I have often been very uncomfortable with the way we sometimes talk about the doctrine of forgiveness.
Here’s what I see too often happening: Someone is hurt very badly by someone else. Maybe it is sexual abuse; maybe it is some other form of abuse; maybe it is a major betrayal (like an affair). They are then told that the only way to heal is to forgive. In fact, God demands that they forgive. If they don’t forgive, then God can’t forgive them.
Suddenly the person who has been the victim is now the person in the wrong, because they are still struggling to forgive. So God must be mad at them. Not only do they feel distant from God because of the hurt; now guilt pushes them away from God, too.
I’ve been thinking a lot about forgiveness lately for two reasons, and allow me to share a bit of a stream of consciousness post on something God’s been showing me.
First, let me take you back to my teenage years.
I struggled a lot in my teen years with forgiving my dad for leaving us and for really having very little to do with me as I grew up.
(I saw him a week a year; several years he was too busy to do even that). I would read all of these books on how I needed to forgive, and I would pray all the time about being able to forgive him, and it never seemed to work. Whenever I saw him I would get stomach pains.
It got worse when my children were born and I realized what an all-consuming love I felt for them. I couldn’t bear to be away from them.
Why did my dad not feel that way about me? Sometimes he would visit for a few hours when he had a stopover in Toronto on his way to a conference, and he’d ask if I could bring the kids to the airport to see him. And my stomach would ache for several weeks afterwards.
When Katie was 2 we moved to a small town and I started attending a women’s Bible study. For the first time I did really in-depth studies of several Scriptural themes. I started teaching some of the studies. Our marriage was getting super strong, and I loved being with my kids. And one day my dad came to visit, and I realized that I hadn’t been angry and my stomach hadn’t hurt. Somehow, in all of those Bible studies, I had managed to forgive him without really trying. Instead of crying and praying about forgiveness, I had spent several years just focused on Jesus. And He changed me.
I learned from that the truth that whatever we focus on expands. When we stare at the hurts in our lives, it’s very hard to get over them. When we focus on Jesus, it’s often much easier.
None of this is meant to say that we should not seek counselling for big hurts; I think that’s a very necessary step. It’s just that we should also seek to simply know God. When we grow in Christ, He changes us, and that enables us to forgive.
When my dad died 10 days ago, I was able to spend his last days with him with no anger and no bitterness.
I was changed a long time ago. And that really was a wonderful gift.
Now here’s part 2. This week I went on a bit of a rabbit trail on the web and I did some reading on the abuse that many missionary kids suffered in boarding schools throughout the world from the 1940s to the 1990s. I grew up with some missionary kids who went to boarding schools; I know that not all of those kids have done wonderfully as adults. There was a lot of hurt. I watched the documentary All God’s Children, which you can watch free on YouTube (Start here; the documentary is divided into 10 videos that are all on this channel). It’s about the horrendous abuse suffered by children as young as 6 who were sent to the Mamou boarding school in Guinea for 9 months at a time each year. Decades later the denomination was finally forced to acknowledge what had happened there.
On a website started by missionary kid survivors of abuse, I read something very insightful about forgiveness. Talking about a Columbia Theological Seminary professor John Patton’s work, the article writes:
He sees this process of forgiveness as something that we discover has “happened” in our lives over time, rather than being forced or just a decision we make. Perhaps forgiveness is a by-product of healing, rather than being the source of healing.
Read that again, because it’s brilliant. Seriously. “Perhaps forgiveness is a by-product of healing, rather than being the source of healing.”
And it’s just what occurred with me. One day I woke up and realized that forgiveness had “happened” within me. And it had happened because I had been healed.
As we know God more and focus on Him more, He changes us on the inside.
As we learn more of God’s character, we realize that He is angry about the abuse, betrayal, and abandonment too. We see that God understands.
As we learn that God understands, we also learn that He cries with us, and that we were never alone.
As we understand that we are not alone, and that we are deeply valued by God, we allow God to start defining who we are, and we stop giving that power to others.
As we are able to see ourselves as precious to God, we become more confident. We stop looking inward and start looking outward. Our lives become bigger. The hurt is no longer the focus of our lives.
And as the hurt is not the focus, we find it easier to look at it, and let it go. We have something else to live for now.
