ruining your future. Otherwise, the hurt becomes a permanent filter through which you view everything, past and present.
Have you ever noticed how trauma has a way of colonizing your entire history? Suddenly, even happy memories become tainted with the knowledge of what would eventually happen. But what if you could reclaim those moments? What if you could say, "That joy was real, even if it wasn't the complete story"?
The ability to hold both joy and pain simultaneously-without letting one cancel out the other-is perhaps one of the most mature emotional skills we can develop. It allows us to honor our full story without being defined by its worst chapters.
4장
Is This Pain Even Survivable?
Despite my journal entry celebrating forgiveness, I discovered how fragile my progress was when triggered unexpectedly. When deeply wounded, it's natural to wish your life had never intersected with your offender's, to feel haunted by their cruelty.
Pain projects itself in various ways-through angry social media posts, alcohol consumption, pouting, silent treatment, manipulation, or controlling behaviors. I'm not spying on you; I'm outing myself. Feelings of pain and the desire to forgive don't commingle well in my heart, so let's start with acknowledging the pain.
Once pain has been inflicted, it's impossible to remain unaffected. The more our pain consumes us, the more it controls us. While someone else caused the pain, the resulting feelings are mine to manage. I can't manage feelings I don't acknowledge, and I can't wait for another person to make me feel better. Blame hands power to the person who hurt me, making me feel powerless to change.
Today is the day it stops-the day to end the hopeless pursuit of expecting others to make things right. What we look for is what we will see, what we see determines our perspective, and our perspective becomes our reality. I want my reality defined not by rewriting yesterday but by accepting what happened without letting it steal future possibilities.
Beyond BC (Before Crisis) and AD (After Devastation), there's RH: Resurrected Hope. The possibility of hope has a multiplying effect-the more you look for it, the more you'll see it. Hope begins where it was lost-where I stopped seeing what's beautiful about life, love, and leaning into God.
Imagine if you began searching for hope with the same intensity you've been scanning for evidence of betrayal or disappointment. What might you discover? How might your neural pathways begin to rewire themselves toward healing rather than hurt?
5장
The Forgiveness Decision and Process
"I don't know how to forgive this," I told my counselor Jim during an intensive session. "He isn't sorry. They don't think they did anything wrong. They're enjoying life while I'm drowning in tears. How can I possibly work on forgiveness when not one ounce of me feels like forgiving?"
Jim wasn't concerned about my resistance. He handed me index cards and asked if I had the desire to heal. I did want to heal, but thought I needed to feel better about my circumstances and the people involved first. With my husband Art and I separated for months and complicated realities preventing us from processing what happened, I believed everything needed to be settled before forgiveness could begin.
I thought those who did wrong would first realize they were wrong, justice would prevail, and then I could consider forgiveness and healing. But even if everyone became utterly repentant, that wouldn't undo what happened or erase the damage. I had to separate my healing from their choices.
During a trip to Israel, I had a revelation when our guide mentioned Jesus performed few healing miracles in Jerusalem. In John's gospel, only two are recorded: the lame man at Bethesda and the blind man at Siloam. In both cases, healing came after they chose to obey Jesus, independent of anyone else's actions. The lame man almost missed his healing because he was focused on what others needed to do. Jesus simply instructed him to get up and walk.
What I discovered is crucial: Forgiveness is both a decision and a process. You make the decision to forgive the facts of what happened, but then must walk through the process of forgiving the impact those facts have had on you. Every trauma has an initial effect and a long-term impact.
Even after our eventual reconciliation and beautiful vow renewal, I still experienced triggers. When Art mentioned a friend who had hurt me during our crisis, my body physically reacted-racing pulse, hot face, tight throat. Though I'd forgiven the fact of what she'd done, I needed to forgive the ongoing impact: "I forgive her for being insensitive about my pain and saying things that made me feel belittled and judged."
As I continue healing, I've gotten better at sitting in the space between triggered feelings and my reaction. I can now discern what the feeling is and what to do with it, sorting through what's true and what isn't, giving myself moments to grieve what was lost.
