Is This Even Survivable?
Forgiveness is a complicated grace that uncomplicates my blinding pain and helps me see beautiful again.
I scribbled this in my journal, feeling so hopeful that morning with my progress. I felt light and right and good.
Until that afternoon.
When I got triggered.
Like I said before, part of my story is a severely busted-up marriage. The wounds are healing, but there are areas inside of me that are still so raw, so full of freshly exposed nerves, that even the slightest touch can make me react and recoil.
Like a tooth that’s been broken enough to expose the nerves, even breathing hurts. Cold liquid that used to be refreshing stabs. Chewing, absolutely not possible. And I’m constantly aware of the possibility of intense pain if I don’t protect myself. But, inevitably, I’ll forget. And in an unguarded moment, I’ll pay for letting down my defenses.
Raw nerves are complicated with teeth and souls, and near to impossible to protect at all times.
So, when I got triggered and some raw, unresolved pain got poked, a venomous string of words shot out of my mouth. And in less time than it takes to snap my fingers, I was undone. Unwell. Unraveled. All the “progress” I thought I’d made seemed like such a sham.
Forgiveness is such a complicated grace, for sure. But how in the world does it uncomplicate my blinding pain so I can see beautiful again? Sometimes words sound so possible until the living of them feels impossible. Stupid rhetoric.
Except that it wasn’t. I wrote it because I had truly experienced it. So, why was I having such a hard time living it in this moment?
A maddening heaviness returned.
And I felt more betrayed than ever by those who’d hurt me. I wanted to rip those forgiveness words out of my journal while saying things you don’t find in the Bible. A scream rushed through the chambers of my heart. And no matter how desperate I was to keep it in, I couldn’t. Then I felt the overwhelming desire to slam something. Hard. Really, really hard. The front door seemed like the most obvious choice. I jerked it open and slammed it shut while screaming. While flailing my arms. I just gave way to it all. I held nothing back. Until I saw movement through the glass of the door that somehow miraculously didn’t shatter in my slamming-and-slamming-again tirade.
A delivery gal was standing on the front steps of my house watching it all. She was on the outside staring in. Trying to hand me a package. But shrinking back with each crazed swing.
I was on the inside staring out. I felt stunned that my private tirade wasn’t so private. And it was clear neither of us knew what to do.
Eventually, she just set the package on my front steps and walked away. I wanted to follow after her. Explain. Apologize. Offer her a cookie. Something. But who wants to eat a cookie made by a woman flailing about? Instead, I just watched her climb into the truck and drive away.
I wish I could say I turned it all around after that. I didn’t. I let the triggered emotion settle in and become a bad mood for the rest of the day. And all the people around me who didn’t deserve to catch the brunt of my chaos felt the completely unsettled state of my heart.
Now I wasn’t just the one who was hurt. Now I was the one causing hurt in others. And that’s what left me seething with the most painful of all lies hooked into my soul: They did this to me. They made me feel this way. They made me act this way. They have written into my life a script of horrific sorrow from which I’ll never escape, never truly heal from, and can’t ever possibly forgive.
When you’ve been deeply wounded by another person, it’s only natural to be shocked by their utter lack of humanity. It’s understandable to wish your life would have never, ever intersected with theirs. To assume the hell you are now forced to live with is absolutely directly connected to a choice they made that can never be unmade. To feel haunted by a shadow version of the offender who caused this, and to almost feel like they are following you around while you replay their cruel act in your mind over and over and over. To feel forever changed in ways you don’t want to be.
Had they never made the choices they made, then surely you wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t be here. Like this. Flailing, screaming, scaring the delivery girl. And wondering, Is this even survivable?
I pulled my journal back out. I didn’t rip out the forgiveness quote I’d written. Instead, I wrote a narrative to negate it.
It’s all so cruel. And seemingly impossible to get over. I’ve read the Bible verses. I know God’s instruction by heart—forgive and you will be forgiven. But I can’t process how to apply this right now. I’ve tried. I said the words of forgiveness I was supposed to say. So, why does this kind of anger still circle around in my heart, take over my best intentions, and fly out of my mouth? Forgiveness didn’t seem to work for me. So please don’t ask me to forgive like Jesus forgives. I’m not Jesus.
I closed the journal. And ran the risk of closing off my heart from ever truly healing, except that this message of forgiveness kept finding its way back to me. And I guess the fact that this book has made it into your hands, and you’ve made it this far, is evidence that this message wanted to find you too.
Let me empower you before I implore you to keep reading.
I’m not asking you to sign up for forgiveness. Not yet. I couldn’t start there, so I won’t ask you to either. All I’m asking is that you’d be willing to consider taking power away from the person who hurt you.
I can’t take away your hurt. But I can help you remove the unfair hold the hurt has on you. Those who injured you are the last people in the world to whom you want to hand over the controls of your life, so that’s where we will start.
