The wound is still fresh and people are already talking to me about forgiveness. Am I supposed to forgive before I have even finished feeling it?

“How long wilt thou forget me, O LORD? for ever? how long wilt thou hide thy face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? how long shall mine enemy be exalted over me?”

David's psalms of complaint were written for public worship, which means Israel sang its unresolved pain out loud in the temple rather than hiding it at home. This one opens with four blunt questions asking how long, and it does not resolve until the final lines. Nobody edited the impatience out before putting it in the songbook. Raw grief is not a detour away from faith, it is allowed inside it.

“At my first answer no man stood with me, but all men forsook me: I pray God that it may not be laid to their charge.”

Paul writes from a Roman prison near the end of his life, describing his first hearing, when everyone who should have stood with him stayed away. He does not pretend it did not sting. He says plainly that no one stood with him, and then asks that it not be charged against them. Honesty first, release second, in that order and in the same breath.