How to Forgive Someone Who Hurt You Deeply

Forgiveness is one of the most commanded and least explained things in Christian life. You have been told to do it. You may have been told you are required to do it. What almost nobody explains is what it actually is — and because of that, a great many sincere people spend years trying to manufacture a feeling that was never the assignment.

Four Things Forgiveness Is Not

Most of the difficulty comes from a definition problem. Clear these away first, because if you are trying to do any of them, you are attempting the wrong task.

• It is not declaring them innocent. What they did was wrong. Forgiveness does not revise that.
• It is not forgetting. You will remember. Memory is not the same as ownership.
• It is not reconciliation. Reconciliation requires two people and, often, changed behaviour. Forgiveness requires one.
• It is not a feeling. If it were, it could not be commanded. You cannot be commanded to feel something.

That last one deserves emphasis, because it is where most people conclude they have failed. They wait to feel forgiving, do not feel it, and decide they are incapable.

What It Actually Is

Forgiveness is transferring ownership of justice. It is moving the debt out of your hands and into Christ’s — where it has already been paid.

The scripture is precise about the division of labour. “I, the Lord, will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men.” Notice the structure. God reserves the right to judge. You are required to release.

That is a relief if you let it be. You are not being asked to determine whether they deserve it, whether they have changed, or whether justice has been served. Those are not your jurisdiction. You are being asked to stop being the one who carries it.

Why Holding On Feels Like Power

Unforgiveness feels like control. It feels like the last piece of leverage you have over someone who took something from you. Setting it down feels like letting them win.

I know this feeling well. Years ago a senior executive humiliated me in front of my wife, then made an inappropriate gesture toward one of my managers. When I confronted him he told me flatly I would never be promoted while he was over me. I was not angry at first — I was exposed. Then the anger came, and it grew.

I began writing it out at night. Every injustice, every insult, every reason he should not lead anyone. Page after page. It felt powerful, like building a case. But I noticed the more I wrote, the more agitated I became. Heaven felt further away, not closer.

The truth is that unforgiveness does not bind the offender to consequences. It binds you to the offender. It ties your emotional life to their memory. It replays scenes on their schedule, not yours.

The Process, Step by Step

Here is what I have watched work, done in this order.

1. Write what happened. Plainly and completely. Not a summary — the actual account.
2. Write how it made you feel. Then, and now. Do not tidy it.
3. Write what you came to believe about yourself because of it. This is the buried one, and it is usually the real binding. “I should have stopped it.” “I cannot trust my own judgement.” “I am the kind of person this happens to.”
4. Name the debt. What did they take? Say it specifically.
5. Transfer it. Say and write the five surrenders: I give this to the Savior. I forgive myself. I forgive the person or organization. I let this go. I will not pick this up again.
6. Cover the page. Take a red pen and write those declarations across what you wrote until the words underneath are no longer visible.

The physical act matters more than it sounds like it should. Something written and then deliberately covered is different from something merely considered.

The Delete Moment

One night, after typing another page against that executive, I leaned back. A thought came — not loud, not dramatic. You cannot carry this. Give it to Me.

I stared at the screen. All my arguments. All my justification. Every carefully constructed paragraph. Deleting it would feel like surrender. Like losing.

Then Alma 7:11–12 came to mind — that He suffered pains and afflictions, that He might know how to succor His people. Not just sins. Humiliation. Threats. Injustice. He had already paid for this. Why was I insisting on carrying it?

My hand hovered. Then I pressed delete. The screen went blank. And something inside me went quiet. Peace did not explode. It settled.

Within a short time that man was gone and a new leader asked why I was not running the branch. But that was not the real promotion. The real promotion happened the night I deleted the file. Forgiveness did not excuse him. It freed me.

If You Cannot Do It Yet

You may reach this point and find you simply cannot. That is not failure and it is not rebellion.

Do this instead: write the person a letter you will never send. Tell them everything — every memory, every wound, every thing you never got to say. Do not moderate it. Then set it down and leave it.

I gave that instruction to a young woman who had worked through one hundred thirty-five items and froze at the last one. She went home for the holidays and wrote it. When she came back in January she had also written about the Savior — about how He had already carried the other one hundred thirty-five, and how she had decided she would not carry this one either. Not because it was fair. Because she refused to carry him any longer.

Sometimes the item that feels impossible becomes possible only after the ones around it are gone. Work the list. Come back to the hard one. The process page has the steps, and The Rubber Band Ball walks through the whole thing.

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