It was the perfect day in the mountains – one of those nostalgic days of childhood sure to become a core family memory. We’d recently moved to a small town with dreams of giving our girls an idyllic upbringing and had decided to spend an afternoon at the creek.

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My husband found the biggest ride-on, blow-up unicorn tube known to man, and in true girl-dad fashion, invented a way to turn “tubing down the creek” into a wild, unbalanced ride of sparkly pink and purple delight. The three of them took ride after ride, flying down the creek on that crazy unicorn to the kind of screams and laughter only little girls can make. It was the best of days.  

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Until it became the worst of days.  

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Hours later, that happy little family found themselves in a hospital room in the middle-of-nowhere, listening to an ER doctor say our 5-year-old daughter was making up her pain. Screams of delight had turned to screams of agony, and the doctor refused to see what was right before his eyes. We begged him to do an ultrasound. The ultrasound staff was on-call, but he wouldn’t call them in for pain he didn’t believe wasn’t real.  

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Until that moment, I didn’t know how it felt to be defenseless to help my own child – to know what was right for her yet be turned away by those who held the power and thought they knew better. I didn’t know what to do when our voices went unheard, and I felt blindsided when our advocacy didn’t make a difference. My husband and I believed we could find a solution for her pain if we asked the doctor for help. Instead, we found ourselves fighting a system that is so very broken, and our daughter ended up paying the price.

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It took me a long time to forgive what was done to her because I felt like part of her childhood was stolen from her. A little girl who should’ve been happily enjoying Kindergarten had now undergone an unnecessary, traumatic medical experience that led to months of excruciating pain before emergency surgery. Before she ever turned six, she knew what it felt like to be told her pain wasn’t real, to be dismissed and shamed by people who were supposed to help her, and to be treated like a nuisance for dealing with a medical condition no one could see. Our little girl now understood what it felt like to shoulder adult problems, and it broke our hearts.

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It took a long time to grieve, and even longer to grapple with the reality of learning to forgive the willful ignorance that led to her immense suffering. It wasn’t easy to forgive those we should’ve been able to trust – those who showed my little girl the world isn’t always a kind place, and sometimes it causes a lot of hurt.

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In Matthew 6:12, Jesus says, “And forgive us our sins, as we have forgiven those who sin against us” (NLT). He knew firsthand what it felt like to be sinned against, to be overlooked, to be ridiculed and undervalued, and to suffer at the hands of those who should’ve been on His side. He understood the grief of living in a broken system, and he knew we would experience it, too.  

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He also knew the significance of learning to forgive those who have wronged us. Forgiveness points us back to the One who has forgiven us. Through our confession of sin, and the resulting forgiveness, our broken relationship with God is healed. In this way, forgiveness becomes a picture of restoration to the world around us. God forgives us. Therefore, we can forgive others, and healing is possible.

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That’s not to imply every relationship will be made right in this lifetime, but it does mean forgiveness has healing power to restore brokenness even in situations where reconciliation is impossible.  

Eight years and four life-saving surgeries later, I’ve learned things I never wanted to learn on this journey with my daughter. I know, for instance, there will never be justice for the things she has endured. She has been given zero apologies, and despite how much we fought, she still suffers horrible consequences from the misdeeds of the system that was supposed to protect her. She will live with the ramifications for the rest of her life, without anything to make it right. Sometimes, that’s how life goes.  

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But God.  

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God will make good from her hardships in His time and His way. None of that is up to me. The only thing I can do is forgive, and trust God never wastes hard things.  

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The pain of forgiving points to the power of God’s forgiveness towards us.  

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1 John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (NKJV). God forgives and restores us at the moment of our confession. That doesn’t necessarily mean consequences are erased, but it does mean restoration becomes the best part of the story.  

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Whether today is a day you need to offer forgiveness or lift up a prayer of confession leading to forgiveness, let it focus your eyes and heart on the One who gave His life to restore yours. Life will be full of times you're wronged. Make it a practice to forgive because He first forgave us (Eph. 4:32, Col. 3:13).