If "I forgive you" Never Comes

What do you get when you play a country song backwards?
You get your dog back. Your house back. Your spouse back. And, your job back.
You get it—you get your life back. If only it were that easy. But what if “I forgive you” never comes?

The Sting of Looking Back

Have you ever looked back on your life and thought, What was I thinking?
Were you satisfied with every decision?
Or maybe something from your past, viewed through the lens of hindsight, stings—a gut punch you didn’t see coming.

Sure, some decisions made perfect sense in the moment. But time and experience have a way of shedding new light on old actions. You wish, like playing a song backwards, you could hit rewind and get those moments back.

The Illusion of the Perfect Fix

We’ve all heard it: hindsight is 20/20.
And it is.

But unless there’s a time machine I don’t know about, we can’t go back.
So… where do we go from here?

If there were a five-step plan to make it all better, maybe it would look like this:

Sit in the weight of how that decision makes you feel now.
Take inventory of those affected.
After much heartfelt introspection, reflection & prayer, own what’s yours.
Reach out. Apologize.
Receive forgiveness.

Sounds good, right?

The Hard Truth

I wish I could say that’s how it works.

But the truth?

It doesn’t work that way at all.

You can do all of those things, right up to number 5—and they are good, healthy, wise things to do. But there’s no perfect plan that guarantees the outcome you hope for.

God’s Economy Is Different

In God’s economy, it isn’t always about you. It’s about others. Yes—He loves you deeply. He wants good things for you. He’s growing you. And because of that growth, you’re seeing things in a different light or maybe seeing them “in the light” for the first time.

This is a very important thing to understand. We should make amends with no expectations of others. Forgiveness is a gift that may or may not be extended to us. And even if it is not, we know we did what was right because we were sorry and our hearts were repentant. Said another way, in God’s eyes, we did it in love, nothing more, nothing less.

Growing in God doesn’t give us control over others.

You can…

ask for forgiveness,
own your mistakes,
love, and
pray.

But you cannot control the outcome.
And you must learn to make peace with that.

Forgive Without Expectation

We are called to make amends with no expectation.
To seek forgiveness—but to release the demand for it.

Forgiveness from others is a gift, not a guarantee.

Even if “I forgive you” never comes, you can rest in this truth:
God already has.

Loved and Forgiven

The foundation:

We love because He first loved us (1 John 4:19).

There is no perfect plan for imperfect people in a broken world.
But we can forgive ourselves and others.
We can walk forward in grace.
We can live in peace, knowing we did what was right in the eyes of God.

Take heart, dear child of God. I say this as much for myself as I do for you, sweet reader.

I’m not writing this from some polished place.
I write this in the midst of messiness.
Still trusting. Still waiting. And, still healing.

I thank God—for all of it.
And I pray daily for the strength to offer myself even a sliver of the grace He pours out so freely.

Challenge of the week

Forgive. Find it in your heart to forgive someone. Another or yourself. But if “I forgive you” never comes, know it’s still going to be ok. Because grace already has. So be it!