I am the grudge queen. I often say to people that once my trust is broken, it is almost impossible to gain again.

I’ve held my hurts very close to my heart believing I’ve forgiven and moved on, but in reality, the hurts are still there. I've used this as excuses not to let people in. People who had been out of my life for 5 or 10 years still had this power over me because I hadn’t forgiven them for the pain they caused in my life.

I had really big things I needed to forgive and it made it hard for me to forgive the small things. Holding onto hurt seems a lot easier than letting it go. I was stuck. I couldn’t move forward because this anger was holding me back.

Forgiveness is really, really hard.

Someone recently asked me to say the things in my life that hurt the most and I gave him a list. He looked at me and simply asked, “Aren’t you tired?” The answer was simple, yes. I had been holding onto these hurts for years and years and I was exhausted. I didn’t want to be the one who hurt anymore.

“Forgiveness doesn’t make you weak, it sets you free.”

I’m not sure who said this, but reading it this summer hit me hard. I desperately wanted to be set free and part of me always looked at forgiveness as weak, but it’s completely the opposite. Moving on and forgiving someone who caused you so much pain is something only the strong can do.

The truth is holding onto hurts does nothing to the person who wronged you. It hurts only you. On some level, I believed that letting go of the pain would give these people the power to hurt me again. Forgiving them doesn’t mean I forgot what they did.

Pain has a way of changing us. We learn and grow from pain, but part of that growing isn’t just in the midst of the storm. Most of that growing comes after when we learn to let go and move on.

Forgiveness doesn’t give the people who hurt you power to hurt you again. It gives you the strength to move forward. It sets you free.

The truth is, I could never even think about forgiving things in my past if it wasn’t for my relationship with God. My faith has helped me walk through some of these storms and now it is helping me move forward.

I believe forgiveness is a daily battle. I wish I could forgive once and it would all be gone, but some days I have to start all over.

There will always be people who hurt you, but it is how you walk through this that defines you: not the hurt and pain.

I haven’t fully moved on and I don’t know when I will. But I’m learning to forgive day by day. I’m learning to let people in and share my hurts and burdens because it takes away their power. I'm learning to move on.

I’m learning to be set free.