I lost a dear friend six years ago. Not to death, but to misunderstanding. I agreed with someone on a group text, not knowing that person was at odds with another friend on the same group text. It’s amazing how fast something that seems strong can dissolve. My friend’s perception was that I had taken sides against her, and her response was immediate and caustic. I went into an emotional tailspin.

What to do? I wanted to acknowledge the pain my friend was feeling, but I didn’t know how. I bought a potted flower, wrote “I love you” in a card, and bravely went to her front door. Her husband received the gift, and I cried all the way home. Choosing vulnerability has a way of opening the floodgates sometimes.

I had told her once that I deeply valued our friendship and would fight for it should the need arise. I meant it, yet I didn’t know what it meant. What does it look like to stand beside someone when they hurt you? How do you disentangle a misunderstanding when both parties are licking their wounds and yelping if anyone gets close?

My friend didn’t respond to the flowers and card, and I felt lost. I was hurting from her bitter text message and mostly I just lurched along with my emotions. One day I was angry and self-righteous. The next I was practicing gratitude for the years of friendship we did have. Sometimes I made excuses for her hurtful words and ensuing silence. Other times I rehearsed spiteful responses. I thought I wanted reconciliation, but I suppose what I really wanted was for her to apologize, magically leave the pain in the past, and move on. Instead I was left in the discomfort of unresolved conflict, and silence.

A year or two after the one-text-detonates-a-friendship-bomb scenario, I decided that with my therapist’s support I would seek to repair the friendship. I emailed my friend and asked if we could talk about something that was weighing on me. She suggested I see a counselor for anything I needed to work through, and said she would be available in four months if I wanted to talk about only light-hearted things. I had to hand it to her for having crystal clear boundaries!

I wasn’t interested in talking only about rainbows and unicorns—as one of my friends put it—so that was the end of that. I told her I appreciated her honesty and moved on… sort of. I continued to feel uneasy whenever I thought about us. She would text me occasionally about something innocuous, like a local event or the weather. I felt anxious every time she contacted me, and uncomfortable developing what felt like a completely fake “friendly” relationship.

Over the years I have continued “trying” to forgive, and have continued feeling hurt. When someone says they “forgave,” sounding utterly confident in forgiveness as a past event, I am puzzled. What have they figured out that I haven’t? Why is this failed relationship still hanging over my head? Every now and then I pray about it and journal some new angle to the whole mess. But I still feel captive to it. Until I read these words in Anne Lamott’s book Traveling Mercies: “…forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a different past.”

These words begin to reframe how I think about the loss of safety in friendship. Forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a different past. I can stop rehearsing what I could have done differently, said better, or not said at all. I can stop grieving mismanaged words and allow them to be what they were. Emotional pain is an acceptable human experience. Being misunderstood is an acceptable human experience.

Here’s the thing: forgiveness is not giving up all hope of having a different future. I can sit here, between the past that simply is, and the future that simply will be, and fret about neither. I can release hope for a different past, giving myself and my friend permission to have an unresolved misunderstanding; and I can maintain hope for the future—not because I can force healing, but because when I open my hands to receive the past for what it was, I simultaneously give myself permission to receive the future for whatever it will be.

Is forgiveness in this relationship done and in the past? No. It could be one day, but at this moment it’s still a work in progress. Perfectionism begs to take center stage and rehearse the un-done “right” past and the unlikely “right” future. And I fight back, learning to forgive myself and others, and live openhanded. I begin to think about this new definition of forgiveness—giving up all hope of having had a different past—as it relates to parenting. When the kids hit and scream, ignore me, make messes, dawdle: in those moments could I release the hope of a different past few minutes? Could I forgive them and myself this way? Could I embrace both friendship and parenting as the freedom to love in this moment, giving up all hope of the last moment being different?

I realize that I have invested much in hoping for a different past, grieving my behavior and the behavior of others. But I am not my behavior. This could change the way I look at the last six years and the last six minutes. I am not what people say or think about me, and I am not what my behavior says about me. I don’t have to revisit the choices I already made today—like when to get up, how many shows the kids can watch, looking at my phone before prayer time—and wonder if they are “right.” Or wonder what they say about who I am. I can release those moments and face forward. My hope is not in a different past, but in living this moment open-handed, loved by a wild and lavish God. Living now is lighter.