I Cannot Tell Forgiving From Forgetting

Somebody told you to put it behind you. Probably more than one somebody.

And you tried, in the only way the phrase suggests, which is by not thinking about it. And you were fairly good at that for about a week at a time, and then something would bring it back, and the coming back felt like a failure.

So now you have a test, and it is a test you fail every time. If you can still remember it, you have not forgiven it. Meanwhile the promise has stood the whole thirty years, and nobody has ever once mentioned that.

That test is not from scripture. It is from a phrase somebody used at a kitchen table in about nineteen ninety, and it has been running your inner life ever since.

Before we go further, and this goes first on this subject always.

If the repeated thing is somebody frightening you, controlling you or hurting you, then this is not a forgiveness question and I am not going to treat it as one. Forgiveness has never once meant staying where somebody is doing harm, and nobody who cares about you would ask you to take it again. Talk to somebody qualified where you live, this week, and if there is danger in that house, contact an emergency service or a domestic violence line today.

For everybody else, let me take the test away, because it is not one and it never was.

As far as the east is from the west

There is a line in Psalm 103 about distance, and the metaphor is chosen with great care.

As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us (Psalm 103:12, King James Version)

Removed from us. Not erased. Not deleted from the record of what happened. Removed from us, which is a claim about location and about who is carrying it.

That is a distance metaphor, not a memory metaphor. It says the thing has been taken away from where you are, and it says nothing at all about whether anybody remembers it.

You are describing distance where you have been reading amnesia, and Psalm 103 has never once said the memory disappears. Psalm 103:12 removes the transgression from us rather than from the record, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a woman keep a memory and be free of a thing at the same time.

Read the direction too. East from west, which is the one pair of directions with no meeting point. It is a picture of a separation that does not close, and separation is a very different thing from erasure.

You have been carrying a thing that scripture describes as removed, and no verse has ever once made the forgetting the evidence. The passage puts the distance between the person and the offense, and the Spirit of God is the one who takes a false test out of a woman's hands.

Where the phrase came from and what it cost

Let me be fair to whoever said it, because the phrase is usually kindness with poor equipment.

Put it behind you is somebody trying to say: I do not want this to keep hurting you. That is a good intention and there is nothing wrong with the heart behind it.

But the phrase describes a spatial operation the mind cannot perform. You cannot put a memory behind you by deciding to. Memory does not take instructions.

It is written that our transgressions are removed from us as far as east is from west, and the Spirit of God is the one who does that removing. You have been graded by a task the mind cannot perform, and no verse has ever once set it.

So the phrase sets a task that is impossible, and then the impossibility becomes evidence of a defect in the person who was told to do it.

That is the cost. Thirty years of a woman failing a test that nobody could pass, and drawing conclusions about her own heart from the failing.

You are failing a task the mind cannot perform, and the failure has never once been about your heart. Psalm 103:12 makes it a distance rather than a deletion, and the Holy Spirit is the one who removes an impossible assignment from somebody who has been graded by it for decades.

You made a promise and you have been keeping it with the memory intact, and the covenant has never once required an empty head. It is written that our transgressions are removed from us as far as east is from west, and the Spirit of God is the one who holds a memory and a release together in one person.

Say it, and then say the second half

Here is the assignment, and the first sentence deliberately includes the memory rather than working around it.

Say out loud, alone: I remember it, and I forgive it.

Both halves of that first sentence. The remembering stays in. Saying it that way settles, in your own hearing, that the two go together.

You are keeping every detail and clearing the debt at once, and Psalm 103 has never once asked for the memory as the price. Psalm 103:12 describes a distance rather than a deletion, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a woman remember and be free in the same hour.

Then say out loud what you will do differently.

Something like: I remember what happened at my mother's, and I forgive it, and I am not going to be the one who arranges that visit this year.

You are able to remember and to release in the same sentence, and one has never once undone the other. Psalm 103:12 removes the transgression from the person rather than from the record, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present when a woman says both parts in one breath.