This is one of the most common questions that reaches my inbox, and it usually arrives with an apology attached. She has forgiven him, or her, and she still does not want to be around them, and she has been told that means the forgiveness did not take.

It took. She is being taught something that is not true.

Two different things

Forgiveness is between you and God. It is the decision to release someone from a debt you cannot collect anyway. It does not require their participation, their apology, or even their knowledge. You can forgive a person who has died. You can forgive a person who will never admit what they did. Forgiveness is work you do in your own heart, and it sets you free whether or not it ever changes them.

Reconciliation is between two people. It requires both of you. It requires acknowledgment, changed behavior over time, and enough trust rebuilt to make closeness safe again. One person cannot reconcile alone, any more than one person can shake hands alone.

You can complete the first without the second ever becoming possible. That is not bitterness. That is arithmetic.

If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.Romans 12:18

Read that verse slowly

Scripture builds two conditions into that instruction, and we skip past both of them. If it is possible. Which means sometimes it is not. As far as it depends on you. Which means some of it does not depend on you at all.

God did not ask you to be responsible for another person's repentance. He asked you to handle your part, honestly and completely, and then to release the rest.

What this looks like in practice

Forgiveness releases the debt. It does not automatically restore the access. You can pray for someone genuinely and still not give them your phone number. You can wish someone well and still not sit across from them at Thanksgiving this year. You can hold no resentment at all and still recognize that a person has not changed and that closeness would cost you more than you have.

If you are working through this, The Grounded Girl was written for it. Not to help you build walls, but to help you tell the difference between a wall and a boundary when the two feel identical from the inside.

With you on the journey,
Autumn