Forgiving What You Can’t Forget Week 2 MT = Melissa Taylor
LT = Lysa TerKeurst MT: Hi, and welcome to
Week Two of our “Forgiving What You Can't Forget” online Bible study.
I'm Melissa Taylor. And again, I'm joined with author Lysa TerKeurst. How are you doing, Lysa?
LT: I'm well, thank you, Melissa. MT: Good. Good. Thanks for coming
back. Good to be with you again this week. LT: Thank you. I'm so excited about the study.
And you know, I always say that with a little bit of hesitation, because the reason someone
picks up this book is because they've been hurt. And so, I always want to just acknowledge that,
that while we're excited to do the study, I'm so sorry, for whatever reason it is, whatever's
happened to you, right, you know that that has caused you to be interested in this forgiveness
journey. But I'm so grateful. And I really want to say too that when I was writing this book,
I left an empty chair at the table. And so, you'll notice we welcome you to the gray table.
It's because I thought about you all the way through the writing of this message. And my
heart was so tender, not just because of the pain that I was processing and trying to heal from,
but because I know you've got pain in your life, too. And so, as we step into this study,
and we really start to make progress here, it's not always gonna be easy,
but we can get through this together as well. MT: And I love this week, you guys are going to
read about one of Lysa's counseling sessions. And I love that you share how you went to counseling,
because that just makes, gives me, the kind of courage to say, it's okay to go
to counseling. Alright. LT: Yeah,
MT: It is not a sign of weakness. I really think it's a sign of strength.
LT: I do too. And I'm not really sure where the stigma came from, of, you know,
you shouldn't go to counseling or whatever. I have a great Christian counselor. But I very much
recognize that not everyone has access to a great Christian counselor. And so, I wanted to provide
some of those insights that I gained in counseling to help people that maybe they don't have access
to counseling, or maybe their counselor isn't as versed as my counselor was in forgiveness.
MT: Well, you even go through an activity in chapter four from one of your counseling sessions,
that really you go through it in such detail, it makes it possible for us to
do this ourselves. Tell us about that session. LT: Well, I think this is one of the most holy
exercises I've ever done. So sometimes I think when people think of counseling, they think
we're separating emotional healing and spiritual truth. And that's not true. The reason I love what
my counselor encouraged me to do is it was really bringing both of those together at the same time.
And it gave me a practical way to apply biblical truth. And so, when,
you know, we alluded to last week, when I went to my counselor, and he said, “Do you want to heal?
and I was like, “Yes, I definitely want to heal.� And then he said, “Well, today's a good day to
start working on forgiveness.” And I thought, “are you crazy? Like, no, I can't work on forgiveness.�
And so, eventually, where we landed is he said, “Okay, well, let's just start with the pain.” And he
handed me a stack of three by five cards. And he said, “Why don't you just write one thing on each
card of how you're wounded or hurt or, you know, something that was causing you angst deep inside
of you?” And I thought, “okay, I can do that.” And so, I started writing one thing on each card of
something that had happened that caused me pain. I was really listing out all the facts of what
happened. And, it, it was such a great exercise, just that part of it even because I'd kept so
much of what was causing me to hurt. I kept so much of it locked inside. And
it's not that I was stuffing it. It's I didn't know what to do with it.
And people would say like, you need to get it all out. But how do you get it all out?
MT: Yeah, how do you do that? Yeah. LT: And then what is somebody supposed to do?
Like when you're trying to get it all out? Like what is somebody supposed to do? Like,
you know, sometimes when a friend is pouring their heart out, you don't always know what to say. And
I didn't want to put my friends in the awkward dynamic. And I was talking to my friends but like
getting all the pain out. I wasn't sure. MT: Right.
LT: But when Jim had me do this exercise, and I was writing all the cards down,
when I got to the very last one, and there were probably 40 cards laid out on his office floor.
He looked at me and he said the very best thing that someone could say he said,” I believe you.” And
he just dared to bear witness to that pain. And if no one else has ever done that for you today,
I want to do that for you. Friend, I believe you. I believe what happened that hurt you was
wrong. It should not have happened. And, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry that they did what they did,
or they said what they said, or they didn't say what they should have. I'm so sorry that
they stayed and hurt you or that they walked away. Whatever the case is, I am so, so sorry.
