On September 10, 2025, the nation watched something almost impossible to comprehend. At Charlie Kirk’s memorial service, with cameras rolling and the world watching, his widow stood up and forgave the man accused of killing her husband. Publicly. Clearly. In front of everyone.
I remember thinking: how do you do that? How do you forgive someone who took your husband, your children’s father, your partner in life and ministry?
The world tells us forgiveness is weakness, that it means pretending the hurt wasn’t real or letting someone off the hook. That’s not what forgiveness is. Forgiveness is a decision to release someone from the debt they owe you and to trust God with justice instead of demanding it yourself. Paul put it plainly: “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32).
Notice what that verse doesn’t say. It doesn’t say forgive because the person deserves it. It says forgive the way God forgave you, and none of us deserved that either. “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). That’s the only foundation forgiveness can stand on. Not that the offender earned it, but that we were already forgiven a debt we could never repay.
I’ve had my own version of this, on a far smaller scale than a widow standing at a memorial service. Seasons of financial ruin and corporate betrayal left me plenty of people I could have spent years resenting. For a while, I did. And I can tell you exactly what unforgiveness cost me: it never touched the people who hurt me. It just kept me locked in a cell of my own making, replaying old wounds while everyone else moved on with their lives.
That’s the trap. Unforgiveness feels like leverage, like you’re making someone pay. In reality, you’re the one paying, every single day. “As the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive” (Colossians 3:13). Christ set the standard, not the size of the offense against you.
Here’s what I’ve learned, and what Divine Gratitude: Joy Beyond This World spends an entire chapter unpacking: you cannot be grateful and bitter at the same time. They cannot occupy the same heart. Bitterness fixes your eyes on what was taken. Gratitude fixes your eyes on what you’ve been given, starting with the grace that forgave you first. When you finally release the debt, whatever it is, your vision clears enough to see it.
Forgiveness isn’t a one time feeling, either. Jesus told Peter to forgive not seven times but seventy seven (Matthew 18:22), because real forgiveness is often a decision you make again and again until your heart catches up with your will. Name the hurt honestly before God. Release it to Him instead of carrying it yourself. Pray for the person you’re struggling to forgive, not that they get what they deserve, but that God would bless them. That’s what opens the door.
Divine Gratitude walks through exactly this process: why forgiveness is the doorway back to God, and what it costs to actually walk through it. If you’ve been carrying a debt someone else owes you, I’d love for you to read the rest.
