Forgiveness part 2

Today I share with you a guest post from my friend JD at Compassion Can. This is a continuation of of her post Forgiveness. If you missed her first post, I would encourage you to first take a moment to read it here, and then come back and join us for Forgiveness part 2.  JD is an amazing writer, friend, lover of Jesus, justice fighter, and has been an incredible inspiration to me. As you read JD's testimony I ask that you let these words sink in deep; deep enough to change you.

 

“As”

I came early that morning, in eager anticipation to hear from His word.  The sermons at our church have been intensifying week by week since summer, leaving me feeling so inspired each week, so convicted, so moved, so in love with the God we serve.  

A week prior, Rebecca had asked if I would write a blog post to share how to love our neighbor through forgiveness.  She knew my story, and knew that through sharing, God could use it for good.  Honored, I accepted.  The post was nearly done, I was just waiting on God’s final “go” so that it would be finished.  Rebecca was gracious and patient with me as it took longer than I had anticipated.

As the sermon began, I leaned forward in attention as I learned that the main topic would be forgiveness.  The post came to mind, and I began to take notes.  Would He be showing me something I could share in that post? 

The pastor made key points that were worth noting: 

“The only effective treatment for the acid of resentment is the antacid of forgiveness.”  Yes.

“Resentment, grudges, negativity are burdens that grow over time.”  True.

“Forgiveness is setting the prisoner free, and discovering that it was you.”  Amen.

So far, all of it felt like a good review before a test.  These were all nuggets of wisdom I knew, believed and embraced, usually easily.  I prayed for God to show me more.

The pastor then spoke of the Lord’s prayer, and pointed out the one word most often overlooked in this prayer:

“As.”

Forgive our trespasses, AS we forgive those who trespass against us.

It didn’t click in right away... something else had caught my attention.  He gave the very vivid story of a brutal officer in South Africa who had kidnapped a woman’s 18 year old son, shot him and burned him on a stake, turning the body on the fire as though he was roasting an animal.  The officer then returned 8 years later, took her husband, and forced her to watch as they poured gasoline on him and burned him alive. 

When the officer was brought to court, the court gave the woman the opportunity to place demands on the officer.

She said “Go back to the place where her husband was burned, gather the ashes so that I may give them a proper burial.”  The officer’s head hung in shame.  She continued “Officer, you took all my family away from me, but I still have a lot of love to give.  Twice a month, I would like you to come to the ghetto where I live, and spend the day with me in my humble house so that I can be a mother to you.  I would like you to know that you are forgiven by God, and you are forgiven by me too.  I’d like to embrace you so that you can know my forgiveness is real.”  Spontaneously, someone broke out into song, singing “Amazing Grace”.   She was not able to embrace the officer – he had passed out in the presence of such radical mercy, grace, love and forgiveness.

Understandably.

As tears poured down my face, I whispered a plea to God “That is the kind of forgiveness I seek to give – help me live it out loud for you.”  I was overcome with emotion, reflecting back on the gift of forgiveness, the heart of it, and why it was so important.

Still struck by that visual of the story the pastor had shared, I had all but forgotten that one word as I walked out of church that morning.  You know, the one often overlooked.  I was re-focused on the post about having forgiven my father, reflecting on that day in my life, how overwhelmed with love, compassion, mercy, and grace I had been for him, against all that made sense.  I reflected back on that woman whose story the pastor shared in the sermon, then back on my father, then back again on the woman...

And then it hit me...  forgive us AS we forgive those...  Every day, it’s me in that truck, head down, hands trembling, words shaking, as I seek His mercy and grace, as I realize how short I fall of His glory – who do I want standing by me, and how would I want to be forgiven?  When I genuinely seek forgiveness from Him, will He also feel the way I did that day, overwhelming love compassion, mercy and grace pouring from Him as it poured from me for my father – I know how that felt, to experience that outpouring to my father that day, and I can only imagine how much better God does this than I did... and to know that this is how He would feel, for me... for us all...  brings me to my knees.

