Welcome to the Table
I WROTE THIS MESSAGE sitting at a gray wooden table. Many days it was just me, my computer, my tears, my Bible, and my own struggles with forgiveness. Other days I invited in friends I work with, who each brought in their own life experiences through which to process this message.
That’s the thing about writing a book that’s complicated and wonderful and hard some days. Life doesn’t stop for a message. New things happen during the writing process that force me to ask the question, “Does this message really work in the midst of everyday life? In this new hard thing that is happening?” Life just keeps placing opportunities to forgive in front of us all.
So we kept pulling up our chairs to the gray table and opening up our hearts to the teachings in the Bible and in this book. Some of us looked back at unforgiven things in our pasts that were affecting us today more than we ever dared to admit before. Others didn’t really have epic hard things, but anything painful that we keep revisiting in our thoughts over and over again is worth addressing. Sometimes things just collect. A hurtful situation here. A painful conversation there. And then others of us had more defined hurts happening in real time.
One of us had an ex-boyfriend who got engaged. She thought she’d dealt with the death of the dreams she had when that relationship ended very suddenly. She’d moved on. But the engagement stirred up hurt feelings not yet forgiven.
One of us had a lifelong friendship that started to unravel because of choices his friend was making that made no sense at all. Boundaries needed to be drawn. Hard conversations turned into silence that turned into the deafening reality of a friendship ending.
Another of us had no idea that this message was preparation for the most horrific situation his family would face. Just before I finalized the manuscript, he got a call that his college-age cousin had been murdered. The next time we pulled up chairs around the gray table, he had just gotten home from her memorial service where they’d played a slideshow of her smiling and laughing and just being her delightfully beautiful self. “How in the world could something like this happen? My family and I are just in shock.”
So we each wrestled through our own questions about forgiveness in the midst of the gritty, tearful, desperate experiences we brought to the table. And, though you didn’t know it, we always had an extra chair for you.
Here, your questions are safe. Your heartbreak is tenderly held. Your thoughts don’t need to be edited. Your soul’s need for truth will be tended to. And your resistance is understood. Welcome to the gray table, friend.
I know what it feels like to have been hurt so deeply that forgiveness feels like a command too cruel for you to consider. Or, it’s a spiritual theory you might think about one day after a lot more time has passed. Or, it’s a topic you’ve been avoiding and don’t care to discuss.
I get all of that. I really do. I think if I were invited to this table, I’d have some version of all of that combined.
There have been seasons in my life when I, personally, had many differing reactions to the mention of the word forgiveness. Guardedness. Defeat. Anger. Hurt. Fearfulness. Frustration. Confusion. That’s why I want to assure you of something vitally important.
I know what it’s like to look around a room, eyes glassy with pain, and feel so very alone. Friend, you aren’t alone here. And you won’t be judged as you wrestle through this message.
I don’t want someone who can’t possibly understand how deeply my heart has been broken to boss me around as if forgiveness should be easier. Nor do I want someone to shame me for being so hesitant or, worse yet, try to burden my brain with a teaching I’m just not ready to hear.
I haven’t waltzed my way through the writing of this message. I’ve wrestled with it. I’ve felt defeated by it.
In all the research I’ve done on forgiveness, I’ve found many legitimate feelings feeding the resistance that holds many of us back. See which of these resonates with you:
•I fear the offense will be repeated.
•Hanging on to a grudge gives me a sense of control in a situation that’s felt so unfair.
•The pain I experienced altered my life, and yet no one has ever validated that what I went through was wrong.
•Forgiveness feels like it trivializes, minimizes, or, worse yet, makes what happened no big deal.
•I can’t possibly forgive when I still feel so hostile toward the one who hurt me.
•I’m not ready to forgive.
•I still feel hurt.
•They haven’t apologized or even acknowledged that what they did was wrong.
•Being back in relationship with this person isn’t possible or safe. Furthermore, it’s not even reasonable for me to have a conversation with the person who hurt me.
•I’m still in the middle of a long, hard situation with no resolution yet.
•I’m afraid forgiveness will give them false hope that I want to reestablish the relationship, but I don’t.
•It’s easier to ignore this person altogether than to try and figure out boundaries so they don’t keep hurting me.
