Every day you live with it. No one else may even know it is always in the back of your mind, taking up part of your life. You hold it inside, day after day. It is a life emotional scar that never healed the right way, and it always bothers you. You were deeply hurt, or maybe it bothers you that you hurt someone else. Anger, Guilt, or Sadness can slowly consume you one life event at a time. It is a result of the memory of what happened and how you feed the emotional beast every day inside you. If you could only lose that memory and hurt……

The good news is you can take control of it. You can give yourself the best gift ever: emotional healing.

Someone has hurt you

You want to be their judge, jury, and executioner. You want them to apologize and change. Whatever your heart wishes would happen may never take place, so you have left yourself in an emotional no man’s land. Is there a way out? How can you have peace? What if you released their judgment and getting even to someone else, and freed yourself from that? Think of it as if there were some emotional police that would take your case, make the arrest, and prosecute them. Then you could be free of that burden. You would not even have to confront the offending party about it, because in your mind you know it is being taken care of. There is only one that truly judges, and He can take this burden from you. Let Him. Let God. I have avoided the term forgiveness up to this point, because some people interpret it as a “free pass” for the offending party. Forgiveness is not a process for them. It is for you, so you can move past the pain and release the control that this event has on your life.

Forgiveness is not forgetting. We need to learn from our life experiences. We grow from painful experiences and they can make us stronger afterwards. Forgiveness is not freeing them from the consequence of their actions, or you being a doormat. There may be very real impacts and effort that may have to expended to make things right again. In some cases it makes sense to tell them you forgive them, and other times not. The important thing is that this is a process for you to do. At a minimum, do it inside you, where the hurt is, so you can release the pain. For me, I forgive them and release the judgment to God. I pray for the strength to move past it, and I tell God it is in his hands now. I also pray that the offending party will be touched by His grace to be forgiven and truly change. We would want the same if we were in their shoes. You get grace, when you give grace.

You have hurt someone else

We can carry emotional scars from hurting someone else also. They usually come in the form of guilt and can degrade self-esteem because it may convince you that you are a bad person. To fully heal, there is a process to follow. In some cases it makes sense to do these steps with the person you hurt, and other times you may not be able to. In either case, you still need to follow the steps to heal.

Confess: You cannot fix what you cannot acknowledge. Our human nature enables us to do bad things. None of us is without something we regret. The truly strong step up and own it, so they can grow past it.

Ask for Forgiveness: For this to be most effective, it needs to be both vertical and horizontal in nature. Vertical is to ask God. Horizontal is to ask the offended party. This cannot be a “I am sorry I got caught” or “I am sorry you feel that way about what I did” apology. It has to be you being specific in how you hurt them and made them feel, so they know you understand the hurt. If you are asking them for forgiveness, they may not agree. You still need to be comforted to move on based on, your outreach to God and willingness to make things right. For Christians, the belief that Christ died for your sins should also give you comfort that you can be forgiven.

You must prove it: Forgiveness itself is not enough, if you don’t truly change the hurtful behavior. It is also not enough if you don’t own the consequences of your actions. I have seen cases where in counseling people have said “you said I was forgiven, so why are you still hurt or bringing it up?” Working through that hurt is part of the consequences of your actions that you must own. You also must prove you have changed and now bear good fruit in your actions, before the grace related to forgiveness is complete.

The good news is it is never too late. We are all both givers and receivers of painful events in life. It is not what happens, but how we grow from it that can make us whole again. Forgiveness is a tool essential to making it through life. Knowing we give pain to others, should enable us to be more forgiving to those who have hurt us. You might be surprised how much forgiveness can change your life, and those around you. You can start healing right now.