Forgiving While the Nails Are Still in:

What Jesus on the Cross Teaches TBI Survivors About Grace in the Middle of Ongoing Hurt

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Those words still stop me cold.

Not “Father, forgive them after they’ve apologized.” Not “Father, forgive them once the pain stops.” Jesus spoke them while the hammer was still ringing, while the blood was still flowing, while the very people who put Him there were mocking Him from the foot of the cross. He offered full forgiveness in the middle of active, ongoing harm.

For those of us living with traumatic brain injury — and for the families who love us — this is not some distant theology. It’s a survival skill we’re forced to learn over and over again during recovery. For those of us with memory issues as a significant symptom struggle each day, the forced learning to forgive and apply this forgiveness cuts deeper.

The pain caused by loss of relationships and the other hurts after a TBI doesn’t stop when the hospital discharge papers are signed. It doesn’t end when the visible bruises fade. It keeps coming, even at times from the very people who are trying their hardest to help.

The Unique Shape of Hurt in TBI Recovery

TBI mistreatment has a particular sting because it’s rarely born from outright cruelty. It’s born from exhaustion, confusion, and fear. These are the reasons I’ve been given that others have cut me out of their lives, community has dissipated, and they can’t put in the effort to love or care about me anymore.

A spouse who has become a full-time caregiver snaps, “You’re not even the husband I married anymore,” because they’re watching the person they married disappear into mood swings, memory gaps, and sensory overload. They don’t see the invisible battle happening inside your skull — the misfiring neurons, the dysregulated nervous system, the constant static where your old personality used to be. When after months symptoms worsen, or after years improvement is not tangible. How could they not be expected to have moments such as that? They just see the changed version of you and feel the loss of the life they thought they’d have. The loss of the future plans that should have been and now become impossible or at minimum changed and different.

A parent or sibling pulls away because your emotional volume — the one the injury turned up to eleven as I wrote about last post— feels like “too much.” They remember the old you. They don’t understand that the new you isn’t choosing intensity; your brain literally lost the dimmer switch. So they protect themselves by creating distance, sometimes cutting contact entirely. Eventually as time passes having cut you out of their life, even forgetting the old you.

Friends ghost. Colleagues question your competence. Doctors minimize symptoms with a casual “lots of people have headaches, losing memory, having trouble concentrating, being impulsive — all these symptoms you have are common after a brain injury”. No recourse, just accept it and move on, this is your “new normal”. Each one of these moments lands like another small crucifixion — not because they hate you, but because they “know not what they do.” They cannot see the neurological storm raging behind your eyes. They can't see you are simply longing for that moment with a friend who just wants to be with you, even while you're broken.

These aren’t one-off injuries. They are daily, ongoing. The harm continues long after the initial trauma because recovery isn’t linear and understanding is slow.

How TBI Relationship Pain Mirrors Every Other Deep Hurt — And Why the Cross Still Applies

I see many of these similarities in the different stories from other survivors on how their TBI-specific wounds are experienced in the painful relationship dynamics during recovery:

The slow-building resentment when one person’s needs dominate the household for months or years.
The grief-fueled arguments where both sides feel unseen: the survivor feeling abandoned, the family feeling unappreciated.
The quiet withdrawal when someone decides your healing process is taking “too long” or costing “too much.”
The guilt that bounces back and forth like a live wire — you feel guilty for changing; they feel guilty for resenting the change.

In every case, the hurt keeps happening while you’re still trying to heal. Of course the pain is deep for those that should still be in your life and have left you altogether. Much like the disciples that were not at the foot of the Cross. But the people causing the pain can also be the same ones bringing you groceries, driving you to therapy, or sitting beside you in the neurologist’s office. They are both the source of comfort and the source of fresh wounds. Just like the soldiers at the cross were both Roman citizens doing their duty and the instruments of torture.

This is why forgiveness modeled on Calvary is so radical — and so necessary. It refuses to wait for the perfect conditions. It doesn’t demand that the other person “get it” first. It looks at the ongoing harm and says, “I release you anyway,” not because the behavior is okay, but because holding onto bitterness while the nails are still being driven in would destroy me.

Forgiveness Is Not Permission

Let me be clear, the way Jesus’ forgiveness was clear: offering grace does not mean removing every boundary.

Jesus forgave from the cross — He did not climb down and hand the soldiers more nails.

In the same way, I can for example forgive my sister for the distance she’s chosen because of my TBI-related intensity. I can forgive the family and friends who stopped calling me because my “new normal” made conversations awkward. I can forgive those who lash out in caregiver burnout. But forgiveness doesn’t require me to pretend the pain isn’t real. It doesn’t mean they aren’t guilty of wrongdoing at times either. It simply means I refuse to let their lack of understanding poison my own heart while I’m still fighting to rewire my brain. They can’t re-enter our family while still pounding nails. Until their behavior changes there can be no reconciliation because they are choosing to still harm, but there can be forgiveness. There is forgiveness each day for the nails still being driven in daily by their absence and rejection no matter how much they keep driving in nails today.

The Quiet Miracle on the Other Side

Here’s what I’ve learned in the years since my injury: when I practice this cross-shaped forgiveness Jesus models on this Good Friday from the Cross, something shifts inside me. The emotional storms don’t disappear, but the bitterness stops feeding them. I become less reactive, more able to regulate, more like the person I want to be even if no one else ever acknowledges the work. Only those right at the foot of the cross got to hear Jesus’ last words on this day. Similarly, only those who have chosen to stay so close to me despite this trial of brain injury recovery will ever be able to see the forgiveness I have for others.

And who knows? Sometimes forgiveness plants seeds. Sometimes the same people who once caused harm look back years later and see more clearly. Sometimes understanding arrives late, like sunrise after a long night. Jesus’ prayer from the cross didn’t stop the crucifixion — but it did open the door for the thief beside Him, and eventually for the very soldiers who nailed Him there.

I’m choosing to believe the same door stays open in TBI families.

Even when the harm is still happening. Even when the boundary is still up. Even when the people I long to reach and have a real relationship with again still aren’t ready.

Because if Jesus could forgive with spikes through His hands and feet, then maybe — just maybe — I can forgive with a brain that sometimes betrays me and a family that sometimes doesn’t understand.

And maybe, someday, that forgiveness will be the thing that finally bridges the gap.

Until then, I’ll keep whispering the same prayer He taught us to pray while the hurt is still fresh:

Father, forgive them. They know not what they do.

And I’ll trust that the same grace extended to me by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, is big enough to cover us all — survivors, families, and everyone caught in the middle of the long, messy work of healing.