The People You Can't Forgive Might Not Be Forgiven Today 'Forgiveness is a decision, but making that decision doesn't override the emotional residue that often.
Forgive, but please don't forget. Forgive and forget are not synonymous, although my background would suggest they are. All my life it was 'forgive and. Forgiveness, however, can be a problem for many people simply because they are not clear about what forgiveness really is. All too often forgiveness gets. How do you forgive someone who sexually abused you? Mary DeMuth writes a letter to the boys who molested her at 5. Eva Kor, who was held at Auschwitz and recently testified against former Nazi guard Oskar Groening, says that when a victim chooses to forgive, they take.
How do you forgive a sexual abuser? By writing a letter. It’s been forty- one years since those bully boys stole my body, mind, and bits and pieces of my shattered soul. They posed as interested neighbors, ready to help my ancient babysitter. They’d take me off her hands, lessen her load. Which is strange if you knew me back then.
I’d already learned the art of being invisible. And if I wasn’t occupying myself alone, I found ways to please people. I was a good little girl.
Innocent, even. Those friendly boys (brothers, boy scouts) took me into the woods. They invited friends to take turns. They violated me under too- tall evergreen trees. They took me home with them, stealing more of me in their bunk beds, a sheet draped over the bottom bunk so they could do it “privately,” all while their June Cleaver mom hummed pop tunes and made cookies just two rooms away. I wonder if she knew. I escaped their clutches by sleeping all afternoon into the early evening. And later, we moved far, far away.
But their haunting stayed with me. I felt dirty, violated, utterly alone with my secret story. I tucked it in a dark corner. The story didn’t resurface until I met Jesus.
And then it leaked, then gushed from me in anguish. How do you forgive that? When I met Jesus, I learned that He forgave me. Growing up in a sexually charged culture like that, coupled with a father with a sexual addiction, I struggled with pornography as a teen.
It’s stark and embarrassing to write it here, but there it is, ugly and real. I struggled to believe I’d been forgiven for reading those books, those magazines. Choosing to forgive those boys didn’t happen overnight. In fact, there are still tendrils of unforgiveness living in my heart, evidenced by the sick feeling in my stomach right now. Because if I’d met boys like that now who DARED to touch my girls, my first thought would be murder.
Yet Jesus says even if we think murder, it’s sin. I have so much that needs to be forgiven. But how do you forgive the boys violation? You start by making a choice to forgive. You continue by walking the radical, nonsensical journey of forgiveness. Today I’m taking another step toward forgiveness. Right here, right now, on this blog, I’m writing a letter to those boys whose first names I cannot recall, but whose last name has caused me to Google the heck out of it, wondering, wondering, wondering what they are doing today.
Is he the teacher who had been suspended for inappropriate behavior? Is his brother the architect? Lawyer? I do not know who these men are today. But, perchance, by God’s great mystery, if they ever, ever, ever stumble across this blog, this letter’s for them. Dear Boys of the Last Name that Roils My Insides,I am still angry. What you did. Your choices dug scars the size of channels in my soul. My valiant view of life.
In the aftermath of the sexual abuse, I hollowed. I believed lies about myself. I am unworthy of being protected. My self- worth = my sexuality, but in the most warped way.
Did you think of these things while you satisfied your base desires? Did you realize you’d destroy a little girl’s kindergarten life? Had you no shame to violate a five- year- old girl for your pleasure? You had so much bravery in your sin, violating me while your mom cooked. And yet, your actions made me run scared most of my life, always looking around corners, running, running, running afraid a villain would grab me. You marked me. Ever since your violating act, a mark danced on my forehead for all abusers and violators to see, as if they were black light, and the mark fluorescent. It was a ticket for further predators.
I am still angry. Because when I watched my own daughters turn five years old, I could barely breathe.
All I wanted to do was protect my girls. I was so small when you took me into the woods. So incapable of running away. And if I had tried, your hissed words would make me turn around and be re- violated. And I dared not run. But if I stay camped in the land of vengeance my joy will emaciate.