But I'm more convinced than ever, that you deserve to stop suffering because of what another person
has done to you. And the only way to sever the source of suffering is through this beautiful
gift that God has given the hurting human heart. And that's forgiveness. And Melissa, I also want
to say, you know, when dealing with forgiveness, another thing that was good about this exercise,
is that there's always a scale to pain. And so, I could see someone saying, “Well, I don't need to do
this exercise, writing out all my pain, because my pain was much, much smaller than maybe my
friend’s pain, or your pain, Lysa, or Melissa's pain or whatever.” And I just want to say,
you know, no matter what, pain in the context of what hurts you is consuming at times, and so,
don't minimize or trivialize what you've been through, if it hurt you.
MT: Right. It hurt you. LT: It needs tending to.
MT: Right. LT: And whether
you consider your pain an inconvenience or something small or something huge, catastrophic,
life altering, forgiveness applies to both. And anytime you've been wounded, there's an emotional
debt that's created there. And that's why Jesus teaches us to forgive those who have created these
debts. And He really refers to them as debts. And that's so true, because there is a cost
to every wounding. So, when Jim had me lay out the facts of how I was hurt, he then had me do the
exercise of going card by card by card, and saying out loud, having a marked moment, “I forgive this
person, for the fact of what happened.” And then he handed me a little stack of red pieces of felt.
And he said, “and just lay down a piece of felt on top of it symbolizing . . .
MT: I love this part LT: . . . that even if you don't feel
like forgiving, that the heavy lifting, the hard work of forgiveness, has already been accomplished
by what Jesus did on the cross.” MT: Yes. Right. Right.
LT: And that's, you know, I'm an over talker when I'm in counseling, and that's what I was saying to
Jim. “Jim, I don't want to feel fake about this.� And he said, “No, Lysa, just lay the piece of red
felt down. And after, you say, ‘I forgive this person for this fact of how they hurt me.’ Then
lay the red piece of felt down and say ‘whatever my feelings will not yet allow for the blood of Jesus
will surely cover it.’ “ And I did that card by card by card. “And whatever my feelings will not yet
allow for the blood of Jesus will surely cover.” MT: Yeah.
LT: And the beautiful thing is when I got to the very last card, and I turned around,
the pain wasn't staring me back anymore. You know, it wasn't the pain staring back at me.
It was the representation that Jesus has covered this, and He will carry me through it. And even
though at that point, there was still going to be emotional processing, that marked moment of
forgiveness did not feel like an unfair gift I was given to someone else. It truly felt like
God's gift to my hurting human heart. MT: I love that so much. It's so complicated. But
yet, what a beautiful visual to see it. And then, there's also a simplicity to it. But it doesn't
end there. It's like you said you didn't just walk away and be like, “okay , I forgave all of these
things. Jesus blood is going to cover what my feelings aren't there yet,” but then even a month
down the road, two months down the road . . . LT: Six minutes down the road. . .
MT: Six minutes down the road, six years down the road, there's still things that are gonna bring
back what you forgave. LT: Yes.
MT: And Aren't you tempted to hold on to that and be there all over
again? What do you do with those triggers? LT: Right. So when you get triggered in your pain,
it can feel like maybe I'm a forgiveness failure. Or maybe forgiveness doesn’t work for me. Because
you think if I've forgiven I shouldn't have these hard feelings. But what we have to understand is
that forgiveness is both a decision and a process. And so, I've walked through the decision to
forgive the facts of what happened, but now I have to walk through the process of forgiving for the
impact that this has all had on me. That's that emotional debt we were talking about. There's
a cost to this. And I think we've done people a disservice when we just say forgive and forget.
MT: Right. Because we're told that move on. Yeah. LT: Exactly, forgive and forget.
MT: Get over it. LT: Exactly. And
I guess what my counselor helped me see. And in all those hours of studying in the Bible,
I started to recognize: No. God leaves space for emotional processing and emotional healing.
And that's okay. Forgiveness does mean that you forgive for the fact of what happened.
And then it also means that you have to walk through the emotional healing process to forgive
for the impact that this had on you. And so, when triggers happen, it's just letting you
know there's more pain to be tended to. And it's time for another marked moment of forgiveness.
And then I just literally will have to stop wherever I'm at and say, “Okay, this is helping
me become aware of how this has affected me; the impact that this wounding had on me.�
And so, I need to forgive. Now I'm going to have a marked moment of forgiveness for this anxiety
or this fear, or, you know, this chaos that's happening, or this emotional meltdown that I'm
like, I'm gonna hide whatever. MT: Right. Right.
