Can I share something with you?
There are some mornings when forgiveness feels like lifting a leaf off the floor during fall season, easy. Other mornings it feels like carrying a whole tree full of leaves on your shoulders, up a steep hill, all by yourself. It feels even heavier when you remember that regardless of the weight the command and demand is the same. Thus we must keep moving and forgiving forward.
There’s an old story Jesus told that still echoes through the rubble of human pain today, this is the parable of the unforgiving servant found in (Matthew 18:21–35). On that portion of The Scripture Peter, being Peter and bold as ever, asked Jesus, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother… up to seven times?” Jesus replied, “Not seven times, but seventy times seven.” I’m not sure whether he asked Jesus if we should “forgive seven times” because Peter knew that this is the number of completeness and spiritual wisdom or just because he felt it was a lot of times to extend grace.
Regardless of the reason why Peter asked, Jesus wasn’t giving a math assignment, He was giving him a recipe to live a healthy spiritual life. Forgiveness. That was it, a daily discipline. A change of heart. A new way of living regardless of the hurt, pain and slander caused by others. That is the exchange of a curse for a gift. A gift to the offender and a blessing to us. Sometimes a fight with ourselves.
Many of us know that trauma can hinder our ability to forgive. When a person carries a heart filled with tallies of unforgiveness the road where they’re carrying the sacrifice to feels steeper and more unbearable. We cannot offer a worship sacrifice.
When you’ve lived through trauma, like betrayal, abuse, neglect, abandonment, emotional or even physical hits that bruises your soul more than anything else — forgiveness can feel like opening the door to the very thing that harmed you to come and wound you again.
I get it. Some teachings on forgiveness make it sound like you just sprinkle a little faith dust on your pain and blow on it and healing takes place. But that could not be further from the truth. Forgiveness requires action.
The good news is that “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit” Psalm 34:18. That’s a word to trust.
Being crushed and having God close to us is not casual. Crushing will produce the oil and wine that God will use to bless others through you. This means that the anointing and receiving of living water can be produced in the crushing, while He sees you. The Word of God is telling us that He is watching your production process. He is anointing you anew through the crushing. Receive it, and receive healing through The Living Water, Jesus Himself.
Being brokenhearted in public is not cute and I know this first-hand!
We walk around trying to hide the broken pieces of our hearts. We carry them to work, church, dinner with friends, in our everyday life conversations; praying that we don’t drop a single piece so that our crushing isn’t expose and becomes evident to others. We are trained to pretend. To walk upright and declare healing and wellness.
I make a parentesys here as I am lead by the Spirit of God. (Lol, yes, seriously, one must laugh out loud. God will not ask us to make healing declarations and proclaim His goodness unless He knew we are bound to be wounded. His word says it, in this world “we will have trouble” (John 16:33). Moreover, God would had never asked of us to pray for one another (James 5:16) and also require us to suppress and hide the sins and transgression that wound us. Why would He ask in James 5:14-15 “call for the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord.” Read this well, His word cannot contradict itself, and in fact it does not (Numbers 23:19). Yes, we must believe and proclaim, love and forgive, but we cannot share a healing testimony unless we’ve been healed, and one cannot heal what “it is well”.)
So we don’t want to risk exposing our wound as if that will disqualify us from the covering and calling of God. But The Lord Himself wore His own broken heart on His sleeves and His pain on His forehead while making the biggest sacrifice of human history for us. He was not ashamed to show us that He hurt, that His distress and pain was so bad that He sweated blood. He asked the Father, to consider passing the cup. Praise Jesus! He doesn’t expect you to suppress pain and become bitter. He knows that pain hurts, He felt pain, distress, and anxiety and found it an extreme effort to give His life for us through the most shameful death while still loving us. He could have said, I’m done here, I actually dislike them for causing me this pain. We caused Him labor pains. Science describes the sweating of blood as something called “Haematidrosis the thought to be caused by a variety of factors including extreme stress or anxiety, which can cause small blood vessels to rupture and leak blood into the sweat glands. The idiom is used to describe something that requires a lot of effort to achieve.“
We must believe that God sees it all. I want to remind you that El Roí, God Himself sees the weight of what happened to you, what was done wrongly and how you fight and sacrifice to forgive and heal. He will not rush you through healing like you’ll lose your salvation for hurting or showing your pain. He is not ashamed.
God also knows that trauma creates emotional, spiritual, and even physical wounds that take time to heal. But He also knows that although forgiveness doesn’t erase the marks of the traumatic past it can keep the past from owning your future.
I’m sure you heard that “Unforgiveness is like drinking poison and expecting someone else to die.” Yes, please imagine that for a second.
Unforgiveness stiffens the heart. It clouds the vision and fogs the mind. Unforgiveness makes your spirit heavy, and bitters the soul.
We can start the fight of forgiveness with a daily act of surrender by saying “Lord, please, help me let this go today. I choose to forgive [name the person or trauma] I open my hands and release this to you. In Jesus’ name, amen!” This prayer will feel like peeling back one layer of pain at a time so The Spirit of God can begin the healing and bring freedom into your soul.
Colossians 3:13 tells us to “Bear with each other and forgive one another… Forgive as the Lord forgave you.”
That “bear with” is the part we often overlook or don’t apply to ourselves. Forgiveness isn’t a one-and-done prayer; sometimes it’s daily endurance. Bearing with your own healing process, with your own triggers, with your own heart that’s trying its best. Giving ourselves grace.
Picture this: You’re walking a familiar road where you recognize every tree, every stone, and every shadow. It feels normal because it’s the known. You know you’ve walked this road before, and you find yourself replaying conversations… next thing memories resurface and cut you deep, and you begin to feel pain, wishing you could rewrite those moments. Your heart feels like it’s bleeding, your anxiety grows, and your begin to hurt…and anger to grow. You’re tired and feel extreme heaviness on your shoulders, wishing you could be teleported to another road, another memory, another story. Even if unfamiliar the unknown somehow seem safer. You know there’s another way, you just don’t know how to get there.
There’s New Hope. You could begin a new path of forgiving forward today. That can happen today. Today, something can shift and you can begin walking on another road. Ahead of you stands the Shepherd, steady and unhurried waiting for you to take a step at a time. He doesn’t ask you to forget the road, or rewrite the story, He’s encouraging you to take His hand, and override the story, to follow Him as He leads you to a new road where Joy and Freedom await.
We will not always get closure from others but we will always be able to find healing in Christ. We can decide to walk a new path where we can give and receive what we deserve. God says, “Walk with Me today, let me take your soul into another road, where it can experience love, blessings, health and freedom.”
I encourage you to try to extend forgiveness to your transgressors. You don’t have to pretend that the pain wasn’t real, but you can choose not to walk the same road expecting a different view. Forgiveness doesn’t mean you must trust them again. It doesn’t even mean reconciliation. It doesn’t mean pretending nothing happened. It means your spirit chooses peace over prison, again and again.
There’s a Promise in Lamentations 3:22–23 that says, “His mercies are new every morning.” If He renews His mercy daily, then we can renew our mind and forgiveness daily too. God handles justice far better than we ever could.
Beloved, in the quiet hours where forgiveness feels impossible, remember this: The One who commands forgiveness is the same One who extends it to you, and heals the wounds caused to you, and from you to others.
He walks with you, He strengthens you, and He’ll take the pieces of yous broken heart that you can no longer hold.
I live you with this beautiful song!
Be well and be blessed!
©️ 2025 Denise Kilby New Hope MHCLC. All rights reserved.
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