The measure with which we forgive, is the measure with which we will be forgiven.  I had never looked at it this way before – and I’m sure never to forget this lesson.  Is it any wonder that we are called to love one another as He loves us?  Oh, how He loves us....

Simple Acts of Kindness: Tangible Ways to Love Your Neighbor- Forgiveness

Today I share with you a guest post from my friend JD at Compassion Can. Before you read this I ask that you take a moment to take a deep breath, ready your heart, and slow down enough to really read these words. JD is an amazing writer, friend, lover of Jesus, justice fighter, and has been an incredible inspiration to me. As you read JD's testimony I ask that you let these words sink in deep; deep enough to change you.

I don’t know if it should have been more impossible to love him, or to forgive him.  No one could have blamed me for not being able to do either – out of anyone in this world, I was the one who had the most reason to harbour hatred and unforgiveness towards this man. 

I was four years old when my innocence was shattered.  I remember the day as though it was yesterday, the day someone came into my room and raped me for the first time.  The abuse continued, typically daily and increasing in severity, until October of 1993 – I was 18. 

This man was no stranger to me.  I had been raised to trust him – his role was to protect me from harm.  Instead, he brought calamity to my life and hurt me in unspeakable ways. 

This man was my father. 

In 1993, after finally breaking free from sexual slavery, I gave the broken pieces of my life over to God and begged Him to redeem my life for something good.  Only He could make me feel whole again, only He could restore what was lost.  To this day, I’ve only ever told one person the depths of depravity I’ve survived, there are few able and willing to hear it.

Freedom was sweet, but there would always be a missing piece.  I would not have peace until I knew that my father also had peace.  As brutal as it was to be in my shoes – imagine the brutality of living with such a darkness choking life out of his heart?  Against all that ever made sense, my heart ached for his life. 

I don’t deserve Jesus’ grace, mercy, forgiveness, even His love – as dirty as I was, broken, shamed, didn’t God reach down and pluck me from the filth He found me in?  I knew He longed to do the same for my earthly father.  My father was His child too.

  

A little over four years ago, in the summer of 2008, I was working in the yard when an unfamiliar truck pulled into the driveway. When I realized that it was my father, I fought back the flood of emotional turmoil until I felt I could breathe again.  I hadn’t seen him in a long, long time.  What did he want? Why was he here? 

After years of horrific abuse at the hands of this man, my father, I had every reason to be cautious, guarded. Who I was in Christ, though, gave me the strength to step forward and greet him. Our strength is not our own. It is merely borrowed from God, given freely when we seek it.

He saw that I had cut down some trees and had a large pile of branches to be hauled away, so he offered to load them up in his truck for me. I tentatively accepted. I've learned to be careful when he offers something.  Invisible strings sometimes have the steepest price. 

Once the branches were loaded and he climbed back into the truck cab, preparing to leave, I stood closer to the door to say goodbye to my father. My father, a normally very strict, harsh, rigid man, a ruthless man, the same man who had done unspeakable things to me as a child, was sitting in the truck with his shoulders slumped, his hands folded meekly in his lap, his head down. He couldn't speak.

When he finally looked up, he had tears in his eyes, and he was choking back the raw emotions.

I had never seen him cry.

His voice broke and crackled as his message to me stumbled out with rare and heartbreaking honesty. He said that in the last few months, his health, his impending retirement, his own journey, had led him to take a long, hard look at his life... especially what he had done to me. Sobs wracked his body as he said that he knew he had no right to ask, no right to expect it, but that he wanted to humbly ask for my forgiveness, for everything he had done, for not only having failed to protect me, but having instead brought me in harm's way.

He explained that not a day had gone by in the last few years when he had not thought about his actions and their consequences, not only for him, but for me. He said that his past haunted him everywhere he went. The world had no mercy for people like him. He was not asking for pity, he just wanted to let me know that he was no longer hiding behind the dark, cowardly cloak of denial. He admitted that while he knew the hell he faced, and could only imagine the personal hell he had created for me, and that he was truly sorry. He looked me in the eyes, crying, shaking, and said "Je m'excuse, je ne peut pas te dire comment je m'excuse... plus que tu pourrais imaginer. Je te demande pardon... je te demande pardon" (I'm sorry... I can't tell you how sorry I am... more than you can imagine. I am asking for your forgiveness. I am asking for your forgiveness.)

