Bitterness is one of the deadliest emotions we ever feel. You can't look forward when you're bitter, only backward - thinking about what you've lost, stuck in the past, despairing because it's gone. In the end, it devours all hope.

Bitterness is like a weed. Remember how hard it always was to pull out thistles once they root? Remember how deep those roots grow, and how if you just snapped off the end of it, the plant would grow right back? You have to dig down deep inside. Let God search your heart. Let Him show you what's there and help you root out all that bitterness. Then you can pray for forgiveness.

My ability to heal cannot be conditional on them wanting my forgiveness but only on my willingness to give it.

To love God is to cooperate with His grace. And since I'm so very aware of my own need for grace, I must be willing to freely give it away. Each hole left from rejection must become an opportunity to create more and more space for grace in my heart.

No, it's not wrong to need people. But some of our biggest disappointments in life are the result of expectations we have of others that they can't ever possibly meet. That's when the desire to connect becomes an unrealistic need. Unrealistic neediness is actually greediness in disguise.

If they make the choice to walk over me rather than walk with me, I'll have to love them from afar.

Staying here, blaming them, and forever defining your life by what they did will only increase the pain. Worse, it will keep projecting out onto others. The more our pain consumes us, the more it will control us. And sadly, it's those who least deserve to be hurt whom our unresolved pain will hurt the most.

We must respect ourselves enough to break the pattern of placing unrealistic expectations on others.

Forgiveness is the weapon. Our choices moving forward are the battlefield. Moving on is the journey.

I forgive this person for how their actions back then are still impacting me now. And whatever my feelings don't yet allow for, the blood of Jesus will surely cover.

So I fight for her. Not because we will reconnect. We haven't. And we might not. Not because she's right. Not because I'm right. I fight for her simply because I want to stay right in step with honoring God.

Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive."1