You will have won the conquest. You see, I met Jesus when I was fifteen years old, ten years after you scared the hell out of me, five years after my father died. Gentle Jesus found me just in time. Those suicide swirling thoughts had hypercharged my mind.
I wondered what in the world I was doing here on this green, green tall- treed earth. Was my purpose to be violated? To be used by others like you two? Or did I have some other unknown purpose. Under an evergreen tree, the memories of your violation stung my eyes. And yet there, in that sacred place, I met Jesus.
He took my sin (oh so many sins, innumerable were/are they) and flung it eastward in a projectile one billions miles away from me. He cleaned me, scrubbed my aching heart, and started me down the painful/beautiful road of healing. He took on my sin and my pain.
He changed my I Was statements into I AM statements. I was molested. I am cherished by God.
I was stolen from. I am given everlasting, joyful, abundant life. I was less than. I am free to look upon you with grace- graced eyes. I am made whole by a holy God. Alleluia! I understand better now. I thank God that by the time I reached your age, I met Jesus.
I could’ve given in to the vile urges inside, crossed over many a barrier, had I not been rescued. Without Jesus, I shudder to think of what I would’ve become.
Which brings me to a vulnerable place, and a deep, deep sadness for you. If statistics play out, you didn’t violate me for kicks. You did what had been done to you. You imitated the life you had.
You acted out on the very thing that agonized you. The thing you hated is what you became. There came a day when you made a choice to give into the madness in your head, where you believed you deserved satisfaction. Someone stole from you, so you may as well steal from someone else. I see Jesus, naked on the cross with labored breathing. He understands the vulnerability of nakedness.
On that cross He could’ve crucified all the violators, all those who sent Him there, but He breathed wild forgiveness. He chose to do what you did not. He suffered for someone else’s sin. And instead of enacting vengeance, He ushered in an era of grace. I wish this Jesus for you.
I worry about you. Maybe you’ve stuffed your memories of the little community near the salty water. Maybe you’ve scrubbed those woods from your mind. You’ve shoved it way, way down. Guilt riddles you, but you cannot articulate why.
I’m proof, beautiful proof, that you can be set free. You can be scrubbed clean. You can be forgiven. But you cannot heal in silence.
An untold story never heals.(Click to tweet this). I challenge you, as that scab- kneed girl you sexually assaulted, to give it up. Ask Jesus to forgive you. All I can do is pray you’ll find this letter through some beautiful God- breathed serendipity and finally want to be set free from what you did to me. I forgive you both, you brothers in crime. You brothers who ruined one year of my scared and scarred life. You brothers who most likely were violated too.
Come to the fount of forgiveness, inaugurated by Jesus. Let my words serve as your entryway: I forgive you.
My mountain of sins toward a holy God dwarfs the molehills you enacted against me. I read Jesus’ words about the unmerciful servant and understand: “Then the master called the servant in. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ (Matthew 1. If I really, really believe in naked Jesus on the cross who bore all my shame and sin and muck, then I have to believe His sacrifice is sufficient for you too. His mercy sparks deep mercy in me toward you.
It’s odd this affection, this ache I have for you two. I long to see you free from those memories, from the abuse you enacted and the abuse you faced. I can’t offer clever solutions or pay for years of therapy to eradicate the pain.
All I have is beautiful Jesus. All I have is my life made whole. All I have is my testimony. All I have is this: I am okay. I am wildly loved by my Creator. I am living a life of truly impossible joy. I am angry. But the anger redirects when I realize that Satan’s greatest weapon is sexual violation.
I’m angry at the powers of darkness that ignite deep, awful, scary soul wounds through pornography, sex trafficking, sexual abuse, and sexual addiction. I’m flat out rage- filled because he has succeeded in stealing, killing and destroying so many lives. This must stop. For our sake. Satan, you cannot have these boys now turned men. Satan, you are not allowed victory in this arena. Jesus trumps your vile deeds.
