Digging Deeper: How Do You Forgive the Hurt You Can’t Forget?

My mom was a prayer warrior. She was always the first person I called when I needed prayer, the right scripture, or a solid voice of reason. Her relationship with Christ was unlike anything I had ever seen. It was something I strived for. She had journal upon journal filled with messages she’d written where God had answered a prayer or shared something she never wanted to forget. She journaled through all the hard and happy moments of her life.

But there’s one thing I never saw scribbled in her notebooks: the day she knowingly and intentionally said something to hurt me.

It was a hurt so deep that, for several months, we didn’t speak. She missed my daughter’s first Christmas and some of her milestones. During the months we weren’t talking, we played a passive-aggressive game of When will it be okay to talk again? Are we both over this yet? For 13 long years, we never mentioned it. We rebuilt our relationship. We still absolutely loved each other— that never stopped. But I was still broken from her words. I was always fearful that the reasoning behind what she did would be worse than her words themselves.

It wasn’t until she entered a battle with cancer that I finally had the courage to ask why she said what she did.

When she broke down and shared her version of what happened, it was eye-opening. In her motherly mind, she believed she was pushing me toward something she thought I needed. There was so much more going on that I didn’t know, so much I couldn’t see, so much she didn’t say at the time. Isn’t that how it always is when someone hurts us? There’s always more to the story—more that we don’t know.

I’ll never forget that conversation with my mom. I’m thankful that God gave me that time to reconcile, to know her reality, and to truly and deeply forgive a hurt I had carried for 13 years. At her funeral last summer, I clung to the words she shared during that conversation. I will forever wish that conversation had happened sooner, giving me more time with her while she was still on this side of heaven.

Ephesians 4:26 says, “Don’t let the sun go down while you are still angry, for anger gives a foothold to the devil.” I firmly believe this with every ounce of my soul.

My prayer for you today is that you hold this scripture in your heart. If someone hurts you, remember that holding on to the hurt will never help you heal. Your heart is too valuable a place to store anger and resentment. We were made to forgive.