Forgiving the Unforgivable

Picture a small, rural town in Tennessee - small country stores with farm supplies, a country meat and three cafe, a full-service gas station, the barber shop, and a post office all surrounded by rolling hills and farm land. The indigenous people going about their business at a busy yet slower pace than today’s hustle and bustle. This kind of sounds like Mayberry on the old Andy Griffith show, but actually, it was my home town. By seven or eight years old my life in this picturesque community was a façade. My days by this age were full of fear, anxiety, and confusion. An older boy in the community had taught me games, sexual games. Games that eventually moved into physical contact and sexual acts.

I had come along late in life to parents much older than other parents that I saw. It seemed like I was living with grandparents, loved but isolated. I realized at this point that a decision had to be made. I needed to understand about what this boy had taught me. Were all these sexual practices wrong?  A lot of them felt good. All of this was so confusing to me. Then, I thought. I will talk to my mom about this. The guilt and confusion cannot go on. In a moment of gut-wrenching courage, I approached my mom and asked, “can we talk about sex”. Her response was immediate. She stopped me short in my question. “Sex”, she said, “Sex is dirty. We don’t talk about that. Don’t ever bring that up again”. In that second something clicked in my young, confused mind. I vowed in that moment to never let anyone know about my abuse. Also, after that moment, time spent on anything sexual brought on a rush of adrenalin and excitement until I was hooked on porn, self-gratification, and sex. This mind set and addiction kept me enslaved within my own head with thoughts of guilt, shame, and low self-esteem. Although I was able to stop the sexual abuse during my adolescent years, the residual hatred and resentment for myself, this boy, my parents, and just life would rule over me for decades.

t took a spiritual awakening, maybe more of an intervention from God, to pull me from these depths of despair. I had accepted Christ at age 22, but tried to be a Christian on my own terms, I tried working through my issues on my own terms, and above all else kept everything about my past a secret. After years of trying to live this self-patterned Christian life, I dropped out of church and eventually returned to my mostly heathen ways. This took my life through one failed marriage leaving two beautiful children in confusion as to why dad was so demanding and angry. Years into my second marriage I was separated, as this marriage was on the rocks as well.At this point I was left alone, separated (isolated) from my family. The only voice I heard was in my conscious from the accuser. He told me over and over that I was a failure, that I had hurt everyone around me, and that I was useless. I could hear his voice clearly telling me that everyone concerned would be better off without me. The best idea was for me to have an accident and die. Then, my family would get the life insurance benefits and everyone would be happy. I was pacing the sidewalk back and forth on busy four lane road trying to get up the courage to dart out in front of one of the large SUV’s traveling at 45 plus miles per hour, when Jesus, my Savior intervened.

You see He had never left me. He sent my estranged second wife who had refused to even speak to me on the phone for over two weeks to get me. She pulled up on the edge of the street and said get in. I asked her why she was there, all she said was that she wasn’t sure. For some reason she just felt like she needed to come and talk with me. This started the dialog that turned my life around. I ended up in counseling, got back in church, and started seeking God.

I eventually joined a recovery group working the 12 steps to overcome my sexual addiction with Christ as my higher power. A big part of working the steps was to inventory my life with each item listed so they can be analyzed and assigned tasks of healing. Some of these tasks include things like taking responsibility for my actions, getting forgiveness from God for my part, and giving forgiveness to others for their part. This forgiving of myself and others for mistakes and hurts was particularly tough for me. I had been holding on to those resentments of myself and others since I was a small child. At first, this giving of forgiveness seemed impossible, but then I started working the first healing part of this exercise, getting forgiveness from God. I had a long list of ways that I had hurt God and others. I spent time in God’s word and learned that 1 John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness”. Armed with this Godly truth I started praying over my list, confessing my wrongs to Jesus. Unexpectedly, during this exercise my view of these sins slowly changed. I started seeing how my disobeying Christ had hurt Him and all others around me, especially my family. This softened my heart as I saw how I had hurt others and felt how my loving God was really forgiving me for those things.

My softened heart was the key to giving forgiveness. Christ gave me this heart. He knew that I would have to come to this realization of who I am and who He is before my heart could be changed. I am broken. He is forever loving, faithful, and forgiving. With this new heart I tackled my list of others who had hurt me. I started praying over all the things that had been done to me. Christ helped me during these prayers to see the truth that people who hurt do so because they are hurting. This older boy that had hurt me as a child was too young to know what he knew unless someone was abusing him. I cried thanking about the hurt, guilt, and shame that he must have felt as I forgave him for passing those on to me. I wept uncontrollably as I forgave aging parents for doing the best that they could with the unruly, unexpected child that I was. I received the most healing as I gradually came to terms with my own brokenness, forgiving myself for all the ways that I had missed God’s mark. Also, I went on to make amends as possible to reconcile and make corrections to others for the ways that I had hurt them. My life today is about do-overs. Each day I do my best to follow God’s instructions of how to live this life, love God and love other as yourself. When I fail, and I do, I immediately ask for forgiveness and try to make things right in the moment. When I am hurt, I hurt with the person who facilitated it and look for ways to improve their lives. Above all I have peace. You can find this peace too. It starts with a talk with Jesus.