OFFENDED: From Hurt to Freedom | Part 2 of 3

My “Get Rid of Offense Action Plan”

Professionalism taught me how to keep working while I was hurt.

It did not teach me how to heal.

I could still show up, answer emails, lead meetings, meet deadlines, and do my job. From the outside, I probably looked fine.

But functioning was not the same as healing.

Once I admitted that I was offended, I needed more than another way to manage my feelings long enough to get through the workday. I needed a plan that would help me process the hurt internally and lead through it responsibly.

That is how my “Get Rid of Offense Action Plan” began.

The name sounds simple, but releasing offense was not a quick or easy process. It required honesty, prayer, support, wisdom, and repeated decisions about the kind of person—and leader—I wanted to become.

The plan has two parts:

• Process the hurt

• Lead through the hurt

Part One: Process the Hurt

1. Name It

I could not heal from what I refused to admit.

Instead of pretending that I was fine, I began telling the truth:

Someone I trusted said things about me that were not true, and it hurt.

I kept wondering whether other people believed what was said. That made the pain even worse.

Naming the hurt did not make me a weak leader. It did not make me unforgiving or spiritually immature. It gave me an honest place from which to begin healing.

Naming the hurt also required me to separate what happened from everything I feared might happen because of it.

What was actually said?

What effect did it have?

What was I assuming?

What was I afraid it might cost me?

Those questions helped me distinguish the facts of the situation from the fears growing around it.

2. Pray It

My prayers were not polished.

They were not the prayers of the woman who writes beautiful Bible studies. They were not pious prayers—I do not pray those anyway. I certainly did not sound like Dr. Jackson!

I called the person’s name and reminded God—in great detail—of what had been done to me.

My prayer sounded something like this:

Holy Spirit, I am angry. This person hurt me, and I am deeply upset by what happened. I want to forgive, but right now, I do not know whether I can. On second thought, I do not really want to forgive.

Nevertheless, I know what You have said about forgiveness. So, I am choosing to forgive with my mouth, and I will continue praying until my feelings begin to catch up with my decision.

I do not like the way I feel, and I do not want to keep living this way. Please help me work through this.

At the same time, God, I want to be honest. I have hurt people in the past, and I may unintentionally—or even intentionally, although I pray I do not—hurt someone again.

I am asking You to show this person mercy because the same mercy I desire for my actions, I want for theirs.

It pains me to say this, Father, but neither of us is perfect. As difficult as it is for me to say, I am asking You to have mercy on both of us.

In Jesus’ name, amen.

Prayer gave my anger somewhere to go before it became an email, confrontation, decision, or reaction I would later regret.

I took my unfiltered feelings to God and asked for wisdom before deciding how to respond.

3. Work Through It

I wrote about the hurt in my journal every time it returned to my mind.

But I did not record only what happened. I also recorded my prayers, what I was learning about myself, and what I believed God was asking me to release.

I also discussed the offense with my therapist.

That support mattered.

Offense can distort our perspective. We may need a trusted therapist, coach, pastor, mentor, or emotionally healthy friend to help us separate the original wound from the assumptions, fears, and reactions that have developed around it.

Journaling helped me process the hurt privately so it would not become a public reaction. Therapy helped me understand what I was feeling and take responsibility for my response.

These practices did not erase the hurt. They gave it somewhere to go while God healed me.

A personal journal, however, is different from formal workplace documentation. Journaling helps you process your emotions. Workplace documentation records dates, facts, communication, decisions, and observable actions when professional protection or accountability is necessary.

Depending on the situation, you may need both.

Part Two: Lead Through the Hurt

4. Discern the Response

Processing the hurt did not automatically tell me what to do about the situation.

I still needed to decide whether the offense required:

• A conversation

• A boundary

• Documentation

• A formal report

• Professional guidance

• Greater distance

• Or no immediate action at all

Not every offense requires confrontation. Sometimes a conversation can lead to truth and repair. At other times, the power dynamics, the person’s behavior, or the risk of retaliation may make direct confrontation unwise.

Forgiveness does not require you to ignore discrimination, harassment, retaliation, unethical conduct, or threats to your livelihood. Healing and wise professional action can happen at the same time.

When necessary, seek qualified support through appropriate organizational, human-resources, union, legal, therapeutic, pastoral, or professional channels.

The question is not simply, “What do I feel like doing?”

The better question is:

What response protects my integrity, my well-being, my responsibilities, and the leader I want to remain?

5. Choose Release

Jamaican people have a saying:

“Today for me, tomorrow for you.”

Today, I may be the person who was hurt. Tomorrow, I may be the person who hurts someone else—and needs grace.

So, my prayer became:

Help me, Lord, to give the grace today that I may need tomorrow.

That did not make what happened right.

Choosing release did not mean calling wrong behavior acceptable. It did not mean abandoning boundaries, avoiding accountability, restoring trust prematurely, or returning to an unsafe relationship.

It meant refusing to allow another person’s actions to maintain control over my heart.

Forgiveness was not a feeling I waited to experience. It was a decision I continued bringing before God while my emotions healed.

Some days, I made that decision more than once.

6. Check the Spillover

I made a conscious decision not to bleed on my team.

They did not cause the wound, and I did not want them to carry it.

Unprocessed hurt can show up in leadership as irritability, distrust, withdrawal, micromanagement, defensiveness, harsh feedback, or the need to control everything.

The wound may remain hidden, but its effects become visible.

So, I had to ask myself:

• Am I responding to what this person did—or to what someone else did before them?

• Is the intensity of my reaction appropriate to this moment?

• Has this hurt changed how I give feedback or receive questions?

• Am I making people prove that they are not the person who hurt me?

• Is my team carrying emotional weight that does not belong to them?

• Do I need to repair harm caused by my reaction?

Accountability is not only something we request from the people who hurt us. It is something we practice when our hurt spills onto others.

The goal was not to force myself to stop hurting.

The goal was to process the hurt so that it did not become my leadership style.

Healing and Leadership Can Happen Together

My “Get Rid of Offense Action Plan” did not change what happened.

It changed what I allowed the experience to produce in me.

I named the hurt.

I prayed honestly.

I worked through it with journaling and therapy.

I discerned the response.

I chose release.

And I watched for the places where the wound might spill into my leadership.

I did not need a better way to hide the hurt.

I needed a way to heal.

In Part 3, we will go deeper into what forgiveness does—and does not—require, including the relationship between forgiveness, boundaries, accountability, trust, and reconciliation.

If you are ready to process your hurt without being ruled by offense, explore OFFENDED: A 6-Week Bible Study on Living Free from Offense at www.livewellleadwhole.com.