I wanted to add this little bit of personal information. I am part of that group of 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 5 boys who are molested. Since I’ve lived more than a half century, there were no books in those days. I can remember being 25 years old and thinking “someone needs to write about this.” I was the victim of countless nightmares and would come almost nightly until I told the secret. My violater never was punished and I never got a financial reward.
About 15 years after it happened I visited my doctor who was also a church fellow. I explained that for each of the last 15 years the season when I was molested was black and I felt lifeless, depressed and dead for a span of three months. He did pray for me and then he told me this: You have no choice but to forgive. Whether you ‘feel it’ or not, you have to start speaking it out forgiveness.
I can remember leaving his office and looking into the clouds saying: I forgive you (I saw looking up there to tell God I forgave the perp). Just a little note here: there were no registered sex offenders back then. There was no group to sit around and discuss it, and no going back to get my day in court. It was simply God and me.
Realize now I had already been praying for at least five years about getting healing from this, and it would another seven more years….actually the Sunday before I got married…when our church had a time when people were asking forgiveness of things in their heart. I later fictionalized and wrote that service into my book And You Invited Me In.
It seemed that everyone was confessing hurt and pain and asking forgiveness during that extra long Sunday morning service. If you come from a tradition of three hymn, prayer and a 20-minute sermon, then this spontaneous service might seem a bit odd. Yet in a flash I knew my hurt and pain was gone and I had truly forgiven the person who had violated me. This was actually over 20 years I had lived in pain and suffering, and in a flash it was like a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders. Now it’s not longer scar tissue over my heart and mind, but an event I lived through like breaking my leg. You know how when you break a bone and when the weather changes you can feel it just a bit?
Therefore, the following post entitled WW(y)CD and registered sex offenders operating with the church is more than blog-lite. I’ve been there, and I know that no amount of money or prison would have done what God did for me when forgiveness for this man became real. I had to embrace forgiveness before it ‘felt okay’; I had to speak forgiveness each time the waves of darkness rolled over me in the day and night.
My doctor said: you will never be the same, but God can make you better. And it happened. Grace works…it is the only thing that heals. forgiveness is difficult but it is imperative.