Yes, forgiveness is a choice we that we do make. Yes, we need to decide to turn away from bitterness. But rushing this process BEFORE we have truly gone to God and made these realizations simply buries pain.
It’s like when the Duggars announced so loudly that their daughters had forgiven Josh for his sexual abuse right away, way back when they were 6. Some elements of the church have no real concept of what forgiveness looks like, and how it is linked with healing. We can’t magically say the words “I forgive you” and then be healed; we have to allow the healing process, through humility, before the forgiveness truly happens.
Here’s how I think the process works: No matter what the pain, healing happens when our mind and our spirit is able to see the event with the same perspective that God does, when we develop “the mind of Christ”. Having our mind see it in God’s way is an act of will on our part; having our spirit sense it the same way is an act of healing on God’s part. It’s not really about just saying “I’m not going to hold this against you.” It’s about the WHY:
“The reason I’m not holding this against you is because I see the incident now the way that God does; I see that God was angry. I see that I was not alone. I see that there is justice. I see that Jesus paid for the sin that was done. I see that I am precious to God, and that it is God who defines my worth, not this thing that was done to me. Because I choose to see with a bigger perspective, I am now able to forgive you.”
Yes, there’s an act of the will, but forgiveness ultimately happens because we change our perspective and see as God does.
I wanted to forgive my dad as a teenager. I wanted to let go of bitterness. And I think that act of the will was important.
But I also don’t think I was able until I grew in Christ. And maybe if we adopted that more nuanced understanding, we would stop rushing victims of abuse and asking wives of porn addicts and wives whose husbands had affairs to forgive, and stop heaping guilt on already broken people, and instead help them see their value in Christ. Help them see with God’s eyes. And then forgiveness is something you will discover has actually already happened.
What do you think? Is this fair to say? I thought that was such a big insight when I read it that I sent it to a bunch of other bloggers who deal with difficult marriages! So let’s talk: what does forgiveness mean to you?
Sheila Wray Gregoire has been married for 25 years and happily married for 20! She loves traveling around North America with her hubby in their RV, giving her signature "Girl Talk" about sex and marriage. And she's written 8 books. About sex and marriage. See a theme here? Plus she knits. Even in line at the grocery store.
I think you are on the right track with this. Through healing, forgiveness can come. But also through forgiveness, healing can come. We try so often to “checklist” our lives that we forget we are human, with real emotions, real experiences, and no two are ever alike. Pressing into the Father, seeking a deeper relationship with Him is what it is all about.
Exactly! It’s all about transforming our minds to be like Jesus, and then it naturally follows. But forcing someone to feel forgiveness, on their own, really rarely works.
I have learned a lot about forgiveness in the last year, and how my own concept of forgiveness was skewed. I grew up being taught and believing “forgive and forget” and “forgive as God has forgiven you” and these things were taught with good scripture to back them up. And these things are easily applicable for the little, everyday kind of wrongs and hurts that come up. Someone says something nasty to me and it is fairly easy to forgive and forget, after all I’m doing what God wants.
A year ago, I discovered my wife’s year long affair. I confronted her, with 2 witnesses and after a lot of denying she finally admitted it. She said she was sorry. Great, now what? I did what was supposed to come next, I told her I forgave her and I think I really did. I do really believe in forgiveness.
Unfortunately I quickly realized that saying I’m sorry actually meant, I’m sorry I got caught. There was no repentance, no remorse, no tears, no sorrow for sin or the pain inflicted on others, no steps to repair, no accountability/honesty measures taken. In fact to this day she still will not say that she will not do it again (if she has actually stoped)
This has made me take a deep look at biblical forgiveness. Especially the link between repentance, forgiveness and restoration. I have found that yes, in some ways I am to forgive her. Vertically towards God and internally I do forgive. This keeps my attitude right and prevents anger and bitterness. But what I see now is that practical forgiveness toward her is not only impossible, but it is not biblical. Forgive as the Lord forgave you, what does that actually look like. Christ died for the sins of the world, But we are not forgiven, until we repent. Forgiveness is based on Christ’s love for us and his death for our sins but there cannot be effective forgiveness until we repent. If this weren’t the case, then all would be going to heaven.
I cannot forgive my wife in that way until there is repentance. And there cannot be restoration of the relationship until there is both repentance and forgiveness.