What you gleefully applauded in the darkness, Jesus heals audaciously in the light. You cannot and will not win. Light always, always, always pushes out darkness. Your days are numbered, and those who follow Jesus are SICK to death of your sexual schemes against humanity. We stand for healing.
We stand in Jesus’ strength for the sake of future radically saved lives. We who know redemption are tired of miring ourselves in the painful past.
Instead we will STAND. We will give our healed lives to rescue souls from the darkness.(Click to tweet).
What Satan intended (and even you, brothers) meant for evil, God makes a holy turnaround. We who desperately needed rescue are now agents of rescue, of reconciliation, of forgiveness. Oh that you would experience this new, new life Jesus offers you, brothers of the last name.
I invite you on the journey. And if we ever meet under the evergreens, by God’s life- altering grace, I will hug you. I will say forgiveness words. I will welcome you to the family of the messy- yet- redeemed. Standing in the glorious, sweet light of Jesus,Mary, no longer five, wholly loved.
P. S. If you’re reading this, and you have the same story as those brothers, please let this message seep deep into your heart. The God who hung naked offers you a way out.
His scarred hands are the hands of victory and forgiveness and light. Extend your hand to Him. He who stoops to the earth is reaching out to you. P. P. S. If you’re reading this and you are the child under the evergreens, consider writing a letter.
Should You Forgive Narcissists Who've Hurt You? In our dialogue about narcissists and sociopaths, many of you have shared your own stories. The damage people do is sometimes beyond my ken.
The wounds they inflict because of thoughtlessness or pure malice can last a lifetime. Some longed for reconciliation, others for vindication. Some wanted revenge, plain and simple, while others talked about letting go. How does one proceed after living with or being raised by a narcissist? There are choices.
Some people opt for the courts and struggle for a sense of justice. This is a noble but arduous road. Ultimately it is a judicial crap shoot. You have one lawyer playing against another, unpredictable juries, and the participation of the original perpetrator, who is usually far from remorseful and to whom you are tied for the duration of the proceedings. Sometimes it is hugely successful. Other times, it is painful beyond words. Some people take the road of least resistance: avoidance and amnesia.
I can understand this. It can seem a very safe place to be.
Unfortunately, it usually ends up quite the opposite because it is a trance of sorts. While some people call this letting go, it is not. We ignore the wound, but it can fester, affecting how we receive and participate in all other relationships from the point of injury forward.
Some people refuse all of the above and instead rest in the familiarity of active anger and resentment. One woman I know said she wouldn't give up her anger if her life depended on it. I asked her why, and she said, . But what does this mean, really? Defining Forgiveness. The word . They are not only unequal, they are opposites.
How we forgive as well as when and why we ought to offer forgiveness are fundamentally important psychologically as well as spiritually. Forgiveness and appeasement must both be very clearly defined. Forgiveness is the letting go of hatred, resentment and pointless, pervasive and paralyzing fear. It does not mean that we must be foolishly fearless or naive. It does not mean that we stop protecting ourselves or deny what is truly dangerous around us. It does not mean that we ignore the obvious or trust what is intrinsically untrustworthy. It does not mean that we relinquish our God- given capacities for discernment and good judgment.
When evil comes knocking, we should lock the door. Forgiveness is not banal and is never another word for . When we appease, we essentially give up rational fear even though we may truly need it. We think that by being . Appeasement doesn't prevent bad behavior; it perpetuates and encourages it.
Forgiving Is Not Excusing or Denial. It is my personal belief that there are things that right- mindedness and spiritual maturity call us to do and not do. And I want to state up front that a great deal of my thinking on these matters has been influenced C. S. Lewis, who gave us quite a bit to digest on the issue of forgiveness: I find that when I think I am asking God to forgive me I am often .. I am asking Him not to forgive me but to excuse me.
