I wanted to buy this book for my wife.
That’s the honest truth.
I spotted Forgiving What You Can’t Forget by Lysa TerKeurst, thought of some things Annita had been carrying, and figured it might help her. I pointed it out, moved on, and didn’t give it another thought.
But it kept coming back to me.
Then I found out another man — someone in my own family — had already read it. A guy. Read a book written by a woman, aimed at women, about one of the hardest things a human being can do.
I mentioned it to my wife. She ordered it for me before I could talk myself out of it.
That’s how God works sometimes. He uses the people around you to get you where you need to go — even when your pride is standing in the doorway.
Let me be honest about something.
My first instinct was resistance. I’m a guy. Why would I pick up a book on forgiveness written by a woman? Shouldn’t I find something written for men? Something tougher, more direct, more suited to the way we handle things?
And that right there — that thinking — is exactly the problem.
Because here’s what I’ve had to admit:
Women are better at this than us.
Not at everything. But at this. At actually sitting down with their pain instead of stepping over it. At processing, praying, talking it through, grieving it, and coming out the other side with something that looks like real healing.
Men? We put the armor on.
We face outward, chin up, jaw tight. We tell everyone we’re fine. We keep moving. Meanwhile there’s a full war going on inside — unprocessed grief, old wounds, buried anger, things we haven’t named and definitely haven’t dealt with.
We just keep marching and hope the noise eventually stops.
It doesn’t stop.
It just goes deeper.
I’ve written about this before — “When You’re Tired of Being Strong” but can’t figure out how to put the armor down. And “The Strongest Person in the Room Wasn’t Me” isn’t always who you think it is. Sometimes real strength looks like finally being willing to deal with what you’ve been avoiding.
Lysa TerKeurst wrote this book out of real pain. Betrayal. Loss. The kind of hurt that doesn’t go away because you decide to be tough.
And reading it, I didn’t feel like I was reading a woman’s book.
I felt like I was reading my book.
Because forgiveness doesn’t check your gender before it wrecks you.
It just wrecks you.
One of the most powerful frameworks she shares is what she calls the Dots.
Collecting the Dots. These are your formative wounds — the moments, big and small, that shaped the way you see the world. The rejection you never addressed. The betrayal that rewired your trust. The childhood experience that left a mark you carried quietly into adulthood. Lysa’s point is direct — most of the time, you’re not just reacting to what happened last week. You’re reacting to everything that came before it too.
Connecting the Dots. This is where it gets uncomfortable. Here she helps you trace those old wounds to your current defense mechanisms — the walls you built, the stories you tell yourself, the way you misread new situations through the lens of old pain. She uses the image of a canary in a coal mine. Miners used to send a canary down first because the bird would react to toxic gas before any human could detect it. Your emotional triggers work the same way. When something sets you off harder than the situation seems to deserve, that reaction is the canary. It’s not the real problem — it’s pointing you to one.
Correcting the Dots. This is the hard work. Identifying the lies you started believing because of what happened to you — about yourself, about others, about God — and replacing them with truth. Not positive thinking. Not self-help. Scripture. The actual Word of God dismantling the framework the enemy built inside your hurt. As Paul writes in Romans 12:2 — “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” That renewing doesn’t happen on its own. You have to bring your mind back to truth — deliberately, repeatedly, every time the lies try to move back in.
This changed how I think about forgiveness. It’s not just about the person who wronged you last year. Sometimes you’re forgiving layered wounds that go back decades. That’s why it feels so heavy. That’s why it keeps coming back.
If the anger has returned after you thought you’d already forgiven — that’s not failure. That’s what healing actually looks like.
Peter asked Jesus about this directly. How many times do I have to forgive someone who keeps hurting me? Seven times? And Jesus answered in Matthew 18:21-22 — “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.”
Not because the other person deserves it seventy-seven times. Because your freedom requires it.
Here’s what else this book has been teaching me — and I say this as someone who has spent a lot of time thinking I understood forgiveness while quietly holding onto bitterness.