70x7.

There was no hesitation... I reached my hand out to him, placed it on his shoulder, and with tears in my eyes, felt an outpouring of compassion for this broken man, this man who had never found peace, but sought it so desperately that he had come to me to find it.

Me. This man, who had done everything imaginable to rob me of my peace, came seeking any ounce of peace that I could spare for him.

I gave him the most radical, liberal and undeserved gift, the only thing I had left to give to this man... my genuine, heartfelt, honest forgiveness.

God gives to us without sparing, He fills us to overflowing with His mercy, His grace, His love, His forgiveness... and His peace.  Who are we not to share from this abundance, from the gifts bought and paid with His blood?

Christ died for our sins... Whatever we do for the least of these, we do it for Christ... but the beauty of it, was that this was not only for Christ, but for both of us.

I told him that I had already forgiven him long ago, that I had found peace through Christ, and that I wanted nothing more than for him to find that peace too, that peace that could only come from God. I told him to seek it, and in the process, not to forget to forgive himself too.

There are no words to describe the way those words affected him that day. I stood by him as I shared God's mercy and grace with him for the first time in my life, for the first time in his. God was there.

Forgiveness is a precious, powerful gift. It is often not only for the one being forgiven, but for the one forgiving. Although I had survived to that point, from that point forward, I stopped surviving, and started living.

The past no longer weighs me down. 

“Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Till seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.” Matthew 18:21-22

Read the rest of this series here. 

Forgiveness and Freedom

(A continuation of Fear and Forgiveness)

Last night a group of ladies from my Life Group poured life into me through annointing and prayer.

They prayed for comfort and healing in my life. And they prayed for strength, because they knew, as did I, that I could not get through today without the strength that comes only through Christ.

Today I attended his funeral.

I stood with his family and friends. As the preacher phrased it, I stood among "Those who had been touched through his life."

I am sure that it was true; that each life there had somehow been affected by his. I prayed that among the crowd, that my story was unique. I hoped that the fun and charming man he was in public was also the man these people experienced behind closed doors.

The family welcomed me with open arms today. They were happy to see me, and happy to accept forgiveness on behalf of someone they loved.

Through words and stories they spoke of his salvation in the last years of his life, as well as the acceptance of death he knew was coming.

It caused a conflict in my soul to hear how great and wonderful this man was.

The man who taught me how to hate.

For a moment I almost surrendured to my instinct to just walk away, but it was in that moment that I was overwhelmed by peace, and God reminded me why I was there.

Forgiveness.

Long ago, after years of fighting him and running from him, I forgave him, and at that point the chains were loosed and I was set free.

Free from bitterness. Free from anger. Free from hate. And now, free from fear.

In that moment I decided not to step back into my chains.

So, today, I found the answers to questions. And, as much as I could hope, I found closure.

I continue to move along the path called Healing....

Fear and Forgiveness

A little over fifteen years ago I lived in a women's shelter.

I mentioned this time in my life briefly in A Mother's Heart, but the things that took my mom, sister, and I there are something I rarely talk about.

As I mentioned before, it was a shelter for abused women and children, a hideout for victims who had no one to protect them, and no place to feel safe.

The years leading up to this time we lived with an abusive man. My mom met him straight out of prison, and she was decieved by his charming ways. They were married almost immediately.

I hated him from the beginning. I am sure he is the only person I have ever really hated.

The abuse that happened over the next year and a half took many forms. Physical, emotional, and the worst of all, psychological.

Things that were done and said instilled fear in us that has remained until today.

Most of his adult life up to that point was lived between Vietnam and prison. We knew many of the horrible things he had done, but there were even more horrible things we didn't know. We knew all the ways he wanted to kill us, and there were times he almost did.

