I never realized how strong I was until I had to forgive someone who wasn’t sorry and accept an apology I would never receive. That takes a kind of emotional labor people often underestimate. I spent years of my life justifying my anger and unforgiveness almost as if it was proof that the abuse mattered. Releasing my anger felt disloyal to the unhealed version of myself. But when he died, I was forced to confront the reality that there would never be earthly accountability, confrontation or an apology. My strength was born through an understanding that I must forgive, just as I have been forgiven, even when nothing about the situation asked for it and nothing about it felt fair.
I wasted so much time wearing anger and unforgiveness like armor. Bitterness kept everything tightly bound and always remembered. Resentment began to harden my heart and avoidance kept me moving away from anything that felt too vulnerable. I filtered a lot of my life through the expectation of betrayal. Unforgiveness and anger shaped the way I moved through the world, the way I trusted people, and the way I understood safety. I told myself I needed it and let it manifest a stronghold that was unexpectedly painful. What I thought was protection was actually my own confinement.
I felt resentful of being left to hold together what his absence and actions had fractured. The heaviness was something I was able to work through bits of pieces of, but resentment grows easily in places where closure feels impossible. The finality of death tempted me to cling even tighter to my anger and everyone kept telling me that anger is a part of grief. Anger felt like the only remaining connection between me and everything that had gone unresolved. It was consuming me. Outwardly I projected the “I’m okay” facade, but spiritually I was exhausted from carrying wounds I no longer knew how to release and heal.
It was in the depths of that inner exhaustion after his passing that my mother, who could see the struggle I faced, placed two books into my hand. The Bible and The Bait of Satan by John Bevere. I disappeared into both books. John Bevere explained that “strongholds, originally created to “protect” us, become a source of torment and distortion because they war against the knowing or knowledge of God.” I couldn’t ignore the truth anymore, my own stronghold born of anger, offense and a lack of forgiveness was the true pain I was feeling and mine had structure and heat to it.
Through hours of reading and prayer I began to understand that resentment and unforgiveness was keeping me emotionally tied to someone who no longer had the power to change, explain, or repair what they had done. I was forced to recognize that closure would never come in the form I had hoped for, and that peace would have to be something I created for myself through my relationship with Christ. It was HIS armor I needed to have all along, the belt of truth, breastplate of righteousness, shoes of the gospel of peace, shield of faith, helmet of salvation, and sword of the Spirit. It was God who helped me realize I was arguing with a silence that would never answer back. It was through Him that I was able to forgive what seemed unforgivable.
Anger and unforgiveness didn’t need to be a part of the process, even though it was a part of mine. I was taught that anger can be a secondary emotion to the hurt, offense, betrayal, pain, fear and disappointment I spent 11 years of my life drowning in. Strangely when someone dies anger can lose its target, but not its energy and all of that energy remained in me until I understood what forgiveness really meant, until I understood how to forgive.
Clarity formed as my heart became more tender and I recognized that forgiveness was never about excusing what was done, it was about refusing to let what happened continue to have authority over me. I could acknowledge the abuse, the betrayal, the absence, the anger and every unanswered question without continuing to carry it with me. I could surrender it all to God and be free of it. I could surrender the desire for an apology I would never receive, the accountability I would never witness, and the explanation I would never get. I could leave those things with God and finally stop demanding that my healing come from the person who had wounded me, just as it was never supposed to. This is what God was teaching me.
Forgiveness did not rewrite my story, it gave me permission to grieve without remaining bound to the person who caused the grief. I could finally tell the truth about what happened without having to live inside of it. I could remember without rehearsing the offense. I was able to release the resentment and unforgiveness I clung so tightly to. I could acknowledge what was broken without making brokenness my identity. And I could finally understand that peace was not something I would receive when he apologized. Peace was something I could receive from Christ even when the apology never came. I know now that I don’t have to remain angry to honor what I survived. I can remember. I can grieve without anger. I can tell the truth. And I can forgive.I am no longer willing to let what happened determine how I navigate the world. What I once wore as armor that confined me and created a stronghold, I was finally able to lay down and be free of it.
Ephiesians 4:31-32 Let all bitterness, wrath, anger and clamour, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice. And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in CHrist forgave you.
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