But there is all the difference in the world between forgiving and excusing. Real forgiveness between two persons, as Lewis so rightly points out, does not mean pretending the hurt has not occurred and does not require that we look away from the wrongdoing. To forgive entails an acknowledgment of the hurt and then, when there is contrition and repentance, a reconciliation. The deed and all its underpinnings must be shed for good. It is this understanding of forgiveness that makes it possible to fight an enemy without hating him. Forgiveness is Not Codependence. Many people who come into my office live with rather troubled people, some of them truly awful.
Some of them are being abused, some are stuck in situations with alcoholic parents that are frighteningly chaotic, others in marriages with addicts or thieves who are stripping them of every reasonable creature comfort. I know one woman whose addicted husband stole all her clothing to sell on the street so he could buy a night's worth of methamphetamine. By the time she was able to take her daughter and herself to a battered women's shelter, she had all their worldly goods contained in one paper shopping bag. Traumatized people (individuals, not collectives or organizations) - - immigrants from Cambodia, North Korea, parts of Africa, victims of abuse - - can't help but bristle at the mention of the word forgiveness. And I understand why they do. I also know that they will never recover without it. My task is to help them see that forgiveness does not mean they need to allow the behavior to continue or accept the next empty promise any more than acceptance means approval.
In their lexicon, the term . To forgive, in their minds, means a tacit cooperation in the codependency and abuse. Father Russell Radoicich, an Orthodox Priest in Butte, Montana, clarifies the it this way, .
One involves 'I', one involves 'the other.' One is prideful and arrogant, almost a rant, the other is humble, contrite. I have never heard a narcissist or sociopath sincerely say, . In fact, we can forgive a person who is quite ill and committed to a path of destruction using words we have heard before, . Lewis gives in his essay, . One may forgive one's enemy but be prepared to do battle in the event of an attack. One may set firm limits with one's child and still provide unconditional love. A Case in Point. Forgiveness is so hard for some people that it seems impossible.
I had one client whose life revolved around her pain and all the love she was unable to get from the important men in her life. One of them, naturally, was her father, for whom she nurtured the most gruesome resentment. She hated him and said so in nearly every session. All her troubles were because of him, she believed.
And to some degree that was true because her hatred tied her to him and his inadequacies as a parent harder and tighter than the original insults she suffered. We talked about forgiveness more than a few times, and she said once, . Unfortunately, that has kept her terribly unhappy and fearful. Her hatred was so great that she could no longer see what was blatantly true. With her vision distorted that way, her responses to life were equally distorted. As a result, not only did she not find the love and acceptance she longed for, but she fell into relationships that validated her worst thoughts about herself.
We don't hear much about this in the media, but it is what we are asked to do. Yet if we look at Biblical history, it is filled to the brim with some of the bloodiest battles in history. How can we be commanded to forgive, to love and to show mercy while being simultaneously called upon to protect oneself and one's family, to be intolerant of evil when it manifests before us - - even to the point of killing? This is the crux of the matter, because if we can understand this, we can see deceptions where they exist and sidestep the inevitable disappointments of personal appeasement. The truth is that evil can never be appeased.
Appeasement only postpones. The price we pay is not mitigated, it is multiplied. I see a couple of steps to answering this, the first one being that while one belief system may in fact be better than another (e. We are all human and imperfect.
Accepting our humanity and our imperfect natures puts the conflict and the inevitable combat in an entirely different context. No one gets out of this sinless or alive. Forgiving is not only hard to do but impossible when we think of forgiveness as pardoning or forgetting or failing to correct. When we remember that we all need forgiveness, even if we believe we are fighting rightly, it is far easier to forgive those with whom we are engaged in battle. The other point that Lewis makes, and I shall close with this, is that while we may kill to protect ourselves, we may not enjoy it. We may not hate, nor may we enjoy hating. We may pick up swords and fight evil, but we may not fight it by becoming evil ourselves.
He covers this in his essay . We must deal with the enemy in us before we can deal rightly with the enemy facing us.