•What they did is unchangeable; therefore, forgiveness won’t help anything.
•The person who hurt me is no longer here. I can’t forgive someone I can’t talk to.
•I don’t think any good will come from forgiveness now.
When your heart has been shattered and reshaped into something that doesn’t quite feel normal inside your own chest yet, forgiveness feels a bit unrealistic.
At first, we say it’s too soon.
And then years go by, and we say it’s too late.
I knew as a Christian I was supposed to forgive. I may have even whispered a faint prayer using the word forgiveness. But truly understanding how to forgive? I wasn’t sure. And isn’t it odd that, though forgiveness is a major part of the Christian faith, most of us have never been taught much about it?
We know God commands us to do it. But how? Why? When? And are there exceptions?
After more than one thousand hours of studying this topic in the Bible, I can’t say all my questions have been answered. Nor can I promise this is easy. But I can tell you the Bible offers the truth about forgiveness that our souls desperately need. And, best of all, God Himself modeled how to do this even when it feels so very impossible.
God’s Word offers forgiveness with skin on. Sinless Jesus, absolute divinity and complete humanity, was afflicted and rejected, beaten and humiliated, spit upon and devalued on every level. Enduring it all so we would never have to endure one minute of our suffering alone.
He came for us with forgiveness pulsing through the very blood He would one day shed. He wouldn’t allow forgiveness to be shoved away with human justifications. For in the very instance we think we have landed on the forgiveness limitation, Jesus blows it apart with His multiplication (seventy times seven) and His declaration that we must not entertain unforgiveness when we have been so very forgiven by God Himself.
Forgiveness is a command. But it is not cruel. It is God’s divine mercy for human hearts that are so prone to turn hurt into hate.
And what about that saying, Forgive and forget? That’s actually not in the Bible. You can still forgive even if you can’t forget. We are instructed to let go of what’s behind us so we can move forward without the weight of bitterness, resentment, anger, and unforgiveness. But forgetting? The only place that’s mentioned in the Bible is connected to God forgiving us of our sins: “For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more” (Hebrews 8:12 ESV).
Also, you can sigh with relief that abuse is not to be tolerated. Where the limitless grace of God provides a way for all to be forgiven, the truth of God provides appropriate parameters so that wrong behavior can be addressed. And boundaries can be established with equal measures of mercy and tough love.
I’ve taken an honest look at deep pain when unchangeable wounds feel so very unforgivable. I’ve wrestled through the unfairness. I’ve turned forgiveness inside out, examining it theologically, morally, ethically, relationally, rationally, and, maybe even best of all, through the irrational but infinitely beautiful actions of Jesus Himself.
There are complexities that must be considered. There is no way to position forgiveness as simple when it is supposed to apply to instances that span the range of offense, from an inconvenience to a brutal murder. The cost of one is so minuscule in comparison to the magnitude of the other. And yet, the invitation to cooperate with the forgiveness of God spans across them both.
Yes, consequences stay tied to the severity of the sin. And God’s mercy is not void of His justice. But the command for us to forgive rings too crystal clear to avoid or refuse.
Please know, though, as a soul who has resisted seeing forgiveness as possible while weeping in my own seat of suffering, I don’t say any of this lightly. I will not shame you for your struggle or blame you for your skepticism.
One of the ways I learned to acknowledge what was holding me back from healing was letting a counselor talk to me about what she saw me doing to cope with all the pain I was in.
I was in a therapy group where I was honestly feeling pretty good about the progress I’d been making. Everyone there seemed to have a plethora of things they turned to when their pain felt unmanageable. Drugs and drinking were the most common choices. But Netflix and casual sexual encounters were also mentioned. And there I sat with my Bible in my lap. My counselor must have picked up on my overestimation of how well I was doing.
“And, Lysa, let’s talk about your coping mechanism.”
I smiled, because I fully expected her to give me a pass on this round of therapy.
She did not. Instead she said, “You hyperspiritualize what you’ve been through to the point where you deny your feelings rather than actually deal with your pain.”
Ouch. No pass on this round. I wanted to glare at her and dismiss her. But honestly, she was right. Her statement peeled back all my posturing and positivity and pretending.