Unresolved pain triggers unrestrained chaos.
Maybe dealing with triggers from unresolved pain is not quite as dramatic in your life as it has unexpectedly played out in mine. Maybe you don’t scream and yell and slam things. That’s not always the case for me either. Sometimes my triggers don’t play out externally but rather sink down deep internally and wreak havoc in other ways.
Regardless, if healing hasn’t been worked out and forgiveness hasn’t been walked out, chaos is what will continue to play out.
Maybe your hurt hasn’t hooked you with chaotic emotions. Maybe it plays out in numbing escapes like porn or pills or pretending to be perfect or playing games with that person secretly communicating with you through Facebook. Maybe it’s lingering about in your liquor or lackadaisical carelessness or a lack of self-awareness or by you labeling other people with all kinds of negativity.
Maybe it’s poking around through pouting, sneaking out through the silent treatment, or manifesting in manipulations and all manners of controlling.
Maybe it’s just hiding behind things that aren’t as easy to attach to unforgiveness. But pain projects. Hurt haunts. Seething never sits still. Something is there creeping up and playing out.
Please know, I haven’t been peeking in your window, spying, and waiting to out what’s happening. I’m outing myself. Not all these issues are my issues. But even just a few are enough to say, enough. And I confess, feelings of pain and the desire to forgive don’t commingle in my heart very well. So let’s start with the pain.
Once pain has been inflicted, it’s impossible to remain unaffected. As I said before, the more our pain consumes us, the more it will control us. That person or people who hurt you, who hurt me—they’ve caused enough pain. There’s been enough damage done. So, what do I do with my pain? Acknowledge it. And what do I need to do with the feelings resulting from the pain? Own them as mine to control. Yes, the hurt was caused by someone else, but the resulting feelings are mine to manage.
And I can’t manage feelings I don’t own.
I can’t wait for another person to do something to make me feel better about the situation. If I need another person to make things right before I move toward change, I might stay unhealed for a very long time. I will paralyze my progress waiting for something that may or may not ever happen.
Yes, there is a cause and effect here. That person who hurt me may be the cause of the pain. But they are not capable of being the healer of my pain. Or the restorer of my life.
This is where my healing fell apart time and time again. Blame hands the power to change over to the person who hurt me. It says, as long as they refuse to acknowledge what they’ve done as wrong, I feel powerless to change. Or, even if they do acknowledge what they did as wrong, if the wrong isn’t made right, life will forever feel different, which also makes me feel powerless to change.
So might you dare to whisper along with me, Today is the day it stops. Say it with me. Today is my day to stop the grim, hopeless pursuit of expecting the other person to make this right so that I can receive the glorious hope-filled possibilities of this new day.
Hopeless pursuits are where so many get stuck, stay angry, and void peace right out of their lives. But hope-filled possibilities? That’s where the process of seeing that healing is possible begins.
What we look for is what we will see. What we see determines our perspective. And our perspective becomes our reality. I want my reality to stop being defined by the hopeless pursuit of rewriting yesterday. I want to accept what happened—without letting it steal all my future possibilities—and learn to move on.
Remember those markings of time? BC: Before Crisis. AD: After Devastation. Well, there’s a third line I’ve discovered. It’s RH: Resurrected Hope.
Honestly, I wish that’s the way the history of time would be marked. After all, that’s such a truer reflection of where we are all living. Not 2020 after Christ’s death. The reality is that Jesus’ death only lasted three days, but His resurrected hope has carried us into the future.
The possibility of hope is what I want to look for so that hope is what I will see. And when I start to notice it, that noticing has a multiplying effect.
Have you ever decided you liked a certain kind of car, and though you haven’t noticed it very much before, the next time you’re out driving, you look for it? And when you look for it, that same car seems to be everywhere! You see two in your neighborhood, another at the stoplight beside you, and then several more when you pull into the parking lot of where you’re going. How can it be that you never noticed it, and then suddenly this car seems to be everywhere? It’s not that those cars just appeared on that day. Chances are they’ve been zipping around you for quite a while . . . but if you aren’t looking for them, you probably aren’t noticing them.
What we look for is what we will see. What we see determines our perspective. And our perspective becomes our reality.
That’s the multiplying effect of making the choice to look for something—you’ll start to see it more and more. In the case of hope, the more you see evidence of it, the more assured you’ll be that it’s there. When you are assured it’s there, a new perspective forms. And even better, this new perspective becomes a new reality.
So, where do we begin? After all, seeing hope is not quite as defined as seeing a red car or a white SUV. The best place to begin looking for something is to go back to where it was lost.
I can’t say I completely lost my hope. But I can identify where my hope got diminished. It’s where I stopped seeing what truly is beautiful about life, love, and leaning into God.
So let’s go back to the place I was in when this message found me.
It’s where forgiveness still felt cruel.
It’s where I stopped seeing beautiful.