So, I have forgiven her in that I have internally let go and I don’t have to be angry and bitter. But she doesn’t necessarily feel forgiveness because the sins have not been dealt with.
I am so sorry for what you’re walking through! That’s just gut wrenching.
But I think you’re spot on here. As we grow closer to God, the internal work can be done. But the external work really is up to her, and you can’t restore unilaterally what isn’t there, nor should you.
I wish you all the best as you go forward, though, and I hope that she does indeed repent.
Dear The Sheep, I too have been through a similar experience where my husband had an affair on me. The difference here is that he is very sorry for the pain he inflicted on me, has asked me for forgiveness, has repented and is working on being a better person by taking a good hard look at himself and improving his relationship with Christ. I wanted to respond to you though, because my heart goes out to you and I know how gut wrenching it is to be betrayed. I would like to help you. I also know that MY actions after I found out about his affair had a lot to do with our reconciliation. I immediately asked God to help me treat my husband as he would. And then I asked God to help me and I listened for an answer from God. What followed was amazing. I took a good hard look at what kind of a wife I had been. I had to be very honest with myself which was not easy. Was I taking care of my husbands most important emotional needs? What was I not providing him with that was important to him that the other woman was? Once I started taking care of his most important emotional needs and going back to the basics of speaking kindly, saying please and thank you and all the things we do when marriage is new, everything turned around and my husband and I are more in love today than we have ever been. We have been married for 22 years and never have had any huge problems in our marriage except we just started to let things slide not taking care of each other….being an old married couple for a lack of better words. God led me to the most incredible site called marriagebuilders.com. I read through the free program alone and applied the principles on my own because I did not have my husband’s willingness to participate and what followed was amazing. I would highly suggest it to anyone who is going through a hard season in marriage. Believe me, t’s hard when you are the one who has been cheated on to take a look at what you might have been lacking doing for your spouse. I am the first to say that it is NEVER okay to have an affair on your spouse. However, most spouses do not go out looking for someone just to cheat with. It happens because they are missing something in their marriage. The cheater is not getting all of their emotional needs met. Find out what your wife’s most important emotional needs are (there is a free printable questionnaire on that site you can give her to fill out) and meet them, and you will find that she falls in love with you again. Go to that website and read through it and follow it. You will be amazed at what happens. God Bless, and I will be praying for you and your wife.
Samantha, I am so sorry for what you have been through, and I am so happy to hear of the healing that is going on in your marriage. And I will say that in a lot of cases, what you say is very true and I agree with all of it. At one time in my life I would have said that it applies to almost all cases. In fact, I operated on this principle for a very long time. When I started seeing the cracks in our marriage, I really sought advice and started applying these things. A huge part of that was deeply examining my heart and life and dealing with the sin, pride, and wrongs on my part. Then seeking to know her and meet her needs in ways I never had before.
But things kept getting worse. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the more I gave of myself, the more she took and the less she gave back. Through a long series of awful events, I realized that she must be having an affair. I confronted her and she denied it. I chose to believe her. It was about then that I started reading all the christian marriage books, and I really liked all of them that gave some variation of “love them till they come back”. I made it my mission to love her totally unconditionally as Christ loved the church. Unfortunately, I didn’t want to listen to the ones that said she needed “tough love”.
She assigned blame for her sins and everything bad in her life to me, and I gladly took it. At one point (after reading some stupid husband advice on the internet) I even told her that if she was having an affair, it was my fault. She really liked hearing that one. Almost a year later I discovered that she was actually having an affair, and I still persisted in unconditional love, Because it I believe it was the right thing to do. It has taken me a long time to realize that real love for someone does not allow them to continue in sin without consequences. And real love confronts sin (even if I have always been afraid of her)
To make a long, awful story short, I still treat her with politeness and kindness. I still love her, but she pretends that nothing is wrong, she will not/ can not admit wrong in herself. She does not feel the pain that she has inflicted on everyone around her, and she uses and takes from those closest to her to meet her selfish desires. Everyone close to her sees this and confronts her with it. But nothing changes.
the sheep, it is important to make a distinction between forgiving and reconciling. You can forgive your wife even if she doesn’t repent, and for your health you should, though it will be very hard. It might take a long time too. But reconciliation is what cannot happen unless your wife repents and stops her affairs.