Eventually, here’s what I had to ask myself: Am I processing life through the lens of the way I want it to be or the way it actually is?
Coping mechanisms, like being overly positive or hyperspiritual or using substances to numb out, may get us through the short term. But in the long run they don’t help us cope; they keep us stuck at the point of our unhealed pain. At some point we must stop:
•Replaying what happened over and over.
•Taking what was actually terrible in the past and tricking ourselves into thinking it was better than it was.
•Imagining the way things should be so much that we can’t acknowledge what is.
We can’t live in an alternate reality and expect what’s right in front of us to get better. We can only heal what we’re willing to acknowledge is real.
I’ve been deeply affected by what I’ve been through. And though I’m really good at decorating the words I’ve used to assure those around me that I’m good and even convince myself I’m better than I am, I think it’s time to pack the decorations away and deal with what’s really there.
I’m both terrified of the stripped-down version of my reality and slightly intrigued by the uncluttered nature of being able to see what’s really there. Then, I can better assess what state I’m really in and decide with great intentionality what parts of my heart still need healing before I can truly move on.
So my counselor wisely pointed out some hyperspiritual statements I’ve made to give the appearance that my heart is more healed than it actually is:
•I’m good. I’m fine. I’ve just decided to move on.
•Their loss for walking away from me.
•God will eventually make everything all right.
•As a Christian, I know I should forgive, so I have.
•What’s in the past is in the past. I’m just walking forward. No big deal.
•There’s so much to be thankful for, so I’m just choosing to be grateful.
•Who has the time or energy to unpack why this happened and how it affected me? Let’s just move on.
•I’m mature enough to say, “It is what it is,” and get over it.
You may be thinking, “Wait a minute . . . those statements aren’t bad.” Well, I agree, unless you are using them and they are keeping you stuck in a bad place. Putting on a smiling face while filled with unhealed hurt inside is a set up for an eventual blow up.
Sometimes it seems easier to deny my pain than to do the hard work to deal with and heal what’s really there. C. S. Lewis wrote, “Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.”1
Whether you’re knee-deep in pain and resonate with the list of resistance feelings described at the beginning of this chapter or denying your pain as in the list just above, let me assure you: forgiveness is possible. And it is good. Your heart is much too beautiful a place for unhealed pain. Your soul is much too deserving of freedom to stay stuck here.
Forgiveness is not adding on top of your pain a misery too great to bear. It is exchanging bound-up resentment for a life-giving freedom, thus making the mystery of the workings of God too great to deny.
On earth we usually only get to see people operating in the flesh. It is expected that kindness is repaid with kindness. And no one is surprised when anger is repaid with anger. We see it every day.
It seems if we have a pulse, we also have stories of when we’ve been injured, hurt, wronged, and brokenhearted by the choices of another. Unhealed hurt often becomes unleashed hurt spewed out on others. It’s so very common to be so very offended.
Even with Christians. Even in churches. Even with friends who used to pray together. And even in families that have Bibles in every room of their houses.
And even with me. When the pain is so deeply personal, it’s hard for my reactions to stay biblical. It’s hard not to eventually lose it when hurt just keeps getting added onto hurt.
But I can also tell you something I’ve seen with my own eyes that’s more astonishing than what I can possibly express through pixelated letters on a printed page.
When someone, by the power of the Spirit of God, overrides the resistance of the flesh and the pull of unforgiveness, it’s shocking.
It’s one of the rarest moments in the lives of everyone looking on.
It’s when you get to see with your physical eyes evidence of the Spirit of God as real as if you can touch it. It is a moment no one forgets.
When this world—so saturated with flesh resenting flesh, hearts hating hearts, fists slamming fists, pride rising against pride—suddenly sees someone dropping their sword and daring to whisper, “I forgive” . . . IT STOPS ALL.
In the split second of that utterance, evil is arrested, heaven touches earth, and the richest evidence of the truth of the gospel reverberates not just that day but for generations to come. While salvation is what brings the flesh of a human into perfect alignment with the Spirit of God, forgiveness is the greatest evidence that the Truth of God lives in us.
And none who sees this can walk away unaffected.
I’m so glad I saved you a seat at this table.