Growing up my brother and I played hard and fought harder.  Although he was my best buddy, at times he could make me mad as a hornet. Our play often ended in full on knock-down drag-out rolling around on the ground fisticuffs, requiring my mom to intervene. We would begrudgingly hug it out and make up and in no time would be right back to loving each other and playing as though nothing had happened. More often than not, we were not even able to remember what had started the fight in the first place.  

As I have grown older, the conflicts I found myself in seemed way harder to work out but time after time I apologized when wrong and forgave when wronged. This forgiveness thing didn’t seem all that difficult until it was. When the man who had sworn to love, honor and cherish me did not keep his promise, I had to re-examine this concept we call forgiveness.  There would be no hugging it out. There would be no forgetting what had been done. Making forgiveness even more unattainable, he had abused our children leaving me with the guilt of having allowed it to happen. I eventually found the courage to leave and rebuild our lives, but it took me thirteen years and I was filled with shame and regret for having stayed so long. I was so angry at that man, not only for hurting us but for making me feel like a failure as a mother.  How do you forgive the unforgivable?

Eventually I came to believe that forgiveness was either something that I was unable to do or something I didn’t even know the meaning of. No matter how many times I tried, the wrong that was done to me and my children just kept coming back.  I worried that if I was unable to forgive that God would not forgive me.  In desperation, I spoke to my pastor about it and he explained it like this.  “Forgiveness is not about saying ‘What you did is ok.  I love you and everything is just peachy.’ Forgiveness is merely sending away the bad thing that keeps entering into your mind.”  

Just send it away?  That I can do. He went on to tell me that I was already forgiving, every time I sent it away.  The devil will undoubtably keep bringing it back up in an attempt to keep you in it and if we choose to dwell there and continually think on it, that is where we fail. The fact that it comes back is not where the failure lies.  The Bible says we must forgive 70 x 7 times, not because that person is going to keep wronging us that many times but because the devil is going to keep bringing it up that many times.  All you have to do is keep sending it away.

There are some wrongs that may never be made right. There are some that cut so deep you will forever carry the scar. The good news is forgiveness does not require you to hug it out and go back living as things were before.  If you have struggled, as I did, with forgiving the unforgivable, what God requires of us is not as hard as we sometimes make it.  The next time the devil reminds you of an unspeakable wrong that was done to you remember, in order to forgive, you need only to be sure it doesn’t take up residence in your heart and mind.  Just send it away.  You’ve got this.