A Turning Point on the Road of Survival

One of the hardest lessons I’ve learned in my 30 plus years of life has been… forgiveness.  Not fleeting forgiveness– forgiving someone for something they may have said that hurt your feelings; or forgiving your best friend for not calling you for a few months.  Those things are easy to forgive, and most of us don’t even have to think about it.  What I’m talking about is true, deep in your soul forgiveness… for something someone has done to you; for a wrong someone has done; for a tragedy that has hit you at the hands of someone else.  But what if you can’t find forgiveness?  Or what if it goes even deeper than that– what if you have to find forgiveness in a place you didn’t know existed?

“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 your trespasses.”  Matthew 6:14, 15

For some, this is a hard bite to swallow, and understandably so.  It is also not something that happens overnight.  This is something I have had to live personally.  Something I struggled with for a long time.  Something I thought I had done, but later found out hadn’t done completely.

For years I was tortured with the shame and stigma associated with child molestation.  The torture was at my own hands.  The shame and stigma was something I placed on myself.  I was desperately trying to keep my head above water while the weight of the past kept me chained to the bottom.  I was confused, my thoughts were scattered, and I wasn’t sure how to deal with the emotional baggage that had been following me around for so many years.  I had tried desperately to keep those memories locked in a cell and hidden in the farthest recesses of my mind.  But every attempt was futile.  Some thing, some where, would bring them back.  Something would trigger the locking mechanism, the door would swing wide open, and the memories would plow their way to the surface.  And when they did, I’d bury myself in denial.  I’d fight hard to push them back into their dark little cell.  I wouldn’t give them a voice; I feared them too much.  I didn’t want those memories to be a part of who I am but rather a vision of another life; one carefully separated from the ME of reality; like watching a sad movie, but that movie being about someone else.

The reality is… those memories are mine and that life was mine.  That little girl in the sad movie is me.   As I began to allow the memories out of their cell, I began going through a wave of emotions not unlike that of grief; after all, I was grieving.

I cried– cried for the little girl that mentally died at the age of 6; cried for an innocence that was taken so quickly and savagely; cried for the teenager that was too naive and inexperienced to know that the shame of those memories were what fueled her reckless behavior; cried for the adult who was now reliving something that she tried so hard to forget.

I became angry.  I was angry at myself, my abuser, my family… I directed my anger in the direction of anyone who loved me.  I built a seemingly impenetrable wall around myself– to protect myself from being hurt again.  Instead of being hurt, I was doing the hurting.  My anger led me to believe that everyone I loved was going to hurt me at some point, so I may as well get to them before they got to me.

I became depressed.  My world became so dark and bleak that I didn’t want to walk outside.  Things that were once joyful became a chore.  Things that made me happy seemed a million miles away.  Darkness was the only thing I craved.  (I still, to this day, have to fight the ugly monster of depression at times.)

This was a long process.  Something that went on for years; not months, weeks or days.  Decades.  It was a constant yo-yo of highs and lows.  A constant roller coaster of ups and downs.  All accompanied with constant torture of my inner-self.

Until one day, I opened the pages of a book and began reading.  I read about life, the meaning of life, and about how much God loves us in spite of our faults.  I read about seeking and finding.  I read about tragedy and triumph.  And I read about forgiveness and love.  During that reading, I once again faced my demons head on and in doing so, found out a little more about myself.

I thought I had forgiven my abuser several years prior, but realized that I hadn’t truly let it go.  I hadn’t truly forgiven what he had done to me and the after-math of his choices.  I also realized that there were others I had yet to forgive– who weren’t even involved but whom I had held responsible in some small, or large, way.  I worked on this.  I prayed.  And in time, I learned to forgive… forgiveness from the very depths of my soul.  But even that wasn’t the end.

What I learned about myself was that I had never forgiven myself.  Somehow over the years, in the roller coaster of emotions, I had turned my shame into blame.  I blamed myself for my childhood.  I blamed myself for something I had absolutely no control over.  This blame led to a deeper sense of shame, which led to a deeper sense of despair, anger, depression, and every other human emotion possible.  I had to find a way to convince the little girl from back then that she wasn’t to blame, and should not feel ashamed.  I had to reach back well more than twenty years and tell her “It’s okay.”

This nearly thirty year journey that had taken me from one extreme to the other was, finally, coming to an end.  I was finally a a point of acceptance, but I didn’t reach that point alone.  I finally realized that I didn’t have to bear this cross by myself.  The turning point came when, while reading a great book, I came across a poem by Russell Kelfer and this particular passage jumped off the page:

No, that trauma you faced was not easy.
And God wept that it hurt you so;
But it was allowed to shape your heart,
So that into His likeness you’d grow.

I read and reread, focusing on this part alone. And it hit me… the nearly three decades I had fought this battle, I hadn’t been alone.  As alone in the world as I’d felt at times, I had never been alone.  He knew the trouble I was going through, and He knew how my heart heart.  He knew how difficult it was for me, and He knew how ashamed I felt.  And when I realized this– when I scanned the nearly three decades of memories and realized that He indeed had been there all along, I sobbed like a little child.  He had reached for me so many times, and I had turned away.  He had tried to comfort me so many times and I didn’t allow myself to see it.  He had tried to heal me so many times, but I instead chose to try to heal myself.  And I failed, miserably.

But now…. now I was finally being healed.  I could finally see the light at the end of the long dark tunnel.  I sobbed, and I sobbed, and I pulled every memory I could summon out of the recesses of my mind and gave them to Him.  I  pulled every emotion– every bit of fear; every bit of shame; every bit of doubt; all the anger, resentment, and rage and gave it to Him.  I literally dumped it all at His feet.  And I finally forgave myself.  I forgave myself for all the things I’d done to myself; for all the mistakes I’d made; for all the wrongs I’d done to others in an attempt at self-healing; all the things I’d done while in denial of my reality.  It wasn’t easy, but it was necessary.

With the love of God and the strength of His Spirit, I forgave all that had to be forgiven– myself included.  And now I am at peace.  Now I can share openly and freely.  I can talk about the little girl that was me, is still me but all grown up.  I can tell my story and I can fight to help the next little girl who comes along and maybe, hopefully, prevent one girl from going through what I have.

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”  Romans 15:13