Letting Go of Disappointments and Painful Losses by Pam Vredevelt

whole story, and frankly, I didn’t think it was any of their business. Trying my best to go on without Doug, I slammed the door shut on the guilt over filing for divorce and the unresolved grief over losing our family.
    I had long, angry talks with God. I raged. I asked Him where He was when my husband was betraying me. Why hadn’t He protected me and the children from this abuse? I told Him how desperately unsafe I felt in this God-forsaken world. I wondered about the next shoe He planned to drop.
    All the while, God listened patiently and continued sending blessings that were difficult for me to see through the dense fog of my grief.
    I was so overcome with the injustice the children and I had suffered that I wanted Doug to pay. Vengeance seemed like a practical and logical solution. If I just opened my mouth and told all, I could have destroyed him.
    But something constrained me. Actually, Someone constrained me. The Spirit of God began to speak to me about letting go of my bitterness. Everywhere I turned, somebody was saying something about forgiveness. The lady on
The Oprah Winfrey Show.
The song on the radio. The preacher at church. My friend on the phone. They were all delivering the same message: “Forgive.”
    Forgive?
I cried to God.
Impossible! How do you forgive people who don’t deserve forgiveness?
    “You pray for them.”
    But, God, I don’t want to pray for Doug. I don’t want to pray for his sideline attractions. They betrayed me. I will hate them forever!
    “Not if you pray for them.”
    It was about the time that this war was going on in my head that Karen gave me Dr. James Dobson’s book
When God Doesn’t Make Sense
, which explores the subject of suffering unjustly. As I read, the doctor brought me face-to-face with a set of choices. I could either continue my descent into bitterness and resentment, or I could turn to God. Neither choice seemed very appealing.
    I wrestled with these ideas for months before I was able to bring myself to tell God that I couldn’t let go on my own. A gratifying sense of power came from holding on to my angerand resentment. There was a part of me that wondered if I would crumble if I released it. I needed God to give me supernatural strength to do what He had asked me to do: pray for those who had betrayed me.
    Moments of fleeting relief came as I journaled my uncensored feelings in a daily diary. Revealing the most intimate details of my life helped purge the pain. I read about a man named Job who was able to put words to the anguish I was feeling. I found solace in his life story and in the fact that God was the one who had the final word in his life. Not his friends. Not his family. Not his acquaintances. It gave me hope to know that God’s last word in Job’s life was one of total restoration.
    It is true that the injustices I suffered from my husband’s sexual addiction stole my sense of worth and personal dignity. But looking back, I can see that the bitterness I hung on to for several years robbed me of the ability to heal and move forward. A turning point came when I realized that I could not afford to leave unchecked the hatred simmering in my heart.
    I had to acknowledge that what happened to me
happened.
I was not crazy. My children and I bore the scars of a terrible injustice. But denial was not the answer. Neither wasamnesia or sugarcoating the truth. I had to face the facts and grieve the reality of the injustice if I was ever going to be able to move beyond it. I knew I couldn’t keep trying to cover the cracks in my heart for the rest of my life.
    Somewhere along the line, I heard someone say that if we all lived by the rule “an eye for an eye,” the whole world would be blind. It reminded me of the many mistakes I had made in my life and of God’s unending compassion and grace to forgive me. How could I not forgive when God had forgiven me of so much? I made a conscious choice to let go of my quest for justice for Doug and the women who had