There’s a difference between knowing something and actually handling it.
I’ve learned more about how bitterness and resentment operate — how subtle they are, how they disguise themselves as justified anger, how they slowly corrupt everything around them if you let them sit. Envy and bitterness don’t just hurt you. They spread. To your family. To your kids. To people who had nothing to do with what started it.
The writer of Hebrews put it plainly — Hebrews 12:15: “See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.”
A bitter root doesn’t stay contained. It spreads underground and poisons everything above it. Your marriage. Your kids. Your grandkids. People who never even knew what started it.
That’s why this matters beyond just you.
I’ve been learning to pray consistently through it. To keep God in the middle of it — even in the moments when I’m not sure He’s listening. Even when I’m wondering why things haven’t been resolved yet, why I haven’t gotten the closure I was looking for, why healing seems to be taking longer than it should.
And here’s what I’ve settled on:
God is working.
He’s always working. Romans 8:28 reminds us — “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”
All things. Not the easy things. Not the comfortable things. All things — including the betrayal, the wound, the unanswered prayer, the person who still hasn’t apologized.
He’s still in it. He’s just not done.
That’s where patience gets built. And patience is one of the hardest things God ever asks of us.
Not yet doesn’t mean never. It means trust Me in the waiting.
Now here’s the moment in the book that stopped me cold.
Lysa shares an exercise she learned in counseling.
Write your issue on a card. Whatever it is — the betrayal, the person, the wound that’s been living rent free in your head. Put it on a card and lay it out in front of you.
Then take something red — a cloth, a piece of paper — and lay it over the card.
That red is the blood of Christ. His grace, pouring over the very thing you’ve been dragging around. The thing that’s kept you up at night. The conversation you’ve replayed a thousand times. The hurt you thought you’d buried that somehow keeps climbing back out.
You cover it.
And here’s the truth that hit me like a wall:
We won’t forget. Forgiveness was never meant to erase the memory. But when you can genuinely lay that red cloth down and mean it — something shifts. You’re not releasing them from what they did. You’re releasing yourself from the grip it has on your life.
That’s not weakness. That’s one of the hardest, most courageous things a person can do.
And on the other side of all that grief — and it is grief — there is grace. There is freedom. There is a peace that doesn’t make logical sense given everything you’ve been through.
Philippians 4:7 calls it “the peace of God, which transcends all understanding.” That’s not a feeling you manufacture. That’s something God deposits into you when you finally stop white-knuckling what He’s been asking you to release.
“Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord. On the contrary: if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
That last line is the whole message.
Do not be overcome by evil — but overcome evil with good.
You don’t overcome it by holding onto it. You don’t overcome it by staying locked inside the hurt. You overcome it by making the choice — sometimes repeatedly, sometimes daily — to release it and let God handle what you were never equipped to carry anyway.
Before I close this out I need to get personal with you for a minute.
The verse I stand on. The one that has been part of my life for years. The one that used to be the wallpaper on my computer screen. The one that shows up every single time I study, every single time I dig into Scripture on this topic.
“My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.”
Here’s the part that will blow your mind.
That verse was introduced to me by someone I had to forgive.
Let that sink in.
The Scripture I now stand on — the one God used to shape me — came through a person who hurt me. A person I’ve forgiven. A person I still have to choose to forgive some days when the anger quietly climbs back up without warning.
That’s how God works. He will use anything. He will use anyone. Even the wound. Even the person who caused it.
And Lysa has that same verse in her book.
Of course she does.
Now let me say something that needs to be said clearly and without apology.
Sin is not competitive.
Read that again.
We rank sin like it gives us permission to stay bitter. We tell ourselves — what they did was worse than what I’ve done. What they did was unforgivable. What they did doesn’t deserve grace.
But sin is sin.
No sin is greater than another in the eyes of God. Not yours. Not mine. Not theirs. We all stand on equal ground at the foot of that cross — every single one of us in desperate need of the same grace.