The following is taken from my journal and was written long ago:

"He would remind me that he could kill me with a jerk of the neck. He would grab me, and I would fight him. I would kick and bite and elbow the best I could. He liked that; that I would fight. I never got out of it. One time I almost escaped, and I would have if it wasn’t for my long ponytail. He grabbed it as I ran away. If I could have I would have cut it off in order to escape. Still, I would have come back and it would have been the same thing all over again, but I would have had that one time I got away.

When he got me in his grips, he did not do what one would expect in a typical abuse situation. He would hold my head with his hand, his other arm across the front of me like he was going to snap my neck. I am honestly surprised he never did. There was so much evil, I could see murder in his eyes, but for some reason, he let me live. God's plan for my life is the only way I can explain why he did not, in the midst of his insanity, kill me. Sometimes he would hold me there for 10 minutes, whispering words of death. Once he even grabbed a knife, and holding it to my neck suggested it may be more fun to slit my throat than snap it. When he let me go he would promise 'tonight.' Tonight, while I was sleeping, he would kill me then."

For a year and a half a woke up every morning wondering if that was the day he would kill me.

After 18 months my mom gathered the courage to tell him to leave. It was much easier said than done.

You see, we lived with him for less than two years, but the abuse continued long after.

The divorce began a fifteen year streak of restraining orders, self-defense classes, gripping fear to come home to an empty house, and moving constantly in attempt to stay one step ahead. He would break in and steal things, which would then end up in curious places months later. Once he sat right outside my bedroom window and smoked cigarette after cigarette while I slept, leaving the pile of cigarette buds as his sign that he had been there. He wanted us to know that he was there, and that he could have killed us. He would leave us notes and death threats. My mom would drive the car down the steep hill at one of the houses where we lived, and my sister and I would walk to the first stop sign before getting in, for fear that the breaks had been cut. Something as small as a call hang-up would turn our world up-side-down, because it was a sign that he had found us once again.

At one point, many years later, I made the decision that I would no longer live in fear. I stopped letting the fear control my life, but that does not mean I was not afraid.

Every time in the last fifteen years that I have come home to an empty house or walked across a dark parking lot, I have done so with fear. I have not let the fear stop me, and I have learned to cover it well, but it has been there.

In total it has been 17 years of fear. But today, for the first time in 17 years, I walked into an empty house without fear.

He will no longer threaten my family, because he died today.

When I first heard the news, I cried.

I had to stop and process and ask myself why I have tears for this man.

First, I know that they were tears of relief. After all these years of wondering if he would finally make true of his promise to kill me and my family, I know he never will. We have survived.

Second, I think I cried because I realized I would never find the closure I desired. I desired for him to one day send me a letter saying he was sorry. I desired that he would one day explain to me why he did what he did. And I desired that he would want my forgiveness. I also desired to tell him that I had forgiven him.

Lastly, I cried because I was sad.

Yes, this emotion was unexpected. How in the world could I possibly feel sadness for a man who had terrorized nearly my entire life?

I realized in that moment that I had truly and honestly forgiven him, and I was sad for him. It wasn't necessarily his death that made me sad, but his life. Somewhere deep down I truly desired for him to find salvation and healing.

Many years ago, not long after I wrote the words from the journal entry about him wanting to kill me, I wrote:

"It is easy for me to forget that he is human, because with that fact comes the reality that at some point he too has been a victim. I realized I know nothing about his childhood. I wonder when he forgot his goodness. I wonder if he was hugged or ever truly loved. I wonder about the first time he hated someone, if that was what devoured him. Hate can do horrible things to a person."

I believe I wrote that on the day I chose forgiveness over hate.

I find it hard to admit that he caused so much fear in my life. For years I have claimed the verse "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear." God is perfect love, and he is the breath that gives me life, so how could I, for 17 years, live with fear?

I don't know the answer to that. But I do know that today I am letting go of things I have been holding onto for so long. I do know that my heart is ready for healing. And I do know that today I will walk free of fear, and maybe in that freedom I will find the answers.