6장
Collecting the Dots: How Past Wounds Shape Present Reactions
What made Art's betrayal so devastating was that it destroyed the emotional safety net I'd relied on for nearly twenty-five years. During difficult times, I'd always comforted myself by thinking, "At least Art and I are okay." Before him, my life experiences had taught me to distrust men, creating a story I constantly told myself: "Don't open your heart to men. Men steal hearts. You can only trust yourself." Art had been the exception, and for years I was glad I'd made that exception.
Then everything changed, leaving me unsure about my beliefs on forgiveness, how to move forward, and what to do next. I wanted to be able to say, "I'm okay even if Art and I never are," but I wasn't there yet. More work needed to be done to untangle the scripts and beliefs making me not okay.
We all have a story, and then we have the story we tell ourselves. Revisiting the past can be frightening, but full healing requires understanding what's behind the curtain. Forgiveness isn't just about what's in front of us-often a bigger part of the journey is uncovering what influences us from long ago.
My story begins with my mother, who was born to a single mother quarantined in a sanatorium and immediately taken to an orphanage. Though named Linda on her birth certificate, the orphanage mysteriously called her Ruth. Her grandmother eventually gained legal guardianship and brought her to a tobacco farm in North Carolina.
When I was born, my father was deployed for my first two years. My mom and I quickly became a unit, rising above our trailer park limitations. She treated me more like a friend than a baby-potty training me at six months, teaching me to walk by eight months, and having me recite the Pledge of Allegiance by age two.
During visits with my grandmother, I experienced sexual abuse from her neighbor who babysat me. He threatened to hurt my mom if I told anyone, so I stayed silent. I eventually told my mom in middle school, who confronted the abuser and did everything to protect me and seek justice. My father, however, whom I'd hoped would return to protect us after learning what happened, did not. His absence hurt me more than the abuse itself.
From my childhood experiences, I developed a rigid script for how forgiveness should work: someone is clearly wrong and someone is clearly right; an authority figure addresses the wrongdoing; the wrongdoer is scolded and apologizes; the authority ensures the behavior won't continue; and in this atmosphere of justice, forgiveness leads to reconciliation.
This system worked well for childhood squabbles with my sister, but fell apart in the real world where authority figures can't possibly address all wrongs. By fifth grade, when my two trusted friends betrayed me to join the popular group by publicly humiliating me on the playground, I was devastated. The teacher's dismissal of my feelings taught me a harsh lesson-there was no judge to right all wrongs.
7장
Connecting and Correcting the Dots: Finding New Perspectives
The messy yet necessary process of connecting our past experiences to our present beliefs helps us understand what still needs forgiveness. What we experience throughout life shapes our perceptions, which eventually become the truths we live by today. The things marking us from yesterday are still part of the making of us today.
Art and I came from opposite emotional backgrounds-he was raised to keep feelings private while I grew up in a home where emotions erupted loudly. He learned to keep secrets; I learned that secrets eventually explode. Neither approach prepared us for true emotional intimacy. We were "good at playing our roles" but lacked the depth needed for genuine connection.
What was missing in our relationship was vulnerability. Vulnerability isn't exposing oneself to harm, but opening oneself to know and love others while allowing them to know and love you. Art kept secrets because he didn't feel acceptable; I pushed for conversations because I desperately needed to feel accepted.
It's not enough to collect and connect the dots of our painful experiences-we must correct them. The perceptions and beliefs we form from our hurts will affect us more than we realize if left unexamined. People who personalize everything filter all interactions through unresolved pain, building cases to support negative interpretations.
Like miners who carried canaries to detect deadly gases, we need warning systems to identify toxic thoughts. Healthy people can give and receive love, forgiveness, hope, and constructive feedback. Our pain should become a gateway to growth rather than a wall we repeatedly crash into.
To correct unhealthy perceptions, I must examine my reactions to people who've hurt me. Can I sincerely pray for them during difficult times? Manage my emotions when good things happen to them? Look for good in people and collect life lessons instead of grudges?
The most important questions help reframe my story: How might I look at this differently? What good could come from forgiving? What positive qualities might emerge in me? Romans 5:3-5 reminds us that suffering produces perseverance, character, and hope. I must ask: How can this hurt make me better?
8장
When the Unchangeable Feels Unforgivable
When painful circumstances permanently alter our lives, forgiveness can seem impossible. The lingering aftereffects of trauma often feel hardest to forgive.
