Forgiveness: How to Let Go of Hurt And Feel Better

It was so wonderful to see you all and to be with all of you again today. But let me ask you this. Have you heard the saying time heals all wounds?

Time is a healer. Just give it time and you'll be better. Well, I don't think so. No, not really. I mean, time can work for you if you're processing your pain correctly. If you're telling your story, if you're pursuing healing, yes, time can be your friend. But time can also work against you if you're not healing right if you're stuck in pain and heartbreak, if you're stuck in devastation, you can just go deeper in your depression, deeper in your sorrow, you can get caught up in even more bitterness is that bitter root just takes over more and more of your life, you can get caught up wanting to it vindicate yourself and paybacks and tit for tat. Time doesn't always work for us.

I think about this saying from CJ Tudor. She wrote “The Hiding Place.” Listen to this incredible amount of pain. “People say time is a great healer. They're wrong. Time is simply a great eraser. It rolls on and on regardless, eroding our memories, chipping away at those great big boulders of misery until there's nothing left but sharp little fragments, still painful, but small enough to bear.” Wow, I think that's powerful.

Have you at one time had a big boulder of pain, of misery, of heartache, but now over time, it's just smaller to bear, but it's all still there? If you were to add it all up, it's all still crushing you and devastating you. I want to help you today. I want to talk to you about how we overcome and recover from deep hurt. How do we deal with something that has devastated us, that makes us feel heartbroken, beyond sad, right, depressed? How do we overcome something that brings anxiety and, and, and endless tears of sorrow? The pain is just so raw. You can feel that sick feeling in the pit of your stomach. What about sleepless nights, worrisome thoughts, concern, and constant uncertainty that never seems to go away? Well, for lack of a better word, what do we do? We fight, we stand up against it. We honor ourselves for what we've experienced, maybe even what we're currently enduring and we make a decision that says, I want to pursue my healing. I want to overcome. We get up each and every day and we declare nonstop. I'm getting better. I'm overcoming, I'm healing. I will learn from this, I will grow from this, and I will be a victor. Now that's easier said than done.

I know because I've been in that place of pain. I've been in that dark place of hurt and despair. I was in that place of depression. I've talked to you about it where all I wanted to do was just curl up in a ball and pull the blankets over my head for another day. You can visit there. But you can't live there. We can't stay there. Hey, bravehearts. We have too much life to live too much ahead of us!

Now I'm going to talk to you sincerely because maybe you have gone through a tragic set of circumstances. You have experienced a loss. You've experienced maybe a horrible report that you just got from the doctor. Something in your body has gone wrong. Maybe there is something in the report that is so grim and you're hurting from it. Maybe like me, you've experienced a horrible betrayal recently, and somebody turned their back on you. Or maybe they stabbed you in the back, somebody left you or somebody lied about you and you lost your job over it. Maybe your relationship has come to an end. I know there's a lot of women I've been talking to lately and this cancel culture. They have children that have said, I want no contact with you. I don't want to talk to you anymore. Ouch. That hurts. That's painful. How do you overcome that? How do you deal with that? How do you go about that? Well, I'm going to give you a few steps, depending on time today, 3-5 steps to overcome, to at least move through so that time does indeed work for you, my friend.

Time becomes a healer because you're processing your pain. Correctly, I don't want you to stay stuck. I don't want you to go deeper into the pit of despair. I don't want you to feel so angry and so bitter that if you get bumped into what jostles out of your vessel is the bitter gall of pain. I don't want that for you. So let's look at a few things. Let me give you the first one. We all know this and we've heard it and psychiatrists talk about it all the time. Pastors, and leaders, we all talk about it. But it is true, you have to come to acceptance. We remember the great serenity prayer. God give me the wisdom to know the difference between the things that I can change so I need the courage to go ahead and face it and change it, or the wisdom to know that this is something that I can accept. That's my choice. I can accept it. I can't kick against the goads and I can't ignore it. I can't turn a blind eye to it. I can't pretend that it's not there.

My braveheart sister, what are you pretending is not there? It's time to look at it and to come to acceptance. It happened. It was painful. It devastated you. The betrayal took your breath away. The loss has been overwhelming. True, it happened. But now you have to decide, what do you want to do with this? You can't seem to find your way out, but you can choose. There is a way out. You can feel the pain. You can honor yourself by acknowledging what you're feeling and still saying, I'm coming up out of this, tomorrow will be brighter. Tomorrow will be better. I will overcome. I will be healed. I always say this, just ride the waves. I remember when I was going through an excruciating painful and horrible experience.

