Have you ever held someone in your heart so tightly, not out of love, but because you couldn’t let go of what they did to you?
Have you ever found yourself so angry with someone that the thought of praying for them felt like a betrayal of your pain? Have you ever held on to a name in your heart, not because you love them, but because they wounded you deeply, and now you don’t know how to let them go? Do you still go back to the memory, playing it over and over, what they said, what they did, what they took? Most of us have someone like that in our story. We call them by different names: enemy, ex, betrayer, backstabber, bully. It could be a former friend, a coworker who made your days miserable, a relative who said something cruel when you were most vulnerable, or someone in your past who changed the course of your life in a way you still haven’t made peace with. The faces vary, but the feeling is always the same: something in you tightens at the thought of them. You tell yourself you have moved on, but their presence lingers in your memory, your sleep, and your reactions. They haunt your thoughts, not because you want them to, but because you haven’t yet found a way to set yourself free. The forgiveness we are told to give feels like asking a broken bone to run a race. And then someone says, “Just pray for them.” You smile politely. But inside, you want to scream.
Pray for them? Do you know what they did to me?
When Letting Go Feels Like Losing
A few years ago, I met a kind woman who had just moved into our neighborhood. She had that quiet warmth, the kind that made you feel safe around her. Her daughter was in eighth grade, polite, thoughtful, and well-raised. But I noticed something strange. Every time I saw the girl, she had a new bruise. A red mark on her face. A scratch on her arm. A welt on her wrist. The mother finally opened up. Her daughter was being bullied at school, badly. The kind of bullying that leaves scars on the skin and on the heart. She had spoken with the school, met with the teachers, and even tried to talk to the bully’s parents. Nothing changed. Why?
Because the bully’s parents were powerful and influential at the school, the kind of people schools listen to. And this mother, faithful and prayerful, was reaching her breaking point. They couldn’t afford to move, and the school, despite its promises, did little more than document the abuse.
“I pray,” she told me one evening, eyes swollen from sleepless nights, “but I think I am praying into a void. There is so much hate in my heart, I don’t think even God wants to hear it. I am tired, and I am ashamed of how much I want that other family to suffer. And I feel guilty, but I can’t help it.” It was one of the most honest things I have ever heard. She was a mother whose love had turned into a wall of rage. And she felt ashamed of that too. Maybe you know that feeling. When your heart becomes so heavy with hurt, you can’t even talk to God without it coming out like a scream. That honesty is where many of us live when we have been wronged so consistently that prayer feels like weakness and forgiveness feels like betrayal of justice.
For people of faith or conscience, the advice is often simple, “forgive,” they say. “Let go.” “Pray for them.” But what does that mean, really, when your body still remembers the hurt, when your mind still replays the moment they betrayed you, when your heart still stiffens every time their name comes up in conversation? Prayer, in this context, doesn’t feel like virtue, it feels like an act too holy for such a human wound. And yet, over time, I have come to believe that this is where prayer does its deepest work. Not when we feel spiritual or enlightened, but when we are angry, bitter, and confused, when we whisper words not because we believe them yet, but because we are desperate for something in us to shift.
The Strange Prayer My Grandmother Once Whispered
I didn’t know what to say. But it reminded me of something my grandmother once told me, words that sounded strange when I first heard them, but have stayed with me ever since. She said,
“If someone is standing in your way and you can’t fight them, don’t curse them. Pray that they find something so good, so fulfilling, that they no longer have a reason to stay in your way. Pray that God blesses them so much, they move on by themselves.”
At the time, I thought it was silly. But when I tried it, something shifted. And so I shared that strange little prayer with the mother.
At first, she didn’t accept it. In fact, she stared at me like I had misunderstood everything she just told me. Why should she pray for people who made her daughter cry herself to sleep? Why should she ask for blessings on behalf of people who showed no remorse? But over the next few weeks, something softened in her. Maybe it was fatigue. Maybe she just wanted peace. Slowly, she began to change her prayers, not because she felt good about it, but because she had nothing else left to do. She stopped praying for revenge. She stopped begging God to change the school. She started praying this
“Lord, give them something better. Give them something so good they have to leave us alone.”
That was all. Four weeks later, the father of the bully received a promotion in another city. The family relocated, just like that. Her daughter came home from school without a bruise for the first time in months. She smiled again.
Some might call that a coincidence, and perhaps it was. But something deeper happened before the external situation changed, my neighbor reclaimed her own heart. The prayer didn’t just move the family. It moved her out of bitterness. It restored her ability to love, to hope, to believe again. And that, in the end, is what real prayer does. It may not change the person who hurt you. But it will change the hold they have over your life.
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Why This Kind of Prayer Changes You First
There is a reason so many traditions, including Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, and even Stoic philosophy, teach us to release our enemies through inner transformation. Jesus said,
“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” (Matthew 5:44)
Not to make us doormats, but to make us free. It teaches something hard but freeing: release the grudge. Not because the person deserves peace. But because you do. And he didn’t say it because it was easy. He said it because it is how our heart survives. He knew what modern neuroscience confirms today: hatred rewires the brain, fuels anxiety, raises stress hormones, and breaks down the body’s immune system. Resentment doesn’t protect us. It corrodes us. As Nelson Mandela once said after years in prison, “Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.” But forgiveness is not about excusing someone’s actions. It is about choosing not to let their actions determine the rest of your emotional life. It is about refusing to become a mirror of the very thing that wounded you. And praying for them is not a declaration that they are right. It is a decision that you are no longer going to stay trapped in that moment they hurt you. You are moving on. You are reclaiming your mind.
What This Looks Like in Real Life
Let’s be honest. Most of us won’t get the happy ending the mother got. Your enemy may not move away. They may never change. They may never say sorry. They may never even know how much they hurt you. And some will go on to live happy lives without ever facing consequences. You may never get justice. You may never get closure. But prayer isn’t always about changing the situation. Sometimes, prayer is what changes your posture in the middle of the situation. It is how you reclaim your power without becoming like the person who hurt you. You don’t have to invite them back in. You don’t have to pretend everything is okay. You don’t even have to tell them you have forgiven them. But you can pray that they find something else to chase, so you can live again.
What If You Tried? Just Once. Just Today.
Think of the person who lives rent-free in your mind. The one you constantly replay arguments with. The one who made you question your worth. Think about that someone in your life right now whose name you can’t say without your stomach tightening, whose memory still stirs up shame, anger, or grief. The one who stole something precious, your peace, your confidence, your trust. Perhaps this is the moment to begin to reflect and ask yourself:
Do I really want to hold on to this forever?
And if the answer is no, then maybe it is time, not to forget, not to excuse, but to whisper a different kind of prayer:
“I release you. I hope you find whatever it is you have been searching for. I hope it is so good, so complete, that you leave me in peace. And I hope I get to breathe again. I hope I find myself again too.”
Words to Carry with You
- Sometimes the way forward is to bless the road behind.
- Praying for your enemy may not change them, but it will change you.
- Peace begins the moment you stop rehearsing the hurt.
- Peace is not pretending it didn’t hurt. It is choosing not to hurt yourself again by holding on.
- If you can’t remove them from your path, pray they find a better one.
- Sometimes, praying for someone to move on is how you move forward.
Before You Go
Everyone has someone they are still holding onto, not out of love, but because the pain hasn’t loosened its grip. But what if the way forward isn’t always through revenge, or justice, or even closure? What if your healing starts the moment you stop fighting them in your mind and start blessing them in your prayer?
Try it. Just once. Even if you don’t feel it. Just say the words.
The miracle might not be what happens to them. The miracle might be what happens to you.
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