How Many Times?

By

Pastor B.J. Knefley

A young girl approached me crying, and through her tears, she asked, “How many times do I have to do this?” I soon realized she was talking about forgiving her father for abandoning her as a baby. The pain of that rejection was real. Entering adolescence seemed to make it even more difficult. Even though I could answer her question, the pain would remain. Peeling away the layers is like ripping a bandage off the skin; it hurts, and no matter how many times you do it, it still hurts. 

If you haven’t learned this yet, forgiveness is tough. There are no simple steps or formulas. Yes, God can forgive and forget, but we can’t. That’s part of the problem. We remember everything: every pain, every word, and every action. But God doesn’t ask us to forget. What He asks is that we release the other person. As the saying goes, forgiveness is setting the captive free, only to realize the captive is me.

Part of forgiveness is learning how to deal with wounds. This means we must bring them into the light and remember them. We often don’t want to remember; we want to move on and forget. However, people who try to forget often find that the pain shows up in other ways. Eating disorders and addictions are just two of many results of unresolved hurts. They eat away at us from the inside, and despite our desire to hide, we can’t.

The answer to the question, “How many times?” is as many times as necessary. Even at my age, I have seen things resurface that I hadn’t remembered, and I am again forced to confront something from my past. Why does that happen? Simply because we all tend to stuff things down. What I have discovered is that the place where I’ve been storing these things is starting to leak, and I can’t contain them anymore. We no longer have the energy to suppress and deny. The emotions we’ve pushed down begin to show themselves in other ways. Often, the only solution is to start the forgiveness process that we’ve kept at bay for so long. Today might be the day. Think about it.