The most pain I had experienced at that point in life. I had had something that was more fearful than that. When my daughter was fighting for her life after being struck by a truck as a pedestrian. Thou is very fearful, but she survived and so it was very, also very celebratory at the end to see the faithfulness of God. But what about when the thing, the prayer, the answer's no? You're not getting the restoration. You're not getting the resurrection. You're not getting the do-over. It's done. It's over. I mean you literally, your life has just been sliced in half before and after. That's where I was. I was in the aftermath, and there's no way this is ever going back. It's done. It happened, and I was in so much pain like heart broke, and I lost so much weight, and I was having panic attacks, and I was so devastated, and all my trigger things, all my little childhood things, things, a fear of abandonment and men don't champion you. They hurt you and they devastate your life and all the lies and all the limiting beliefs and all of it was going on. I just had to ride the wave when that emotion would come and I would feel pain coming from a distance. Moving towards me, almost like it was a horse on the horizon galloping towards me. I knew, here it comes, or, or truly the wave of the ocean. You see it coming, and all you know is that it's about to overtake you. You're just gonna fall engulfed in the waves, engulfed in the pain. That it overwhelmed me, and I would just feel it splashing over me like I was gonna drown, and I couldn't get out. But every day was a little bit better because I was processing my pain correctly. I was praying. I was seeking healing. I was choosing to heal. I was saying the right things and focusing on the right things, but when that pain came, I allowed myself to embrace it. I allowed myself to feel it. Honor me by saying, Dawn, yeah, girl, this hurts. You're going through it, baby girl, but you're going to be okay. You're going to live past this. This has come to pass, not to stay. And you know what? I have to tell you, I can remember seeing that wave coming again, or that horseman coming at me again on the horizon, I could feel that pain coming, and it would just about get to me, and all of a sudden, as I was healing, I would feel it dissipate, and just move away, like the Red Sea just parting, and I would just be walking through by God's grace. The pain was lessening. I was stronger. I was more assured of myself. My confidence had returned. The joy was coming and excitement for my future. I was making it through the storm. I was making it through the trauma. So acceptance.

Just know that those emotions come and they're not going to own you and they're not going to grip you. They're just a traveling companion. They're just going to walk with you for a little bit. Then they're going to take a turn and you're going to keep on going.

The second thing I'd really like to recommend for you if you're in this place is you have to talk to someone. Tell someone who has your interest at heart. Someone who cares about you. Someone who's not going to sit there and tell you, Oh, I remember the time when I went through that and I had this issue and I was hurt. You think you're hurt, I was hurt. No, they're okay to go shopping with, but that's not who you're going to tell your story to. You're also not going to tell your story to someone who's going to come back right away with shaming.

I was talking to a woman on the phone the other day and she's going through a lot of persecution in her job. In fact, it was really demonic. It was just this gossiping spirit that went after her to take her down. So she called a high-level colleague in another department or another company looking for some confidential advice. When she got on the phone with this man, the first thing out of his mouth he said to her was, Well, what did you do wrong? I mean when she told me that I'm gonna be honest with you I had some sassy frass rise up in me and I was like what are you kidding? No, no no, no as a coach and as a counsel that's the very last thing you asked I hope that what you said to him was, Thanks for the call. Bye now. You don't talk to that person. That judgment is not what you need at that time.

Now, I'm not saying you don't eventually have to answer that question. If you want to grow and you want freedom, eventually, you might have to look at the situation and say, How did I contribute? Where did I fall short? What could I have done better? How did I show up that maybe Exasperated this issue instead of bringing healing to it? I had to ask that. How did I contribute to the breakdown of my marriage? What did I do? I had to look at it honestly, even though it was painful and I wanted to be the innocent victim. In fact, I was innocent in many many ways but hurt people hurt people. As a survivor of trauma, I came into a marriage and brought all of that baggage with me. Then when I needed somebody to take it out on, all my pain and resentment, instead of the perpetrator, I took it out on my husband. Yeah, I contributed. You bet I did. Talk to someone.

Talk to someone who loves you Who will give you godly wisdom, who will give you support, and someone who will help you navigate and guide you into asking those tough questions eventually. But first, just share your heart, share your pain, and allow yourself to get to the place where you can explore the depth of your heartache.

The third thing that I would really like to recommend is, and I've already touched on it a little bit. You can make a decision that you don't want to be a victim. You can. You can decide. I want to be healthy. You know, I remember when I was going through this painful season of life, it was a domino effect because of the divorce because my husband left me. Then I left my job. I needed to step down because you can't be a woman pastor and go through a divorce. Then I lost My finances and then it just kept trickling and my friends and I felt very isolated and alone. But in any event, what I remember crying out to God was like, Lord, I don't want to be bitter. I don't want to be this jaded, cynical person. I've been happy. I've been positive. I've been powerful. I don't want to be weak. angry and mad and broken and devastated. Oh, I don't like being the gimmer anyway. It kind of goes against my core values or kind of how I'm wired to be a scrapper. But I did have to admit, I'm out y'all. This thing here is taking me out. But then I said to God, Lord, dying an old bitter woman is not on my bucket list. So I believe in the resurrection power. You're gonna have to raise me up because I literally feel dead. gutted, done. Every day I'd say, God, lift me up. Every day I needed another douse of that grace, Lord. I need buckets of grace, God. I need supernatural empowerment to face another day, God and He were faithful, but this is the thing I said, I don't want to be a victim.

