Who said forgive and forget

I forgive and forget. I have not time to get mad or hate. Anger kills before it is noticed. It travels faster to the destination to destroy long before conscience arrives to regret it! Drop down the bullets of anger; it destroys at the speed of light! Look around to find beauty and focus on it.

I'm not asking you to forget or even forgive. I'm telling you to find a way to get around it, not over it. Sound familiar? In the Gospels, the command to forgive is clear. Forgiving someone does not mean that we ignore what happened and how it affected us. Or that we wholeheartedly restore trust, especially when it would be unwise, imprudent or unsafe to do so. We are not asked to delete painful and harmful experiences from our memory, since remembering the pain of past hurts can help us to choose more wisely and to avoid occasions where we may be hurt unnecessarily.

But if it means that you pretend that the hurt never happened, that would be unwise. For example, a good friend may have betrayed you. You can forgive them but decide not to be in a close committed friendship with them any longer. That is OK. At best, we learn to live with the pain. He designed us to forgive, and then let Christ come into our lives, and heal us of the pain and wounds we experienced.

The healing does not begin until we first forgive. That rarely happens. In fact, quite the opposite is far more common. For example, one spouse has an affair, wounding the other deeply. The pain from the sin is very real and the wounds of betrayal and infidelity go very deep. I find that, usually, the faithful spouse wants the unfaithful spouse to know how much it hurts.

He or she will refuse to forgive until that point comes that the unfaithful spouse has hurt enough. That day never arrives. The wounded spouse never is satisfied their partner is hurt enough.