It’s easier to write about doing forgiveness well or God’s way than actually doing it. Like you, we’re in process, so what we want to share is what the three
of us have learned in our work as psychologists and in our marriage relationship, families, and friendships. That certainly doesn’t mean we do it that way every time with each other OR with the other people God brings into our paths.

Last time we wrote about non-forgiveness, that too-familiar and often too-comfortable progression from being hurt to feeling resentment, not forgiving, separating from the hurter, becoming bitter, and barely surviving (or at least not thriving). Far too often, we start the process all over again: remembering the hurt and continuing to recycle our energy-draining feelings and actions until we’re unable to do much else. There is a healthier alternative!

The Better Way: Forgiveness

This diagram depicts what usually happens when you do forgiveness God’s way. Ideally, you start with love—your own toward the person, if possible—
but if you can’t muster that, God’s love flowing through you as if it were going through a pipe or conduit to the person who hurt you. Don’t believe this is possible? The Bible commands us to love even our enemies, so God wouldn’t leave us without a way to do that. Try asking God to love your hurter through you. It’s amazing how strong God can be in allowing His love to rush (or sometimes trickle) through us toward someone who has hurt us deeply. It’s definitely one of His inexplicable miracles.

Allowing this to happen enables you to make the conscious choice to live in peace and serve as Jesus did, to decide to forgive, no matter what the other person does or says...or doesn’t do or say. The healing process of forgiveness works best when your abusers own up to what they inflicted. But even when they don’t, you can still pray for the Holy Spirit to convince them, maybe even through your approaching them. Deciding to take the step and then doing it (even if you don’t particularly want to) is what counts. The positive feelings may come later.

This leads either to reconciliation of the relationship OR to an acceptable separation in which you and the other person agree to disagree and/or agree to stay apart, at least for now. Jesus was a good example of someone who forgave yet didn’t necessarily choose to travel or otherwise hang out with people who scorned, ridiculed, and continued to hurt Him.

You may never approve of the hurtful action, and you may or may not become close to this person in the future, but you treat the other person with politeness and respect.

Despite sayings to the contrary, you may never forgive and forget completely. However, you can work deliberately to fade the hurtful memories. Fortunately, our minds can only hold one thought at a time, so when a painful recollection appears, consciously replace it with a more positive thought. For example, when “He ruined my life” drifts into your mind, forcefully replace it with something like: “God’s helping me rise above this; I’m okay and getting stronger every day.” When you stop bringing up the memories, gradually the neural pathways formed by those old repetitive thoughts will fade.

When you’ve done all you can to forgive, reconcile or go separate ways, successfully treat the relationship with dignity, and start to fade the intensity of the memories, you feel a genuine sense of peace. Because of this freedom and knowing you’ve pleased God, you’re finally able to enjoy thriving in many or all areas of your life.

All three of us authors have struggled with forgiving and not forgiving. We’ve lost loved ones through disease, accidents, and conscious decisions to leave us, missed out on opportunities because of unfair practices on the part of others, experienced abuse, and been misunderstood and criticized. We’ve learned the hard way that not forgiving is too great a burden for any of us to carry. There are too many opportunities and too much potential pleasure to add to our spiritual joy in God’s world to linger on past hurts and the wrongful behavior of others. We hope we’ve inspired you to take the steps you need to do, and we’d love to hear how you do it.

In the future, we’ll ask you to try out different parts of a personal forgiveness inventory we’ve developed. If you can’t wait for the parts, purchase the set listed as How Well Do You Forgive and Seek Forgiveness? under What We Offer.