Today I shared a personal FOCUS with our Cornerstone Scripture Bible Study.  Our lesson was based on the story of Jacob and Esau and the forgiveness that Esau had given Jacob even though Jacob had stolen his birthright which caused him a lot of pain and grief.  The questions the study provoked were in regards to forgiveness and most specifically family. 

God is intentional.  I was not surprised to have been asked to do the focus once I did the lesson.  So I prayed about what I should share and decided this was the best avenue to go about sharing what I’ve been going through.  So it is my show up moment today.

To Forgive Or Not To Forgive

That is the question.  What I’ve learned as a survivor of abuse is that the forgiveness I give is for me and not for the other person.  Forgiving is an act of letting the control that person has on you go and giving it to God…placing it in His hands and trusting He will take care of it as He deems suitable.

Sounds good in theory but it isn’t so easy.  It is hard to have a lesson such as this one (and to have been the one assigned to do the focus) because it isn’t so easy to forgive some issues.  This lesson talks a lot about the harmony of family and forgiving family for what they’ve done.  And it shows a clear sign of repentance on Esau’s part to his brother, Jacob.

As many of you already know, my grandfather has hurt my mother and my sister in a very deep and unimaginable way and just a few months ago God has given me the gift of unearthing some of my own memories of this same abuse.  I say ‘gift’ because it is a blessing to finally have the final piece of my puzzle that makes up who I am, why I might do what I do, or did, and why I might think I’m ‘not good enough’…now I know and now I can finally accept that I AM good enough because it all makes sense.  My questions are answered. 

With that being said I do believe that forgiveness is still needed in this situation but along with the forgiveness I am allowed righteous anger, pain and the feeling of betrayal.  My grandfather is 95 and still alive.  So I think about the idea of how important ‘words and actions’ are….and that leaves me in a quandary.  He is in his last days and not even coherent enough to offer any words if even I asked for them.  Not that he would give them to me as he did not offer them to my mother or sister when they went to him face to face.

I won’t stand here and say that I have forgiven him and I’m fine.  I have put him in God’s hands and for now, that’s where I feel safest, to have God in control of the matter of his soul.  Like I said, the forgiveness is for me more than it is for him.  Right now I think I am still on my journey as both Jacob and Esau were. I believe every person, no matter what evil they have done in their life, is a child of God and deserved the same redemption as I, but, I don’t feel the need to ‘live in close proximity as a family.’ 

What I am thankful for in this journey of living through what I have is that God has taken the gifts He’s given me from the moment of conception and has used them to bring forth healing to all those who have been wrongfully caught up in evil the way I have.  The lesson discusses how we might take awhile to get where we are meant to be… and I don’t always think that is our fault.  Sometimes we get caught in other people’s sins which throw us off track.

But God is relentless in finding a way to get us where we need to be.  Five years ago it was put on my heart that there needs to be an abuse survivor support group within the Catholic church, just as there is the Rachel’s project (for those affected by abortion) and Gabriel project (for those dealing with unwed pregnancy.)   Abuse survivors need support too, in the church, especially with the dark secrets that had been earthed.

This is when I went to the Archdiocese and found that Miguel Prats and Fr. Gavin Vaverek had recently founded the Maria Goretti Network, a social justice program that is a peer to peer ministry of abuse survivors. Everything they encompassed was exactly what I felt the church needed.  So I became their spokes person.  An interesting side note to this is that I had met Fr. Gavin Vaverek , who is the pastor of St. Mary’s in Longview, TX, about fifteen years before right after I had been raped the second time.  I met him when he officiated my friend’s wedding and I was her maid of honor.  I was in the worst place of denial at this wedding  but I find it interesting that our paths crossed at that time.  Who knew fifteen years later we would be in cahoots to heal survivors of abuse?   

The journey of my life has been clearly headed in the direction of helping others.  Just last year God brought me to found Hopeful Hearts Ministry, a 501 C3 non-profit dedicated to empowering and restoring the lives of those abused. 

Had I not been sexually abused as a child I most likely would not have found myself in a position to have been raped as a teenager, or in the least I might have had more courage to tell.  Or I might not have been subsequently lost in the depths of shame and unworth through most of my teen and young adult years.  

Had none of it happened I do believe I would have still been meant to live for a cause, it just would be a different cause.  I thank God for my life.  All of it.  That is what forgiveness can bring, an appreciation of my own life and the redemption that I’ve been given.

Now you know the ‘rest’ of the story. 😉 

One final word to leave you…in the group discussion one of my friends, Joy, gave us this quote to ponder:

“Unforgiveness is like drinking poison but waiting for the person who wronged you to die.”

Blessings

Shannon