LT: But I do want to say it's normal. It's normal. These triggers are not evidence that you're
forgiveness failure. They're not a setback. They really are a setup to help make you aware that
there's more healing work that needs to happen. MT: Well, and I love how you really did a good
job of telling that story. Because you talk about at one point, I don't know,
you have a freak-out moment, and there's a delivery girl at the front door, like watching,
you have this freak-out moment. LT: And if you are that girl,
please forgive me. I'm so so sorry. MT: She's just like . . . [setting package down]
LT: I honestly did not see her, I was just having a moment, I was slamming the door and slamming the
door and slamming the door. And then all of a sudden, I see her standing on the porch holding
this package, and her eyes were like as big as saucers. And I didn't know what to do. And she
didn't know what to do. So, she laid the package down and gets in her truck and drives away. And
I just remember thinking “I need to chase after her; offer her a cookie, something.”
MT: Right. But you know, it's like, we can laugh about that now. It wasn't funny that day for
sure. We can laugh about that now. But you also talk about a little bit later is how you start
to make the choices in your reactions. And for your own health, to be able to stop and process
or maybe withdraw or quit talking or do something whatever you have to do, get in God's Word to, to
get through it in a different way. LT: Yeah, and something I didn't write
in the book that I want to give this to you because I think this will really help.
When you get triggered in your pain, this is a physiological situation. I mean, this is normal.
What's happening is the amygdala part
of our brain where trauma is stored . . . MT: Say that again, the what part of our brain?
LT: The amygdala. MT: Amygdala. Okay. Yeah, I got you said
something like that. I wasn't sure. The amygdala. LT&MT: Amygdala. Part of our brain.
LT: That's where our deep emotions - our trauma - are stored. So, when that gets triggered,
it immediately makes that kick in - that fight, flight, freeze, I added freaked out, right,
that's obviously what I do. But that's sort of when your logical thinking
has shifted into emergency reaction mode, you know. And so, you've got to give yourself just
a few minutes. And here are three things that will help tremendously if you get triggered and pain.
Number one: recognize it takes 20 minutes for that amygdala to calm down and for your logical
thinking to come back on. MT: Oh wow.
LT: So, don't make big judgments about your life in that 20 minutes. Don't make phone calls in that
20 minutes, don't make accusations… MT: Oh, definitely don't even get
your phone. Don't even look. LT: Do not get on social media in
20 minutes. Don't make a judgment of how horrible. Your life is in that 20 minutes.
Just recognize I need a 20 minute pause right here or I need to just put myself in kind of a space
of, maybe I do need to turn on some praise music. I like to walk outside sometimes. I
even take my shoes off, I look up into the sky and tell myself “The sky is not falling�
because I have such a propensity to, like drive it all the way to the worst-case scenario, right?
So that's one thing, give yourself 20 minutes. Take a walk. Do some deep breathing. Get in,
you know, read the word if you want to; listen to praise music; whatever; but 20 minutes is
really important. Drink, number two, four ounces of water. four ounces of water has been proven to
reduce our anxiety level. Who knew? MT: I never heard that.
LT: How have I gone 51 years of life and never knew, drink four ounces of
water and it will help you. MT: Right. Wow. Yeah.
LT: And number three, give yourself some grace. And just say to yourself out loud,
“the world is not ending. My life is not falling apart. This one area may fall apart. Or this one
area may be crashing or this one area. But the sum total of my one incredible life is not ruined. I
can have a bad day. I can have a bad season. I can have some bad years. But that does not mean that I
have a bad life. And I think it's so important that we coach ourselves and remind ourselves,
don't start buying into the enemies lies. Remember what the enemy does, he comes to steal,
kill, and destroy. So, we do not need to have thinking that aligns with anything
that he is pitching to us because his attacks are lies. He is the father of lies.
MT: That is so good. Are you not so glad that you watched this video to the end today? Because now I
know I have amygdala in there somewhere and but just everything you just said about those three
steps that are not in the book, you guys, but just to help you get through and everything else that
we're going to be reading this week. This is just we are in for a great week. So you guys,
go ahead and map out some time. Go ahead and put it in your schedule. Carve out some time to read
your chapters this week and to be able to open your Bibles and get into God's word.
And we are going to have a great week too. LT: Thank you so much.
MT: Yes. Absolutely. Thank you. And you guys, don't forget God's Word. That is the truth.
That is what we need. We need it. And when you know the truth, and live the truth,
LT&MT: it really does change everything. MT: That's right. You guys have a great week.
Lysa, thanks for joining us again. LT: Thank you.