Forgiveness Part 1: Acknowledging the Hurt

Forgiveness and the Process of Letting Go: Part 1 Acknowledging the Hurt

Dana McGee, CIT

Forgiveness is often seen as an act that is black and white; you either forgive or you don’t, or you hang onto the act or forget it. In hindsight, who is forgiveness actually for? Is it for the forgiver? Or the forgivee?

The Bible tells us “If you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you”; Matthew 6:14. While researching the topic, a common denominator comes up, “if I forgive (and forget) then that person thinks I am ok with what they did”. This could not be further from the truth. Forgiving is processing what is going on, working towards letting go of the hurt, and refraining from holding on to grudges. Forgiveness is not condoning bad behavior but moving on from the control the hurt has over you. There are five ways to work through forgiveness and for the next few weeks we will look over these and walk through the process together.

The first step is to identify the hurt or the act that hurt us. While working on identifying the transgression we must also accept that keeping on to anger and grudges impacts us in many negative ways. This impacts both physical and mental health by causing an array of problems and the negative results can control our everyday life. We cannot let anything control our life other than God, especially negative and hurtful things. Forgiving is what the Lord would want us to do, but He also would not want us to keep getting hurt. That brings us to the phrase “forgive and forget”. Sometimes we cannot just forget what happened but how do you forgive without forgetting? We need to remember some things to teach us a lesson and to grow from them while letting go of it so the trauma does not do further harm. Remember, “Love is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs;” 1 Corinthians 13:5.