I just wanted to make that distinction because many times people think forgiving means reconciling and it doesn’t. Even if you eventually have to divorce, it doesn’t mean you are being unforgiving. It just means you can’t reconcile because she isn’t doing her part. I feel you.
wifeofasexaddict, Thanks for saying that. I probably wasn’t as clear as I should have been, because that is one of the points that I was trying to get across. Yes, I do need to forgive her, and I do believe that I have. This is what keeps me whole and keeps me from drowning in bitterness and anger. This forgiveness just does not look like what I grew up believing it was supposed to look like.
It means that I have let go of my “right” to be angry and bitter toward her even though I have every reason to be. But, forgiveness does not mean that I restore the relationship without giant steps and signs of true repentance. If I were to do that (like I tried to do early on after the confrontation) I would be allowing her to believe that she is ok, she doesn’t need to repent, change, or work really hard to repair the damage that she has done. That it is ok to go on abusing me and the children and those closest to her. (there is a lot more to this than simply an affair)
As much as I have tried, I can’t fix this by myself and Lord knows I have tried for a really long time. And, it just can’t be restored until there is true repentance, humility, and honesty, and these things are being consistently demonstrated in her life. (I would rather use the words “build a new relationship” because I have finally figured out that I was being abused in the old one, and that she had never really opened herself up to me and made herself vulnerable)
And I have finally figured out that if I end up divorcing her, it doesn’t mean that I haven’t forgiven her. It also doesn’t mean that I don’t love her.(because as hard as it is to believe, I still do) It just means that my love has a different form, and that is allowing her to receive the consequences of her actions. Which is what Christ also allows us to receive when we won’t submit ourselves to His will and we insist on living in sin. He shows us His love by allowing us to receive the consequences of our sin.
I think that’s a very wise way of seeing the situation. I do believe God can do amazing things with reconciliation–He really can. And I do pray for a miracle for you. But if it doesn’t come, I do think you’re thinking through this wisely.
God has taught me so much about Himself and so much about myself that I probably never would have learned through all of this.
He has also taught me so much about the church and the people in it. For a very long time I bought the lie that christians really look down on and are unforgiving toward others that have committed the “bad” sins. I’ve realized that I have had this attitude mostly because it is the attitude of my wife and not because I have observed it. But, the last few years have taught me that true followers of Christ desire to see repentance and restoration. That they rejoice when conviction brings about repentance and real change.
One of the biggest things I have learned is that there is great freedom in vulnerability. That we are not designed to keep everything to ourselves. When we become the person that we talk to the most, when we don’t have other wise, mature believers speaking into us, we can convince ourselves of all manor of foolish beliefs. Then we can easily justify the ungodly and immoral works that proceed from our foolish beliefs.
This would all be next to impossible for me to deal with if it wasn’t for the Godly friends and family that have been here for me.
I remember at one stage in my life there was someone I knew I “should” forgive, but I wasn’t in a place where I could do that yet. I didn’t actually even want to forgive.
So my prayer, for a while, was, “Lord, help me *want* to want to forgive.”
baby steps! and I did get there in the end. 🙂
Hey there Sheila – great post today. When I look at my own story as I was reading this today these thoughts came across my mind:
I didn’t sign up for the deal I got. Someone’s will intervened in my life. While I admit I took the wrong path and did a lot of things by choice, somehow I can’t take full responsibility to what happened to me. I was just too young to find my way out on my own. So God graced me when I was 30 years old with a way out. It took me 14 more years to find Jesus and be free. The biggest lesson I have learned since finding my way out of my mess 14 years ago is patience. Patience has been the single most BIGGEST message in my recovery from day 1. Us Addicts want it now. Give me what I want now. I am sure all will agree this is also true of our society in general in many ways as well. I wanted out as soon as I figured out there was a way. However it took 14 more years. Now I am free and there is still more suckage potential in my life, yet now I am not scared. Now I have Jesus to protect me. In some way I think this may be connected to redemptive suffering. Not really sure here. I know I don’t think God keeps us away from him. I just think it takes each person to go through their journey according to the plan. What every that might be. Not sure if I am making sense here….Sometimes I wish I could like take your articles and google the whole thing so I can find more information on it…Good stuff today. Thanks
Sometimes I wonder how much is really lost when Biblical manuscripts are translated to other languages. The Bible DOES say we have to forgive. But there are also things it doesn’t say. It doesn’t say that forgiveness has to take place immediately, especially if the offending person isn’t repentant. I think we need to desire to forgive, like you desired to forgive your father. But sometimes God really has to make up the difference. That’s where the healing comes in.
