Lewis Smedes Forgive And Forget

The Practical Work of Letting Go

Lewis Smedes spent his career thinking about what actually happens when someone tries to forgive. His 1984 book Forgive and Forget: Healing the Wounds That Haunt Us sits somewhere between pastoral advice and psychological observation, and it has held up better than most books in that space. I came to it through a church counseling situation that had stretched on for three years. The people involved were not looking for theory. They were stuck. The core argument is simpler than people make it out to be. Forgiveness is not the same as forgetting, even though the title plays on that confusion. Smedes argues that forgiveness is a deliberate decision to release the right to revenge, to stop keeping score, and to stop letting a past wrong continue to define your relationship with the person who caused it. That distinction matters because most of us conflate the two and then blame ourselves when we still feel angry after we have supposedly forgiven.

What Lewis Smedes Forgive And Forget Actually Means in Practice

The framework breaks into stages that are easier to follow in practice than in summary. First, you have to acknowledge the hurt without minimizing it. Smedes is blunt about this. He says you cannot forgive what you refuse to name. The second stage is making the choice to forgive before you feel ready. That is the part that makes people uncomfortable, but it is also the part that does the most work. The emotional alignment comes later, sometimes much later. Then there is the forgetting piece, which Smedes treats as a separate process. He does not mean amnesia. He means working toward a place where the memory no longer triggers the same visceral reaction, where the wound stops dictating how you respond in the present. That part is gradual and not guaranteed for every injury. Some hurts leave scars that stay sensitive. Smedes acknowledges that. One thing beginners miss is that Smedes frames forgiveness primarily as something you do for yourself, not something you do for the offender. The offender does not get credit for your forgiveness. In many cases they do not even know it happened. That alone removes a lot of pressure from people who feel like they cannot forgive until the other person apologizes. It also means forgiveness can happen without reconciliation. The two are related but not the same, and mixing them up causes a lot of unnecessary pain.

I ran into a real edge case a few years back involving a client whose sibling had stolen money and then cut contact. The family expected her to forgive quickly because everyone else had moved on. She tried following the basic steps, but every time she said the words, the anger came right back. The problem was not that she was failing at forgiveness. The problem was that she had skipped the acknowledgment stage and jumped straight to the decision stage without letting herself sit in the anger long enough. Smedes mentions this kind of thing briefly, but he does not hammer it. I had to figure out the rest by watching what actually happened over several months. The workaround was simple. I told her to stop saying she had forgiven her brother. Instead, she started writing down exactly what had happened and how it made her feel, without trying to resolve it. After about six weeks of that, she could actually make the decision from a place that felt honest. The forgiveness stick then held. She had tried to plant it in dry ground before and it had just fallen over.

Where the Model Breaks Down

This approach works reasonably well for personal betrayals, broken relationships, and ongoing grudges between people who have some history together. It does not work well for situations involving ongoing abuse, active manipulation, or criminal behavior where contact with the offender should be limited or eliminated entirely. Smedes himself draws that line in places, but readers sometimes ignore it because the language about releasing bitterness sounds universal. The biggest limitation is time. The forgetting part is not something you control directly. You can create conditions that make it more likely, but you cannot force it. Some people spend years working through this and still carry flare-ups of anger on certain dates, in certain settings, or around certain topics. That is normal. It does not mean they failed at forgiveness. Another practical issue is that the model assumes a certain level of emotional literacy. If someone grew up in an environment where feelings were never discussed, the early steps can feel foreign and even pointless. They might go through the motions for months without getting any relief, then suddenly something shifts and the whole process clicks into place. There is no reliable way to predict which will happen first.

If the injury involves trauma responses that look more like PTSD than ordinary resentment, this framework alone is not enough. You need trauma-informed support, sometimes medication, and definitely a licensed therapist. Smedes was a theologian, not a clinician, and his book reflects that. It is useful for moral and relational work, not for treating clinical conditions. The book is still in print in various editions. It is widely available through major retailers and library systems. The original hardcover and subsequent paperbacks all contain the same core material, though some later editions include updated introductions. You do not need a special edition to get value from it. The ideas stand on their own. The practical takeaway is that forgiveness is a process with distinct parts, and rushing through them usually just creates a shallow version that collapses under stress. The decision to forgive is real and meaningful, but it is only the beginning. The emotional work that follows is what changes how you actually live. If you are dealing with a specific hurt right now, the first thing to check is whether you have honestly acknowledged it before moving on to the rest.