Painful Anniversaries: Can God Transform What Can’t Be Undone?

It was a favorite stop on my way home from work for coal-fired, oven-baked pizza—especially on beautiful Philadelphia spring or fall days. Then, one day as I waited to pay for my order, a heart-breaking text came in. The words confirmed what I’d had a foreboding sense of for weeks: my trust had been profoundly broken. I spun out emotionally and mentally, not sure what to do. I grieved, raged, and texted words that I needed to repent of later. A certain day in a certain month became a difficult marker for me.

Many of us have painful anniversaries that don’t prompt happy thoughts, like the one-year anniversary of a loved one’s death, a scary diagnosis, the loss of a job, or a finalized divorce. Unless we shut down and go into denial, there’s no way of getting around reminders of painful events which may have launched us into a radically altered life landscape.

Do you have days in the yearly calendar, or even certain hours of the day, that trigger an emotional cascade of troubling thoughts because of what happened in the past? You discovered evidence of your spouse’s betrayal. A trusted companion (friend, ministry colleague, mentor) pursued a sinful path that broke your heart and crushed your spirit. Your secret lover said they didn’t want you anymore. A cherished son or daughter announced that they don’t believe in “your God” anymore, and have run enthusiastically into a far country to create a new LGBTQ+ identity for themselves. Maybe someone publicly outed your hidden sin, and the revelation of well-guarded secrets produced a tornado of shame and devastation. You’re walking in repentance but can’t shake the threatening darkness when that day comes around every year.

What can we do when past events, which can’t be undone, continue to hijack our minds, threatening to steal joy, hope, and peace?

Facing Painful Anniversaries in Christ

In Christ we have a solution. We bring our memories to the Lord and remember them in his presence. By faith we renew our minds with a gospel interpretation of those memories. With hope in God’s promise to bring life from death, we rehearse the truth about God’s healing comfort and sovereign purposes. And then by faith we resolve to pursue what helps us stay anchored in the hope of the gospel. These four actions help us respond to our painful anniversaries with hope in our ever-present and loving Savior.

1. Remember your past event(s) in the presence of God and trusted friends.

God’s people have a long tradition of remembering hard things, including the attacks of their enemies, betrayal by leaders, selfish spouses, and rebellious children. God includes all of this in his inspired Word! Yet consider also the feasts of Israel, commemorations of God’s faithfulness to his people—including atonement for their sins. Knowing God’s grace required them to acknowledge many past failures, which is rarely fun. Psalms 106 and 107 recount significant acts of disobedience by God’s people through spiritual adultery. God’s Spirit inspired these bluntly honest words about his people to be recorded for the generations to follow, likely provoking painful memories of significant public failures—events which could not be undone.

Yet notice how the author (Moses, most likely) doesn’t leave readers to muse in isolation—this is communal remembering, in the presence of God, of sinful actions and being sinned against:

“Remember me, O Lord, when you show favor to your people; help me when you save them, that I may look upon the prosperity of your chosen ones. . . . Both we and our fathers have sinned; we have done iniquity; we have done wickedness. . . . He caused them to be pitied by all who held them captive” (See Psalm 106:4–6, 46).

Friend, perhaps the consequences of past events remain heavy and costly to this day. Yet because God is also your faithful and present Father, Deliverer, and Comforter, you can face painful anniversaries with him and before him. Crying out for help, faith, comfort and wisdom, you can walk forward. Though bruised and heartbroken, and perhaps abandoned by someone you loved and trusted, you are not alone.

Remember what happened in the presence of the One who can shepherd you into the following truths every time your thoughts are filled with memories of what can’t be undone:

Gracious is the Lord, and righteous;
    our God is merciful.
The Lord preserves the simple;
    when I was brought low, he saved me.
Return, O my soul, to your rest;
    for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you.

For you have delivered my soul from death,
    my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling;
I will walk before the Lord
    in the land of the living. (Psalm 116:5–9)

Ask God to return your soul to the true rest of his love and care for you. And reach out to friends to help you even as you struggle, perhaps, with why he allowed what happened.

2. Renew your thinking through a gospel lens.

Resting in God’s presence during painful anniversaries helps you to be still and soak your thoughts and memories with gospel truth. God wants to help you renew your mind through a gospel-infused lens of what happened rather than a pain lens or betrayal lens. What do I mean?

The betrayal of trust I described earlier wounded my heart profoundly. For weeks I replayed conversations and re-read emails and texts, trying to make sense of what happened. I poured out my heart to the Lord and trusted friends. Yet after a while, I realized that, rather than seeing through a gospel lens, I’d allowed my hurting and angry heart to have the strongest influence in processing and interpreting what happened. And you know what? Our hurting hearts and raging emotions do not make for good interpretation. We lament and pour out everything to the Lord. Yet we need his help to see our experiences through the gospel which promises that life arises from the deaths he allows.

Here’s what this might look like for you.

• Lord, I hate what happened, but rather than letting this betrayal, deceit, shame, anger, or heartbreak be the window through which I interpret my world, I need you to be my window.
• Father, the trauma^[1]of what happened is ruling my life—my thinking, relationships, faith. Rescue me, Lord, and heal my heart; I don’t want to be controlled by the sin of others but strengthened in my heart by you.
• Please God, redeem every drop of what happened; help me see it through your eyes.

3. Rehearse truth about God’s sovereign purposes for every trial. 

In Psalm 116, David remembers a scary, distressing trial:

The snares of death encompassed me;
    the pangs of Sheol laid hold on me;
    I suffered distress and anguish.
Then I called on the name of the Lord:
    “O Lord, I pray, deliver my soul!” (vv. 3, 4)

David couldn’t undo the past, but he looks back on it with the Lord as his lens. He doesn’t sugarcoat it or try to dress it up with ‘easy-believe-ism.’ We see this over and over in the psalms: he’s in a mess, overwhelmed, on the run, and cries out to his sovereign King to help. And then he can look back and see, with bruises and scars, that the Lord brought him through: he wants to live faithfully in the land of the living!

4. Resolve to pursue what keeps you anchored to the gospel.

On the one-year anniversary of my painful experience, I returned to that pizza place with two friends. They knew the whole story, and, in community, I wanted to create a new memory as I recounted all that God had done in those twelve months. We celebrated the Lord’s faithfulness as I cried and testified to the new growth and depth that he had birthed through a mini-death that had broken my heart. 

There were other practical things I did to remove distractions from my anchoring in the gospel. I deleted lots of texts, emails, and other reminders that tempted unbelief and a lack of love. I made commitments to not investigate or search out information regarding the circumstances surrounding what happened, and I made myself accountable to friends about this. I needed to pursue certain things and flee others to keep my eyes on Christ and maintain a gospel perspective about what happened (see Rom. 12:9–21; 1 Cor. 10:13, 14; Col. 3:12–17).

Friend, past trials and memories of being sinned against do not have the right to hijack your heart, well-being, or growth in Christ. God’s work of comforting, renewing, and freeing our hearts is rarely quick, but it can be steady over time as you look to him to redeem the painful anniversaries of what can’t be undone.

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^[1] I’m deeply sensitive to readers who may be suffering the profound impact of traumatic events. This article can’t dive into the care you may need if you are experiencing PTSD symptoms. Please reach out to a counselor who can help you process your painful suffering with a gospel lens.