I have found this to be true. Jesus says forgive others as I have forgiven you……the only way to do that is to know Him. Everything points back to Jesus. If we stay in the Word, He will help us to figure this out.
Exactly! It all comes back to knowing Jesus.
I know this is coming a great while after the posts. Please forgive me for jumping in.
I am thankful for the posts I read here and in other blogs written here.
But I think most of the confusion regarding forgiveness comes from not comparing scripture with scripture. That is not meant to be considered as any kind of accusation of your readers. What I am about to say is where I am coming from and I hope it helps others.
My wife and I (and others) have had a great heartbreak with our daughter. She is (was) married with 3 beautiful children. Long story short, she committed adultery, divorced her husband and threw the family into turmoil.She to this day remains unrepentant and gets almost violently angry when ever we try to approach the matter.
My wife and I have both struggled with the issue of forgiving her as the weight of the verses quoted both before this and after this post make it obvious “we are to forgive”! The solution for us came when I was thinking about how God forgives us. We know that as a gracious and merciful God He is always ready to forgive. THAT is key. Without getting into the theological issues of election or predestination, it IS clear that forgiveness is not actually ours until we ask! And we don’t ask until we confess our sin before Him and repent and believe. But He is ever ready and willing ( a great comfort to us sinners) to forgive.
This is how we have come to handle our daughter, We Are ever ready to Extend forgiveness and our actions toward her back this up. And in a sense we have in our hearts forgiven her, but we have not Extended it as she has not asked forgiveness for her sin. And none of us receive it until we ask of God. I’m just trying to point out that scriptures picture of Our heavenly Father’s example may have bearing on this issue. Since adopting this attitude of willingness, readiness to forgive and then extending forgiveness when asked, has helped us thru this turmoil. Only when she comes to repentance, confesses her sin to the Lord and asks Him for forgiveness can any true fellowship with Him be restored. So when she asks us to forgive her can any bond of spiritual unity and fellowship occur in our family. We long and pray for her to return to the Lord and in a real sense return to us.
Assure your readers that even after 50 years of marriage God has ways to grow us
Thank you for bearing with me, Bill & Ellen
I think this is a very good point your making. It sometimes seems like as Christians we want to quickly brush over the sin and kind of pretend it never happened, which is aweful because it doesn’t allow for dealing with it properly. Or sometimes it’s the opposite we hold onto the pain and hurt to tightly and thus give the sin more power than it should have. I think that is why it is important to make those first steps of will to forgive. It’s like handing the hurt over to God, and as time goes by He brings about the healing and you find you forgave. If we just brush over it and “forgive” to quickly and act like nothing happened it’s like locking the hurt up somewhere in your heart pretending it’s not there… That is dangerous and toxic.
A very interesting book on the topic is “As we forgive” (by Catherine C. Larson) it has story of forgiveness and reconciliation from people of Rwanda after the Genocide and between the stories some articles on different aspects of forgiveness, reconciliation and restitution. It’s not a light read, but the power of Gods healing is shining through.
This post was so helpful. Thank you for writing it!
Great points, Sheila. And I think that’s why we say “time can heal.” It’s not time that heals, necessarily; it’s time WITH GOD that heals our hearts and we are able to release hurts.
This is amazing. I think more Christians should be talking about this topic. It’s so important.
An acquaintance of mine left an abusive marriage and the elders read a nasty letter about her in front of the congregation and told everyone basically to shun her. She lost her marriage, her friends, her family, her whole life that day. To be going through something so difficult and to have everyone you love turn against you like that…I can’t even imagine what that must feel like. She got on facebook and was saying that she has tried but she still can’t set foot into another church building, because of the emotional trauma she experienced that day….even though rationally she knows that not all churches are like that. I think talking about what happened publicly is a part of the healing process sometimes…writing a book, a blog post, a social media post…and not just keeping it inside. She was very classy about it, too. But of course, even though it was hard for her, I’m sure, to admit all that to her peers on social media, people got on and told her to return to church and to forgive. Forgive. Forgive.