I have a black-and-white photograph of myself as a small girl leaning against a tree, looking lost in thought. No one could see I was desperate to be rescued, hiding inside myself. This photo was taken during the season when my grandmother's neighbor abused me-stealing not just my innocence but yanking me into a pit of fear I still fight to escape.
The abuse left me with fears that I'm unlovable, that others will use and discard me, and that worst-case scenarios will always happen to me. I learned to think like an adult to try saving myself, and though I've experienced much healing, I still find myself constantly bracing for impact.
The aftereffects of childhood abuse have left my brain instantly jumping to extremes. Even during fun moments, I hold my breath thinking of all that could go wrong. I've imagined myself going to jail for accidents I tried to prevent, planned funerals for loved ones who were just running late, and made myself sick with worry over unlikely scenarios.
How do we forgive when the offenders can't or won't cooperate? When they refuse to change, are no longer alive, or when contacting them would be dangerous? While forgiveness is difficult, it's the only step that leads to anything good. Every other choice just adds more hurt upon hurt.
Revenge means paying twice for someone else's offense-first when they hurt you, then when you carry that pain inside, causing you to say and do things you wouldn't otherwise. Trading your peace, maturity, spiritual progress, and integrity just to add suffering to your offender's life isn't worth it.
When we see offenders seemingly thriving while we suffer, it's easy to assume God is doing nothing. But God is always working, even when we can't see it. Sin itself contains built-in punishment. Art, my husband, later admitted he was miserable during his years of deception, trapped inside a lie that required numbing substances that were killing him.
It's hard to forgive without compassion, and hard to have compassion for someone who's shown none to you. Start by having compassion for the pain they experienced that led to their harmful choices. The one who causes pain is in pain-someone brutalized their innocence or made them feel terrified, tossed aside, or unwanted.
9장
Drawing Boundaries While Pursuing Forgiveness
I found myself driving home at 1:30 a.m. in pouring rain, feeling utterly helpless and devastated by my inability to fix the madness. Someone I loved was making choices I had no control over, yet I was deeply affected by them. I realized I was just as powerless to fix their situation as I was to stop the rain-I could scream and demand the drops cease, but my efforts would be fruitless.
Forgiveness becomes incredibly complicated when someone I love is making destructive choices that affect us both. It's like watching them flush our shared dreams down a toilet while I stand helplessly by. The unfair loss, their selfishness, their lack of discernment-it costs us both in horrific ways.
When someone is making destructive choices because they're hurting, we can invest our energy in one of two directions: drawing appropriate boundaries or trying to change them. Most of us know we can't change another person, yet when faced with unbearable consequences, we exhaust ourselves trying. I had to release working on Art when I realized I was working harder on him than he was on himself.
Beyond fight, flight, or freeze, I have a fourth reaction: freak out. When I see someone I love heading for disaster while they remain oblivious, I jump into rescue mode-losing sleep, waving red flags, trying everything to save them. But saving someone isn't possible if they don't agree they need saving.
I've learned to shift from efforts of control to efforts of compassion. When I lose my boundaries, I downgrade from gentleness to anger, from forgiveness to bitterness, from reconciliation to retaliation. Boundaries aren't to push others away but to hold me together. They're 100% my choice, allowing me to offer compassion within my spiritual capacity.
As my counselor says, "Adults inform, children explain"-we must state boundaries with clarity but without lengthy explanations. We can say no, be honest about our capacity, and not crumble when accused of wrong intentions.
10장
When God Seems Silent in Our Pain
I questioned God's presence during my "tunnel of chaos" season, constantly making suggestions about how He could fix everything. I kept setting up perfect scenarios for divine intervention, thinking if God would rescue and restore, then I would forgive. I watched expectantly for signs of hope while praying desperately. But as God didn't intervene with Art as I expected, I felt increasingly unseen and unheard.
I became utterly lost inside my own life-ignoring texts, avoiding public places, and even driving past my own driveway without recognition despite living there for twenty-seven years. My faith became part of my problem. Having witnessed God's miraculous works before, I couldn't understand why my desperate prayers for my marriage went unheard.
Unanswered prayers for unending emotional pain made me question not just my feelings about God but His feelings toward me. A New York Times article revealed the third most-asked question about God: "Why does God hate me?"-reflecting how dark our perspective can become when we feel abandoned.