So I had to do these things. I could not meditate on the wrongdoing. I could not meditate on what was done to me. I could not meditate or repeat or rehearse to others how vile this person was and how they did me wrong and how that person also did and what they did and did it. No. I took it to God in prayer, and I had a small circle, I had a few people that I could go ahead and just spew to. But for the rest of the world, I chose grace, I chose my words wisely, I chose to put a smile on my face, and my countenance, and carry the light of Christ. I remember smiling, and people thinking, Oh, you're happy, and one time, a friend said, You're doing better, you're smiling. I said, No. I'm hurting like crazy. Yeah, this sucks. I got a lot of pain. I feel it in the quiet place, but right now out here, when I smile, I activate over 140 muscles in my face. I think that's the math that sends messages to my brain to tell my brain that I'm happy. When a brain feels happy, my brain will start seeing things that are worthy of happiness. My brain will start showing me positive things and releasing those serotonins and dopamine chemicals that will make me feel well. I just chose happiness. I chose that I was going to not hurt someone for hurting me. I said I'm not going to retaliate. I'm not going to do paybacks. That's a snare and that's a trap. I'm going to speak blessings. I'm going to pray for the person who persecuted me and hurt me.

Now, I couldn't do that at first. I'll be honest with you. I'm not giving you Pollyanna here. I wanted to pray those precatory prayers, like God smashing his teeth in, God. But eventually, blessed are you when you mourn. Blessed are you when you also seek righteousness you're gonna be filled and you're gonna see God's goodness and his love. For me, I made a decision. I want freedom I want wholeness and I'm gonna not be a victim. I'm not gonna be a victim. That is not gonna be my identity. That is not gonna be my future my identity I am an overcoming daughter of the king.

Okay, the next thing I want to share with you is to go ahead and write the poison pen letter. Do you know what that is? The poison pen letter is where you get a piece of paper and you begin to write it down. Now you might be writing to an institution. You might be writing to an individual. You might even be writing to God. In sharing with Him that you feel hurt or disillusioned or disappointed in the decision that He made for your life. That's okay, God can handle it. Here's what you're going to do though. You're going to explore the depth of your pain and you do that through journaling. You do that through writing. This isn't the first time. A flowery rendition that, Oh, I'm gonna be nice about it. 'cause what if when I die somebody finds this? I want them to think that I really handled this pain. Well, no, forget that. That's not the letter you're writing. You're writing the letter that you pray no one ever sees 'cause when you're done, you're gonna rip it up or burn it up or shove it under your mattress, but you're gonna allow yourself to express your feelings. You're gonna say, Do you have any idea how you hurt me? Do you have any idea the pain that I'm experiencing? Do you know what you did to me? Do you know how you destroyed my life? Do you want to know what happened since then? Do you even care? How selfish can you be? That's the letter you're gonna write. Or if you're writing to God, God, I don't understand you. I'm disappointed. I don't even want to worship you right now. I'm so frustrated. I feel so alone. You said you wouldn't abandon me, but here I am feeling completely alone. Where are you, God? That's okay.

Write the letter and go ahead and allow yourself to express what you're feeling. In this way if you're stuck in your emotion or if you're numb or if you're in such bad denial that you can't feel you need to write the poison pen letter. Then when you're done, make it a moment. Go ahead and offer it as a sacrifice to God. As you rip it up or you burn it make it a memorial, write the date, and say this is when I became ready.

And finally, I want to say this to you. It's the last point that I offer. When you're ready, it's time to forgive. Now forgiveness just means that you're turning it over to the just judge who will do it right and you're letting him, dole out the punishment. If you're confused about who the just judge is, you know, it's God. God knows what's best. For me, when I'm ready to forgive, I acknowledge my pain. I acknowledge the depth of what was done for me. I don't skip to forgiveness right away until I've actually embraced the pain and felt it. Then I say, it's time to let it go. I'm not saying what you did is okay. I'm not saying I'm perfectly healed now. I'm not saying that you and I get to jump back into a relationship together. I'm not even saying that you get to be released from consequences because of what you've done, you might have to pay the price. But what I am saying is I'm not going to drag you around into my future. I'm done. I'm letting it go. It's in the past and I'm moving on. My confession, my faith, and my eyesight are towards the future.

So that's what I have for you, my bravehearted woman. I hope that you find value in this today. And as always, you know, I like to give you something this week. I'm not giving it away though, but I'm offering you, it's time to get my new book. I've written it just for you. The Making of a BraveHearted Woman: Courage, Confidence, and Vision in Midlife. It's available for purchase on Amazon on October 23. Get your copy today! We're going to be doing a lot of cool things with it, but I want you to have this book.

All right. Okay. I pray you find blessing and joy and peace and healing in your heart. This is Dawn Damon, the Brave Heart Mentor saying to you, that it's time to find your brave and live your vision!