When I was 18 my mother met a man who was very emotionally and verbally abusive. He would yell, throw things at me, call me names, humiliate me in public (I’d be trying to get away from him and he’d find my car and come in and yell at me in a restaurant, etc), try to control every aspect of my life and even more so, my mom’s (he was jealous and would show up at her work and yell at her, call her friends and yell at them- she lost her job and friends….everything when she met him.) He called the cops on me one time and had a restraining order put on me (I was a straight A student and president of the service club in highschool if that gives you any indication of how ridiculous this was.) I failed a semester of college because he abused me so much and I had nightmares every night and suffered from exhaustion and depression. Eventually I found my way…I opened up to friends, found God, married an amazing man, and am a mother of three awesome kids. And now I struggle with allowing my abuser into my life in order to keep having a relationship with my mom who was an absolutely amazing mom for the first 18 years of my life and is a wonderful grandma. He is still controlling and still has abusive tendencies. He lies. I don’t trust him. But the outright abuse and anger issues haven’t been around much. Partly maybe because he’s trying, partly because I have a husband now, and partly because I avoid being around him and talking to him. There was an incident the last time they visited and we made him leave our house. He is insisting that I apologize. And my mom is insisting that I forgive. “God requires forgiveness”, she says. Forgive. Forgive.
There is so much more to forgiveness than a person choosing to say the words “I forgive you.” I love how to describe it as a process, something that occurs with healing. I think figuring out how to heal and how to forgive is difficult enough without feeling guilty that you are a bad person for not being able to forgive properly or feeling pressure to forgive more quickly.
Years ago, an American student was killed and raped in one of our townships – Amy Biehl. It was a terrible story – yet, that very same evening her parents (who I clearly did not or do know now) came on TV to say they forgave the perpetrators of that crime. That has always stood out in my mind, because there is no way I would be able to do that. I would need to grieve first, be angry – maybe even hate a little. Then let God change me. You can’t stay in that place – you have to move forward towards forgiveness. In fact, God is changing me for things that have happened to me in my own life that are so minuscule in comparison. Yet He is working. Forgiveness isn’t quick or easy – but it does require a heart change. And I pray that God would do that – change my heart so I can live and love in my life and in my family the way He does. Sometimes its all we can hope for – but it is the best we can hope for…
Thank you for sharing this. I discovered right before our first wedding anniversary that my husband had been having a physical affair with a woman he worked with. I already knew they had had an emotional affair for about a year before we got married, but I thought it was over. Throughout our marriage (we just celebrated two years), I have discovered a total of 4 times that this woman has continued to come back into his life, and I suspect they’re talking again. I have been feeling like a terrible person for not being able to forgive her (for hating her) and for living in fear and suspicion and never feeling as though I can believe my husband. But your words have reminded me that I’m still in the midst of the pain. I still sometimes wonder if I believe the truths that I have always known (God is sovereign, God can bring healing and restoration to my heart and marriage, God will be the one to bring justice), but I’m trying to remember that and believe in Him again.
Oh, how awful! I’m so, so sorry that you’re walking through this. Have you ever read Love Must Be Tough by James Dobson? It’s really good for people in your situation, when their spouse just doesn’t seem ready to give up a lover. You are in the midst, and I think the main thing right now is figuring out your marriage. Then you can work on the rest!
This was so good for my heart. I am currently going through a divorce after 20 years of marriage. We have spent most of our lives in ministry… the last 12 years full-time. My husband struggled with porn addition even before we were married. I did’t know this going in and didn’t find out for more than a year…but after each confession I forgave him. I wouldn’t talk much about the way his porn use affected me or us because it upset him. He didn’t want to deal with the consequences of this actions.
In late 2015 I found out that he had been having an emotional affair with one of my friends who was also one of his ministry volunteers. It devastated me. I couldn’t offer the quick forgiveness this time, but it did come. After about 4 months I was able to tell him I forgave him and I thought we would be moving forward. However, our marriage relationship began to deteriorate. I couldn’t figure out why. I prayed and cried and worked and begged for my marriage. I remember begging him to fight with me because I couldn’t fight for us by myself. All he would do in every conversation was bring up everything I had ever done wrong, ways I had hurt him, things I needed to change about myself. It was never about him. I believe God sustained me and my self-worth through that time, without Him I would have felt like a complete failure, like a big sack of nothing.
