As an addict, I learned an important lesson several years after I was found out by my spouse for the second time. Forgiveness is good, but forgiveness doesn’t put it back the way it was. Once that damage is done, you get to live with and look at the scars every day.
It’s like this.
You are holding an heirloom plate in your hands. It was crafted by skilled artisans of the Hapsburg empire. It has a legacy. Memories. Stories. It is a unique piece not only on earth, but it has a unique interaction with how you and your family relate to it and come together.
Then one day it slips from your hands and shatters across the floor.
Those rich memories, stories and interactions will never be told again. Your family will never create a new experience with it ever again.
You look to your wife and say “I’m sorry”
She says “I forgive you”
She may even mean it, as opposed to just form for form sake. Yet no amount of forgiveness in the world brings that plate back. If you try and glue it together all it does is highlight the flaws and the fractures. You can sweep it up and throw it away, but then you lose out on what the plate meant to everyone. Probably the worst of all is to buy a new plate.
No matter how good of a plate, or a replica even of the original plate, everyone knows that it’s not the same. You don’t like bringing out the plate, because all it does is remind you of your horrid mistake. Soon the family stops talking about it and moves on. Maybe a new tradition forms in it’s place, but more likely, there is simply a void.
You can’t unbreak the plate. You will never get back what you gave up. Only God can truly blot out your sins, and make them white as snow. Unfortunately, that doesn’t change your relationships here.