4 Levels Of Love

 I’m not just talking about PTSD that affects so many Veterans and victims of sexual assault. I’m talking about the “ordinary” betrayals suffered by so many of us. “Victim,” I hate that word, but that, is essence, is what we are. Or are we?

 When I was six years old, before Moses and I met, I was play on a swing set in a friend’s back yard. Some how my right thumb got stuck in between two moving parts and ripped open. The bloody mess required a stitch, which to this day, fifty years later is still there! My hunch is that those betrayals are literal scars in our brains clearly “visible” to us; you just can’t make it go away!

It is like the time my dear friend and colleague stabbed me in the back and threw me under the bus and left me for dead. Now he did not literally stab me in the back and throw me under the bus and leave me for the birds to peck at my bones, but it sure felt like it. More than that it ruined me, it truly did. I had to start all over again. That scar is in my brain visible for me to see every single day.

What to do?

Here is where the old Biblical concept of forgiveness is so powerful. Forgiveness is God’s gift of healing to the scars of victimization. It takes the wounds and makes a new story out of them. Forgiveness turns those scars into “battle scars.”

Here is my new story. When my victimizer assaulted me he was as guilty as sin. He had no idea, though, that God would take that God awful event and transform it into a major story of God’s redeeming grace and empowerment for my life. But that is what happened. I’ll be honest with you. I would never want to experience that kind of betrayal again and more than that I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. Heck no! But somehow I survived, and more than that, I have overcome, I am victorious. And more than that, I live to love and empower others. How did that happen?

Here is something you may have never heard before; Forgiveness is changing the story and making it just another episode in the on going saga of your life of love. I got hurt, I have a scar, I have a story, I know how you feel, I’m really sorry that happened, I’m living my life of love.

What about my perpetrator? I can’t tell you much about him. I see him every once and a while. Frankly, I feel sorry for him. And while he may have screwed me (pardon my French), I think he must be really screwed up to do the things he did. He has no power over me. I’m praying for him and his family. God knows they need all the help they can get.

Actually, I’m pretty proud of those scars. Even though those scars didn’t come while I was serving my country or something great like that, they are meaningful to me. You see, when God forgave me, he changed the story of my life. That is the least I can do, just like it says in the Lord’s Prayer, “as we forgive those who trespass against us.” There is a story in that, a new story.

I love you — Bryan