Do not take revenge, my dear friends,
but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written:
“It is Mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord.
—Romans 12:19
I plan to share this story in full in another book, but when I was in high school, I was tackled to the ground and choked by a grown man twice my size for “touching his wife” (essentially tapping her on the shoulder in the grocery store). I’ve processed this memory from a few different angles already—the fear of having my life threatened, the inability to breathe as I began to black out, the violation of someone forcing themselves upon me—but apparently, I had one more angle to process: forgiveness.
This was probably the most difficult hurdle in my trauma-processing journey so far. I really had to wrestle my ego into submission as it struggled to hold onto the notion that “this man doesn’t deserve forgiveness!” While that might be true, the idea expressed in the quote above popped into mind and helped me realize that holding onto murderous thoughts of revenge wasn’t doing me any favors.
I’ve experienced something akin to convulsions when processing trauma before (which I’ve described as something like wringing out a towel full of anger, hatred, or fear), but what I experienced in letting this go was an intensity to the degree I felt a blood vessel might burst in my eye.
Being violated by a man twice their size is something no child should have to go through, but I am a believer that everything happens for a reason, and the experience of overcoming this hurdle in forgiveness was—dare I say—almost worth having the experience itself.
Replacing my hatred with compassionate wonder for what happened to this man that he’d go as far as to strangle a boy felt like walking in Christ-like shoes. I found myself sympathizing with someone who was, perhaps, molested as a child, and who felt tapping his wife on the shoulder was a violation of boundaries, and I even envisioned myself embracing this person with the hug they’ve probably needed for a very long time.
Processing this experience was for my own benefit, I suppose, but I hope sharing this story has the power to inspire someone else to work through their own healing journey.