What If Forgiveness Isn't What You Think?

He told me, “There came a day when I knew I needed to tell someone about the abuse I had endured at my father’s hands.”

After years of counseling and learning to live more honestly in my faith, I finally told my brother. I believed I was telling someone safe. I wasn’t.

Within days, my entire family knew. Then my phone rang. “Why are you spreading lies about me? I should come over there and kill you.” I answered, “If I see you coming down my street, I’ll call the police.” Then I hung up. It was one of the hardest conversations of my life.

For many of us, forgiveness can feel impossible. We know Scripture calls us to forgive, yet our hearts still carry wounds that seem too deep, too painful, or too unjust to release.

It is a holy tension, I think many of us wrestle with in one way or another.

Forgiveness Is Part of Healing

Too often, we are told to “just forgive,” as though forgiveness were a quick decision that erases years of wounds and pain.

It isn’t.

Healing often begins with safety before we can address the issue of forgiveness.

We need space to tell the truth. We need permission to grieve what happened and to acknowledge how it affected us with someone safe.

And then, over time, God begins to do something remarkable.

He gently leads us toward forgiveness—not because He dismisses our pain, but because He longs to free us from carrying the weight of unforgiveness for the rest of our lives.

The forgiveness we receive from God and the forgiveness He invites us to extend to others are both gifts of grace that we grow into. We can't do either without Him.

What Forgiveness Is Not

Years later, while I was in a hospital chaplain training, I shared part of my story with a fellow chaplain. As he learned more about what had happened, he repeatedly encouraged me to press charges against my offender.

“Rob, he broke the law.” Each time, I responded quickly, “I've forgiven him.”

But every conversation stirred something deep within me—anger. Eventually, I realized why.

I had spoken the words, but forgiveness was still only words. It had not yet become something I had truly experienced in my heart—a release.

That realization became a deeper invitation into my healing.

I began to understand that forgiveness doesn't mean pretending the offense didn't happen. It doesn't mean the offender gets a free pass. And it certainly doesn't mean we have to remove healthy boundaries or ignore accountability.

Forgiveness is not:

• Pretending nothing happened.

• Minimizing the abuse or harmful acts and words.

• Excusing the person who caused harm.

• Denying pain, anger, or grief.

• Trusting someone who has proven untrustworthy.

• Removing healthy boundaries.

• Eliminating consequences or accountability.

• Using Scripture to avoid facing reality.

Forgiveness never requires us to ignore the truth of what happened.

In fact, the deep work of forgiveness must acknowledge the wrong done to us, the pain it caused, and the effects that followed.

Forgiveness begins with telling the truth—to ourselves, to safe people, and ultimately to God.

What God Taught Me

Looking back, I can see how God used these experiences in different ways.

That threatening phone call from my friend’s father exposed the brokenness that harmed him.

But my conversations with my fellow chaplain exposed something happening within me—the anger and injustice I was still carrying. At the time, I didn't fully understand what God was showing me.

I began to discover that forgiveness is not primarily about the person who hurt us. It is about what happens inside us because of what they did to us.

Unforgiveness keeps us emotionally connected to the very person and experience we desperately want to be free from. It leaves us carrying both our pain and our desire for justice.

When we remember what happened, it is as if the offense is happening all over again.

God never asked me to carry both.

Justice belongs to Him. Healing belongs to Him.

My invitation was simply—and with great difficulty—to place both into His hands.

The Gift of Freedom

Years later, my friend’s father was dying in the hospital. The last words my friend had heard from his father years earlier had been a threat. And yet, he wanted to see him. When he entered the room, he was alone. His father quietly said, “Son, I hope you can forgive me. I’m so sorry.” My friend answered, “I do, Dad.”

The next day, his father died. My friend returned to the hospital to collect his belongings. Before leaving, a nurse asked if he wanted to see him one last time. He walked into the room alone. He stood beside his father's bed, kissed him on the forehead, and whispered goodbye.

As he walked away, he realized something profound:

Forgiveness had not changed his past. But it freed him for the rest of his days.

The abuse was still real.

The losses were still real.

The consequences were still real.

But the offense no longer defines him or his future.

God had been quietly setting his heart free, step by step.

And isn't that what so many of us long for?

Not to pretend the past didn't happen.

But to finally become free from the power it has over us.

So, What Is Forgiveness?

Forgiveness is releasing into God's hands what only He can carry.

It is surrendering our desire for personal revenge and trusting God with justice.

Forgiveness means:

• Releasing revenge while entrusting justice to God.

• Allowing God's grace to work through my process of healing and freedom.

• Becoming free from bitterness without denying the truth.

• Maintaining healthy boundaries while releasing my need to personally settle the score.

• Allowing accountability and consequences to remain with the offender.

• Forgiveness does not change the past.

  
  

It changes the power the past has over our present and our future. If you are wondering whether you will ever be able to forgive, don't force it. Forgiveness is not something you have to manufacture before you are ready.

In the meantime, ask God for the strength to forgive as He has forgiven you.

Keep bringing your honest heart to the Lord.

Bring Him your anger.

Bring Him your questions.

Bring Him your grief.

Bring Him the parts of your story you still struggle to understand.

As healing takes place, God can bring strength where there was once only pain. And in His perfect timing, He gives us the grace to open our hands and entrust justice to Him.

Forgiveness is not forgetting.

It is not saying that what happened didn't matter.

It is not saying that what happened was okay.

Forgiveness is freedom.

I am no longer defined by the offense I absorbed.

It is the freedom to stop allowing what someone did to determine who I am and who I will become.

Forgiveness is a gift to receive and a gift to give as we are able.

A Prayer for the Journey

Father God,

Thank You for seeing every wound that others have overlooked and every tear that no one else has known.

You know the pain we carry, the anger we wrestle with, and the weight abuse has placed upon our hearts.

Teach us to trust You with justice, while You heal what has been broken within us.

Give us courage to tell the truth, wisdom to establish healthy boundaries, and, in Your perfect timing, the grace to forgive.

May forgiveness become not another burden we must carry, but a gift that sets us free to live again.

There is healing in the name of Jesus, our Lord and Savior.

Amen.

“Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, harsh words, and slander... Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you.”

— Ephesians 4:31–32 (NLT)

You Don't Have to Walk Through It Alone

If you need a safe space to process the pain, hurt, anger, and offenses you have endured, you are welcome here. You don't have to come with everything figured out.  This isn’t about being “fixed,” rather it’s about being healed and set free. You can come and wrestle with the hard places of your story—to be heard, walked alongside, and prayed for.

There is a place for you here.

Peace to you,

Rob

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