Earlier this year he finally confessed that his emotional affair had never really ended and that it had been a physical affair for more than a year. I thought I was devastated before… it was nothing compared to this pain. I thought it would kill me. I never knew emotions could physically hurt. I always thought that was metaphorical, but I literally felt like someone had ripped my heart out and there was just a open infectious would left. And still I was the one who wanted to reconcile and I submitted myself to more of his pointing the finger at me and what I had done, more of his telling me who I needed to be and what I needed to do if there was a chance he would want to come back, more of his making me feel like I had been the worst wife in the world…. Until two separate counselors with two very different views and techniques told me I had to stop allowing him to abuse me that way. Abuse? That was my wake up call.
I began to take steps back to really look at the situation. I began to see it for what it was. He didn’t want me. He was putting me through hell and I was allowing it. He wasn’t repentant, and no matter what I did, said or put up with, I couldn’t make him want to restore our family. I realized that our covenant marriage (that I was trying desperately to save) was already shattered-he did that by his affair, by never really being faithful in the first place. I realized that even though God hates divorce He allows so people in my exact situation don’t have to stay there. So I filed for divorce, and in doing so I think I have finally opened myself up to healing. I allowed myself the space to be angry and hurt. I’ve honestly given myself some space to hate them… my husband and his lover. I think if I didn’t give myself space to feel that and acknowledge that I felt it, it would have just sat inside my heart and rotted. Now I hope to be moving past those feelings and moving toward forgiveness. I don’t care if he ever knows I forgive him, but I want to for my own heart. I don’t want to be a bitter person. God is helping me. As His love for me renews my heart, I am able to be filled with His love for others, and when God’s love fills us there is no room for bitterness. I’m not there yet. I haven’t forgiven yet. But I know God will get me there through His love and grace.
Oh, M, thank you for sharing your story! I’m so, so sorry that your husband has chosen this horrible road. And it is NOT your fault!
It sounds like you are in such a good place now, and you’re on the right road. That’s wonderful. And God does see you and He does love you and He never wanted any of that to happen to you. And your husband was definitely the one who broke the covenant.
Keep looking to Jesus, and the healing will come.
When my husband confessed that he had had an affair while we were separated (by his choice due to mental health issues), one thing he said that made me know even from day one that we could get through this was, “You don’t ever have to be over this.” I knew then that he understood the depth of what was wrong and that I would have the time and space I needed to heal. And because of that, I could heal. But also I realize that some things never heal as much as you would like them to, and that’s ok, too, and doesn’t necessarily contradict forgiveness.
I think this is very insightful, Sheila! Thank you for sharing this perspective!
I really appreciate this message. It can be very disheartening to hear constantly “just forgive them and you’ll feel better” because it really isn’t just a quick fix. Forgiveness to me has always meant being able to face them without feeling something, not rushing back with open arms and a million kisses, and this article really helped to articulate and validate that feeling for me. Thank you!
A couple of things I’ve learned about forgiveness. One, you can forgive someone but still need to work through whatever trauma you have from the situation. The human brain has a certain wired response to trauma that is very normal, and it needs to be acknowledged and processed. Two, forgiveness does not always reconciliation. They are two separate things. Especially if it is not healthy to be in relationship with the other person. It’s okay to forgive and set boundaries at the same time.
Thank you for this. I struggle to forgive when I’ve been hurt. I think it’s because I feel “big.” I feel big…so I hurt big. I’ve always wanted to forgive and “get over” things that people do that hurt me, but I’ve never really known how. And I think the more I focused on the pain and on trying to forgive, the less I was able to. This makes a lot of sense. I need to stop focusing on forgiving and start focusing on Jesus.
I’m glad it helped, Lindsey!
I haven’t got time to write a long comment, or to read all of the ones here, but I just want to say that this isn’t where I thought the article was going, based on the title (though totally valid!). Where I thought it was going, was, you need to really feel the offence. Feel the hurt, the anger, the betrayal, etc — count the cost of forgiving — and THEN do it, not kinda brush it all under the carpet.