And Jesus made it plain in Matthew 6:14-15 — “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”
That’s not a suggestion. That’s not open to interpretation.
That’s Jesus.
And that blood Lysa writes about — the red cloth covering the card — that’s not just a counseling exercise. That’s the Gospel. Christ shed His blood so that grace could pour over every wound, every failure, every sin — yours and theirs — and cover it completely.
He did that for you.
Can you do it for them?
I’m not standing here telling you this from the other side of perfect. Not even close. People who know me — family included — can tell you I’m a work in progress. Some days I get this right. Some days the anger still shows up unannounced and I have to drag it back before God and release it all over again.
But I keep going back. I keep praying. Not surface prayers. Heart prayers. The kind where you’re honest with God about exactly where you are and exactly what you’re struggling with.
That’s all He asks.
Not perfection. Willingness.
Think about the best doctors in the world. They don’t stop practicing medicine because it’s hard. They don’t walk away from a patient because the case is complicated. They practice — every single day — because lives depend on it.
Forgiveness works the same way.
You practice it daily. You pray it daily. You choose it daily — even when you don’t feel it. And slowly, over time, the bitterness loses its grip. The resentment fades. The anger that used to live in your chest starts finding less and less room to stay.
And what moves in to replace it?
Freedom.
Peace.
A future that doesn’t have you chained to something that already happened.
And beyond that — an eternity of joy, peace and happiness waiting on the other side of a life lived in obedience to God.
Why wouldn’t anyone want that?
I’m asking seriously.
Why would you choose to hold onto something that’s costing you everything — when God is standing right there offering to take it?
Forgiveness is not easy. Nobody said it was. But it is possible. It is worth it. And you don’t have to do it alone.
The red cloth is waiting.
Cover it.
And don’t stop until it’s covered.
Father God, we come before You right now — broken, tired, and honest. Some of us are carrying wounds we’ve never spoken out loud. Some of us have been holding onto hurt for so long it feels like part of who we are. Some of us have said we forgave — and meant it — but still feel the anger creeping back in the quiet moments when no one is watching.
Lord, You see all of it. Every layer. Every dot. Every wall we built to protect ourselves from being hurt again. And You love us anyway — not because we have it all together, but because You are a God who meets us exactly where we are.
We ask You right now to do what only You can do. Soften the hardened places. Reach into the wounds we stopped believing You could heal. Help us release the people who hurt us — not because they deserve it, but because You deserve our obedience and we deserve our freedom.
Cover it Lord. Cover every offense, every betrayal, every unanswered apology, every sleepless night spent replaying what happened — cover it all with the blood of Jesus. Let Your grace pour over the cards we’ve been holding onto and replace the bitterness with something only You can give.
For those who are angry — meet them there.
For those who are grieving — comfort them there.
For those who are tired of trying — strengthen them there.
For those who feel like they’ve forgiven a hundred times and still aren’t free — remind them that You are still working, still moving, still faithful — even when they cannot see it.
Teach us to be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger. Teach us to pray from the heart and mean it. Teach us to forgive the way You forgave us — completely, sacrificially, and without condition.
We are not perfect. We never will be. But we are Yours. And because we are Yours — we choose forgiveness today. Not because it is easy. Because You asked us to. And because on the other side of this — there is freedom, there is peace, and there is a future worth fighting for.
In the name of Jesus — the only perfect One who ever walked this earth, who shed His blood so that every single one of us could be covered and called forgiven —
Amen.
This post is part of an ongoing forgiveness series at Faith for Real Life. Start from the beginning:
•What No One Tells You About Forgiving Someone Who Isn’t Sorry
•When You’ve Forgiven — But the Anger Keeps Coming Back
•I Asked God for Patience. He Had a Better Idea.
•When You’re Tired of Being Strong
•The Strongest Person in the Room Wasn’t Me
This post contains an affiliate link to Forgiving What You Can’t Forget by Lysa TerKeurst. If you purchase through my link I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend books I’ve personally read and genuinely believe in — and this one changed me.