My Biggest Step of Healing

For most of my life, my heart carried a deep, quiet pain. It stayed with me until I learned to forgive, both the people who hurt me and myself. That healing began with a memory from when I was just three years old.

Let me back up and start from the beginning.

In my early childhood I grew up in Cobb County, Georgia, around Smyrna, Austell and Powder Springs. One thing was always certain on the weekends: my father and my uncles, my mother’s brothers, would be drinking. That was true in a lot of homes back then. What made ours different was how it ended. The weekend would start great. The holiday would start great. But sooner or later, the fighting would begin.

That was the backdrop of most of my childhood. But one memory stood above the rest, and I carried its pain in my heart for most of my life.

I was three. My dad was very drunk and upset that weekend, and he attacked my mama. He knocked her down and dragged her down the street. There was a heavy downpour earlier, and the road was wet and muddy in some spots. My older sister, who was eight, my little sister, who was two, and I ran behind them, crying, “Don’t hurt my mama! Don’t hit my mama!”

I remember running around to the front of him and shouting, “If you don’t leave my mama alone, I’m going to kill you.” I was three years old. He looked down and stared at me intently for a while. Then he stopped, dropped my mama’s leg, and walked away.

We went to our neighbor’s house. I still remember my mama turning her skirt around so the mud wouldn’t get on the neighbor’s dining room chair.

That pain followed me throughout my childhood, adolescence, and young adult years. I used it as fuel on the football field, everywhere I played. But it also started to affect how I treated the women in my life. So my forgiveness had to reach further than what had been done to me. It also had to cover what I had done to others.

I had a lot to learn. I had to reshape the behavior the young version of me had picked up. I listened to great motivational speakers. I practiced positive affirmations, new habits and daily routines. They helped, but the healing still didn’t come.

Early on in church, I was taught that when someone trespasses against you, you should forgive and forget. That wasn’t working for me. I replayed this memory, and many others, over and over. On top of the trauma, I kept reliving the pain of failed relationships, failed plans and every disappointment in between. It was a never-ending cycle.

Then I had an honest conversation with the Lord. I said, “Lord, I can forgive, and I do forgive. You know my heart. I cannot forget the memory, but I can forget the pain.”

In that moment, it felt like a vise grip let go of my heart, and I was filled with joy.

That was over five years ago. Healing took time, and it still does. Even sharing this story with you is another step on my journey. But that big step was one of the best things I have ever done.

So I encourage you today: forgive. You may never forget the memories, but you can let go of the pain they caused, so that you can heal.

God’s Word puts it this way:

“Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.”

Isaiah 43:18–19 (KJV)

“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”

Isaiah 43:18–19 (NIV)

Thank you for reading, and for taking time out of your day for this word of encouragement.