I Didn't Want to Forgive.

I've gone back and forth about writing this because, truthfully, there are parts of my life that I don't think belong on the internet.

Especially when it comes to my daughter.

But I've also been thinking a lot about forgiveness lately. Not the kind you talk about in church or read about in the Bible and nod your head because it sounds like the right thing to do.

I'm talking about having to actually forgive somebody when every part of you doesn't want to.

Someone very close to me made decisions that affected my little girl. I'm not going to get into what happened, who it was, or any of the details. That's not why I'm writing this, and it's not a story I feel entitled to tell in its entirety.

What I can talk about is what happened to me because of it.

I was fucking furious.

I don't know how else to put it.

I've been angry before. I've had people lie to me, screw me over, disappoint me. I've had my share of arguments and falling outs. And God knows I've been the one in the wrong plenty of times, too.

But I've never experienced anger quite like this.

It's different when it's your kid.

I remember just not being able to understand it. I kept going over everything in my head, getting more and more pissed off. And the fact that it was someone close to me made it so much worse.

I didn't want to hear explanations. I didn't want to find a way to understand their side. I sure as hell didn't want to talk about forgiveness.

I was angry, and as far as I was concerned, I had every right to be.

If I'm being honest, I think I wanted to stay angry.

It felt better than anything else I was feeling at the time.

And then came the part I really wasn't prepared for.

The heartbreak.

I don't know exactly when the anger started giving way to it, but I remember realizing that underneath all of that rage, I was just really fucking hurt.

This was someone I loved.

That's what made it so difficult.

It would have been easier if it had been some stranger. Someone I didn't know or care about. I could have been angry, dealt with it, and moved on with my life.

But it wasn't.

And I couldn't wrap my head around that.

I kept thinking about the relationship. About the trust. About how you get to a point where someone you love has done something that changes the way you look at them.

I think that hurt more than I wanted to admit.

The anger was one thing. I knew what to do with anger. I've always been pretty good at getting pissed off and pushing through whatever is in front of me.

But being heartbroken over someone who was still very much a part of my life?

I didn't know what the hell to do with that.

And the whole time, I had my daughter to think about.

My little girl, who I love more than I could ever properly explain, was the one caught up in something she never should have had to be.

I couldn't fix that.

I couldn't go backward and make different decisions for somebody else. I couldn't undo what had already happened.

That was a hard thing for me to accept as her dad.

You spend so much time thinking about how you're going to protect your children. You worry about strangers and the world outside your front door. You think about all the things that could go wrong.

You don't spend nearly as much time preparing yourself for the possibility that someone you love could be the reason your child gets hurt.

At least I didn't.

And I was struggling with it.

I was struggling with the anger, with the sadness, with what it meant for the relationship, and eventually with something else.

My faith.

Because I'm a Christian.

And I believe in forgiveness.

I've believed in it my entire life. I've asked God for it more times than I can count. I've needed His grace on days when I absolutely did not deserve it.

But when it came time for me to forgive this person, I couldn't do it.

Worse than that, I didn't want to.

I remember wrestling with that part of it because I knew exactly what the Bible said. I didn't need somebody to explain forgiveness to me. I understood what I was supposed to do.

I just couldn't understand how I was supposed to do it with this.

How do you forgive somebody when your daughter is the one who was affected?

How do you look past what happened when you know you'll never be able to forget it?

And how do you forgive someone you love when part of you is still trying to understand how they could have done this in the first place?

I didn't have an answer.

I had plenty of anger. Plenty of hurt. Plenty of reasons to justify holding on to both.

But no answer.

And eventually I found myself turning to God because I genuinely didn't know where else to go with it.

I wasn't looking for some grand spiritual moment. I wasn't trying to become a better example of a Christian. I wasn't thinking about writing an article or what lesson I might someday take away from all of it.

I was just tired of hurting.

I was tired of being angry.

And I was heartbroken.

I needed help.

I needed God to help me forgive someone I couldn't bring myself to forgive.

And I think, for me, admitting that was one of the hardest parts.

I've always been the type of guy who wants to figure things out. If something is wrong, I want to fix it. If there's a problem, I want to do something about it.

But I couldn't fix this.

And I couldn't force myself to feel differently.

So I prayed.

I prayed about the anger. I prayed about the hurt. I prayed about my daughter. I prayed about the person who had caused all of it, which was probably the hardest part.

I kept going back to God with the same thing because I didn't know what else to do.

I wasn't asking Him to make what happened okay.

I don't think it ever will be.

I wasn't asking Him to make me forget about it, either.

I just needed Him to help me find a way to forgive without feeling like I was betraying my daughter by doing so.

That was something I had really struggled with.

For a while, the thought of forgiving this person felt almost like I was choosing them over her.

I know that might not make sense to everyone, but that's how it felt.

And I had to work through that with God.

I had to understand that forgiving someone didn't mean I was agreeing with what they'd done. It didn't mean that trust was automatically restored or that things could just go back to the way they were.

I could still protect my daughter. I could still be angry about what had happened. I could still recognize that some choices have consequences that don't simply disappear.

I didn't have to abandon any of that to forgive.

And somewhere through all those prayers, something finally changed.

I found peace.

I wish I could describe exactly how that happened. I wish I could point to one prayer or one particular day and say that was it.

But I can't.

I just know that the anger that had consumed so much of me wasn't there the same way anymore.

And the heartbreak that followed it wasn't weighing on me like it had been.

I could think about what happened without feeling like I was right back in the middle of it.

I could think about the person without immediately going through everything all over again in my head.

I could finally forgive.

And I know I didn't get there on my own.

I needed God for that.

I don't know what someone reading this might be carrying. Maybe you've been hurt by somebody close to you. Maybe there's a relationship in your life that looks nothing like you thought it would. Maybe you've been holding on to something for years because you genuinely don't know how to forgive it.

I understand that a lot better now than I used to.

I also understand how frustrating it can be to hear somebody tell you to just pray about something when you're in the middle of it.

I know how that sounds.

But I did pray about it.

A lot.

Not because I was some great example of faith, but because I had reached a point where I couldn't carry it anymore and I didn't know how to put it down.

And God helped me.

I don't want to make this sound like everything is magically fixed. There are things that happened that I can't change. There are parts of this that will always hurt to think about. And there are responsibilities I have as a father that forgiveness will never change.

But I have peace now.

Real peace.

And considering where I started, that's something I wasn't sure I'd ever have.

I've thought a lot about what I want my daughter to know about her dad as she gets older.

I want her to know I loved her enough to protect her, even when things were difficult. I want her to know that I took being her father seriously.

But I also want her to know that I struggled. That I wasn't always the man I wanted to be. That there were times when I was so angry and hurt that I couldn't see a way through it.

And that I turned to God.

Because I hope she turns to Him too.

I hope she never has to experience the kind of hurt that makes forgiveness feel impossible. But if she does, I want her to know she doesn't have to figure it out by herself.

Her dad couldn't.

I was angry. Then I was heartbroken.

And when I'd run out of answers, I went to God.

I'm at peace with it now.

And I'm incredibly grateful for that.