Faith & Family Daily

I Spent 9 Years Trying to Forgive Him — Until I Realized I'd Been Doing It Wrong the Whole Time

Everyone told me to "just forgive and move on." Nobody told me that forgiving was never the same thing as forgetting. The day I finally understood the difference, the weight I'd carried since my divorce began to lift — and it started with one simple book.

By Margaret Ellison · June 8, 2026

If you're carrying a hurt you can't seem to put down — a betrayal, a divorce, a loss that still aches years later — and you're tired in a way Sunday never seems to fix, please read this all the way to the end. It is not your fault. And there is a far gentler way through than the one you've been told.

Let me ask you something, and be honest with yourself.

Have you ever:

Carried a hurt — a divorce, a betrayal, a loss — for years longer than you ever thought you would?

Been told to "just forgive and let it go" — and felt like a failure because you couldn't?

Forgiven someone in your heart on Sunday… then laid awake at 2am reliving the whole thing anyway?

Believed that because you still felt the pain, you must not have really forgiven?

Felt exhausted in a way that has nothing to do with sleep, and opened your Bible looking for peace… only to close it more confused than when you started?

If you just nodded at even one of those, please keep reading. Because I want you to know something.

I was that woman.

After almost three decades, my marriage ended in a way I never saw coming. And in the years that followed, I did everything a good Christian woman is supposed to do. I went to church every single Sunday. I prayed. I told everyone — and myself — that I'd forgiven him.

But deep down, where the secrets are kept, I knew it wasn't true.

Because I couldn't forget. And I had spent my whole life believing that forgiving and forgetting were the same thing. So every time the memory came back — and it always came back — I'd think: I must not have really forgiven. What kind of Christian can't even do that?

The guilt piled on top of the hurt. The hurt hardened into a bitterness I couldn't shake. And underneath all of it I was just… tired. Exhausted by a fight I couldn't see and couldn't seem to win.

I knew the answer was supposed to be in my Bible. So I tried. I started a reading plan every January with real intention. I'd make it into Leviticus, read pages about animal sacrifices, and wonder what on earth any of it had to do with the weight I was carrying. By March I'd slow down. By April I'd quietly stop. And the one place that could have set me free stayed dusty on the table.
For years I thought the problem was me. My discipline. My faith. Maybe my heart was just too hard.

It wasn't any of those things.

The real reason I couldn't let it go

Here is what no one ever told me — and it changed everything.

Forgiving was never meant to mean forgetting.

I had blended the two together my whole life. And because I'm a human being with a memory, I could never forget — so I believed I could never forgive. I was failing at something God never actually asked me to do.

What He does ask is something different. Gentler. Possible. But I had never understood that, because I'd never been able to get through the very book that explains it. I'd open my Bible to words written 2,000 years ago, with no idea who wrote them, when, or why — and close it more lost than before. It was like reading old letters from someone I'd never met and wondering why I didn't feel close to them.

The freedom was right there on the page the whole time. I just couldn't read my way to it.

4 lies about forgiveness that keep good women stuck

Lie #1 — "Forgiving means forgetting."

It doesn't. You can release someone fully and still remember exactly what happened. Memory is not a sign you failed.

Lie #2 — "Forgiving means it was okay."

It never makes the wrong okay. It simply takes the weight of it out of your hands.

Lie #3 — "If I still feel the pain, I haven't really forgiven."

Forgiveness is a decision you can make long before the feeling catches up. The peace comes after — sometimes much later.

Lie #4 — "I have to feel ready before I can forgive."

You don't. And waiting to feel ready is exactly what keeps the weight on your shoulders for years.

If you've believed even one of these, please don't carry shame for it. Almost every woman I know was taught them too — and they're the reason so many of us stay stuck for so long.

Everything I tried before — and why it never worked

I tried to "just let it go." It came right back.

I tried more church. The sermons were good, but for an hour on Sunday — then I'd go home and cry in the car.

I tried the Bible apps. They were so cluttered with notifications and other people's posts that they pulled me away from the very thing I'd opened them for.

I tried the beautiful hardcover studies. Thin paper that bled through my pen, spines that cracked, and print so small my eyes ached before my heart ever warmed.

I tried willpower. That lasted until the third week of January.

The desire was never the problem. I was never the problem. I just needed someone to finally walk me through it — slowly, in plain words, in a way that fit a real life and real eyes.

So how do you finally read — and understand — the Word that sets you free?

That's when I found something that changed everything: a 52-week guided Bible study that walks you through the entire Bible, one theme at a time, from Genesis to Revelation — and explains it in plain words before you ever begin.

Here's why it finally worked when nothing else had:

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When I got to the weeks on the Psalms, I met people who cried out from the same dark places I knew. When I got to the Gospels, I finally understood what Jesus actually taught about forgiveness — and how different it was from the impossible thing I'd been beating myself up over for nine years.

What happened to me

For the first time in my life, I opened my Bible in the morning and didn't want to close it. I'd read something and think about it all day. Verses I'd read a dozen times suddenly meant something new — because I finally understood what they were saying.

And slowly, week by week, the weight began to lift.

The memories didn't vanish — I'd been wrong to expect that. But they stopped owning me. I forgave him. Really forgave him — without pretending it never happened. The bitterness loosened its grip. And I felt a peace I hadn't felt in years.

By the end of the year I'd also done the one thing I'd been trying to do my whole adult life. I finished the whole Bible — and I finally knew the God I'd been reading about.

Now my grandchildren see my Bible open on the table. That's the woman I always wanted to be.

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