Toxoplasma gondii.
Letting Go of What Lives in the Mind
It looks as innocent as an octopus. It's
Toxoplasma gondii, and microscopic, invisible to the naked eye, yet capable of entering the bodies and brains of warm-blooded animals, including human beings.It is a disturbing thought: something so small finding its way into the brain and quietly shaping behaviour.
Bitterness can behave in a strangely similar way.
A wound enters the mind; a word spoken in anger, a betrayal, an injustice, and if it is fed long enough, it begins to burrow into our thoughts. The memory repeats itself. The hurt grows familiar. Before long, resentment begins to influence how we see people, how we speak, even how we feel about life itself. The parasitic thought dictates their whole life.
Back in the day when I was part of organised religion, I gave several speeches as a visiting speaker in other congregations. The most requested talk was "Do You Harbour Resentment or do You Forgive?" This was a talk primarily for a Christian audience, the frequency of this talk demonstrated the tendency in humans to nurse other's faults.
History offers us the way forward in the life of Corrie ten Boom. During the Holocaust, Corrie and her family hid Jewish people in their home. Their courage led to arrest and imprisonment in Ravensbrück concentration camp, where her sister Betsie died.
Out of that suffering came a discovery Corrie would later speak about around the world: the power of forgiveness.
Years after the war, while speaking in a church, a man approached her. She recognized him immediately. He had been one of the guards at Ravensbrück. With quiet sincerity he told her he had become a Christian and asked if she could forgive him.
In an instant the past returned—the humiliation, the cruelty, the loss of her sister. Forgiveness felt impossible. Yet the words of Jesus came to mind: “Forgive, and you will be forgiven.”
Silently she prayed for help. Then, almost against her own strength, she reached out and took his hand.
What she felt in that moment, she later said, was something she could only describe as God’s power—an overwhelming sense of release that washed away the bitterness she had carried.
Most of us know the quieter version of that struggle. Someone wounds us, and the mind returns to it again and again. We rehearse the conversation. We imagine what we should have said. Meanwhile, the other person may have long since forgotten.
The strange truth is that resentment rarely imprisons the person who hurt us.
It imprisons us.
Jesus pointed to a different path. When Saint Peter once asked how many times forgiveness should be offered—seven times perhaps—Jesus replied, “Not seven, but seventy-seven.” Forgiveness was never meant to be arithmetic. It is not a ledger of debts, but a freedom of heart.
To forgive does not deny the wound. Pain is real. Loss is real. Forgiveness simply refuses to let the injury rule the rest of our lives.
Corrie ten Boom once said that forgiveness is the key that unlocks the door of resentment. By forgiving, she did not erase Ravensbrück. She simply refused to carry the camp into her future.
And perhaps that is where forgiveness begins for most of us—not as a sudden emotion, but as a quiet decision. Sometimes it must be chosen again and again. Sometimes it is only a whispered prayer: “Lord, help me forgive.”
Yet we are not asked to do this alone. The same Jesus who spoke of forgiveness also practiced it from the cross, and the strength He showed there is the strength He offers to us.
So, it may be worth asking a gentle question.
Is something living in your mind that should no longer be there?
If resentment has burrowed in like a parasite, perhaps it is time to let it go. Forgiveness is not merely a gift given to another person.
It is freedom given to your own soul.
A brief reflection on the Gospel of Matthew 6:14–15
“For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.
But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive yours.”
These words come from Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, shortly after He taught the Lord’s Prayer. They reveal a deep spiritual principle: a heart that receives God’s mercy should become a heart that gives mercy.
Forgiveness here is not merely a rule. It is about the condition of the heart. When someone holds tightly to bitterness, it can close the door to the freedom and peace that God’s forgiveness brings.
Christ is inviting people into a different way of living—one where mercy flows in two directions:
- from God to us, and
- from us to others.
It can be difficult, especially when wounds run deep. Yet the teaching reminds us that forgiveness is not about pretending the hurt was small. It is about placing the hurt in God’s hands instead of carrying it forever.