Faith doesn't fall apart from doubt but from becoming certain of the wrong things: that forgiveness doesn't matter, that God isn't working. During a thunderstorm, I chose to press through resistance and attend church rather than isolate at home, recognizing that my perspective would be shaped by which reality I gave more attention to.
God's silence isn't proof of His absence, and my broken perception isn't evidence of His broken promises. When drawing conclusions from pain, we only have today's sorrow to sip from. But drawing from God's promises and past faithfulness brings living water to our dry souls.
Hope is more than Webster's definition-it's eternity's echo assuring us resurrection awaits. Jesus understood this disillusionment when He told His disciples before His death that their grief would turn to joy, like a woman's pain in childbirth forgotten once her baby arrives.
The disciples wanted political freedom but got a servant who washed their feet; they wanted a ruler but got a teacher; they wanted a justice-seeking king but got a kindhearted healer. They thought God would save them-and He did, just not as expected.
11장
Trusting God's Perspective When Life Doesn't Make Sense
Getting hurt by people is hard, but getting hurt by what God allows can feel unbearable. Though I might phrase my disillusionment as questions, when alone with my tear-soaked pillow, these questions often become bitter feelings toward God.
For a week I've prayed, "God, help me see what's before me as answered prayer." This has transformed my understanding of prayer itself. I've often viewed prayers as either wishful thinking or Amazon Prime deliveries-expecting specific outcomes delivered quickly. But I've expected too little of God and too much of myself, trying to reduce an infinite God to my limited imagination.
When Jesus taught us to pray for daily bread, that bread took many forms in Scripture: sometimes a loaf from the oven, sometimes manna from heaven, and ultimately Jesus himself as the bread of life. We may not recognize God's provision when it doesn't match our expectations.
God's provision comes in different forms: the loaf of bread we work for (giving us a sense of control), manna that falls from heaven (miraculous but consistent), and Jesus himself as the bread of life (the provision deposited within us). If we have Jesus today, we are living in answered prayer and perfect provision.
When we can't see God answering our prayers as expected-whether for healing a child, restoring a marriage, or relieving anxiety-we must trust that God sees what we don't. Our perspective is limited to the earthly realm, while God sees both earth and heaven from an eternal viewpoint.
God doesn't need forgiveness-He hasn't wronged us or sinned. He does His best work in the unseen, and every day with Him is an answered prayer, whether I recognize it or not. I was too certain of the wrong things in my marriage situation, not seeing that God was working even when I couldn't perceive it.
12장
The Daily Practice of Forgiveness
In this final reflection, I acknowledge both satisfaction with my progress and fear about maintaining it. I recognize my tendency to hide when hurt, like Adam in Genesis, and my struggle when the same people hurt me repeatedly. The goal with forgiveness isn't perfection but progress-letting pain work for you instead of against you through small improvements: having one better thought, reaction, conversation, or boundary. Even imperfect forgiveness is better than bitterness.
Jesus taught forgiveness as a daily practice in the Lord's Prayer, where forgiveness comprises nearly half of the teaching. We need God, need forgiveness, and need to forgive daily-as essential as eating and sleeping.
I admit struggling with this practice, leading to relationship difficulties like expecting the worst in people, doubting healthy relationships are possible, and being skeptical of trusting others. I share how praying the Lord's Prayer before an unexpected conflict prepared my heart, allowing me to invite the other person to pray together rather than react in anger.
I had a transformative experience participating in peace talks between women from opposing religious and political backgrounds in Israel. Despite their profound differences, these women-all having lost loved ones to violence-found connection through their shared grief. They listened to each other's stories, made jam together, and ultimately voted unanimously to give the proceeds to those most in need.
This experience demonstrated that compassion and forgiveness can bridge seemingly impossible divides. Pain either makes us more compassionate or more defensive and hurtful toward others. Jesus modeled forgiveness not just in teaching the Lord's Prayer but through His life and death, reminding us that being forgiven requires us to forgive others.
Forgiveness is the decision that those who hurt you no longer get to limit you, label you, or project their own lies onto you. Those who hurt us are often unhealed people projecting their own pain. True forgiveness means refusing to be defined or confined by bitterness, and instead embracing the freedom to live fully as God intended.
