Reconciliation – Part
What About Memories, Scars, Etc.?
In dealing with relationships one thing that comes up is: What about the memories, hurts, scars (emotional as well as physical)? Because of broken relationships a lot of people do get abused and emotionally scarred.
Often these people have heard or have been counseled that when we forgive, we forget. So when they cannot forget (what has been done to them) they begin to question their forgiveness as well as their own spiritual life.
I would venture to say that there are some things that we will never forget because the memories, scars and hurts are too deep, but this does not mean that the person has not forgiven. But we need to think about what do we do with the memories, hurts and scars?
There are several things that I would like to address.
We need to keep in mind that we cannot immediately forget and that some wounds we will never forget because they are too deep. Keeping this in mind we should not feel guilty if we find ourselves not forgetting. Often this is where Satan whispers in our ears that we have not really forgiven because we still remember and we find ourselves reliving the incident again in our mind.
Because we relive these things over in our mind we find that this is where the real battle takes place. We allow the offense to come into our mind and we find ourselves replaying the ordeal over and over. To help us in this area we should not brood over the offense. This is where the renewing of our mind comes in and we begin to saturate ourselves with the Word of God. Remember that “we cannot keep the birds from flying over our heads, but we can keep them from building a nest on our heads.” So it is with these thoughts as well. We might find them constantly coming to us, but we do not need to allow them to stay; we do not need to brood over them.
To help keep from brooding over hurts we should not raise the issue again. Yes, we have forgiven, but we have not so easily forgotten because the hurt is so very deep, therefore we must decide as an act of our will NOT to raise the issue again.
To not raise the issue again also means that we do not indiscriminately share it with others. But, it might be necessary to go to someone trustworthy and discriminately share, not only to get it off your chest, but for praying with someone about as well. Remember: Satan is the one who is trying to defeat us in this area with clever schemes, which I will be sharing about later on in this series on relationships.
One positive step that we can take is to learn to praise the Lord. On this side of eternity we will not understand everything, but we know that He does all things well and we can lift up our hearts to Him in praise and adoration. Paul said in 2 Corinthians 4:8 that we will often be “perplexed, but not in despair.”
We can thank Him for what He has done in our own lives, that even through this experience we have learned a new level of love. God is love and He manufactures nothing else.
I said in a previous chapter that when a broken relationship is handled correctly it can result in spiritual growth. The same thing applies here. God can take something that is ugly and make something beautiful out of it. God does all things well. Amen?