When I was in high school, at the beginning of the year, my
biology teacher had us fill out a questionnaire about ourselves as a “get to
know you.” One of the questions was something along the lines of what is
something about you that many people don’t know? And I was blank. What on earth
was there to say about me? I struggled similarly when people asked me what I did
for fun or what my hobbies were. If I had answered honestly, I would have said,
“Hanging out with my friends, getting good grades in school, and being alive.”
Perhaps in that order. The truth was, I did not have any energy left in my life
but to do the bare minimum of what was required of me and…survive. In reality, I was surviving gross emotional abuse at the hands of my parents (the
physical abuse was always secondary in frequency and impact and barely worth
mentioning). The amount of energy left for knowing who I was or what I liked
was just nonexistent.
But now that I’m older and have seen the effects of that
abuse play out over time, I’m beginning to wonder what was worse, the abuse? Or
the bologna that was fed to me by well-meaning Christian people around me about
“being the bigger person” and “loving your enemy?” Telling a child who is being
abused that he or she should shut up and tolerate their abuse is… also a form of
child abuse.
I tried countless times to make peace with my abusers. To
see their side of things. To give grace. To respectfully disagree. But all it
got me was more abuse.
That’s the problem. You cannot tell someone who is under the
authority of their abuser to be the bigger person, love their enemy, or
whatever hogwash people try to tell you. It. Does. Not. Work. And it heaps extra
harm onto an already barely-surviving person.
I have been living in literal, physical freedom for 17 years,
but it’s taken all that time and more to recover what was lost in me. And I
have internalized this idea, as a result of being raised in a Christian
environment, that I was supposed to love my abuser. Give in to my abuser. Give
them the benefit of the doubt, even as I was given none such luxury myself.
This is harmful! So, so, so harmful!
I deserve just as much love and affection and value and
justice and freedom as anyone else walking the face of this earth. And the
effect of these teaching is that I didn’t believe that about myself. So not only
was I hearing “you aren’t worth much” from my abusers, I was also hearing it
echoed by some people who I should have been able to trust to help me.
THANK GOD that many people have come along side me on my
journey and told me, “No. This is wrong. You don’t deserve this.” Or “You are
valuable. You are worthy of respect and dignity.” Or, “Your emotions are valid, and I will make space for them.” I’m still trying to believe these things. Unfortunately,
believing these things are true, and knowing them deep in my soul, are just two
different things and it takes a lot of time. And a lot of quiet tenderness from
trusted friends.
This is just one personal manifestation of this complete
heresy. It doesn’t take much to see how this mentality keeps abused women (or
others) in dangerous situations, oppressed people in their “place,” and continued
disillusionment of people with Christianity.
Here’s the thing, “loving” your abusive enemy DOES NOT APPLY
to cases where the less powerful person is also the victim of abuse. I will
work, imperfectly, to love those around me for whom I find it difficult to do
so. But if that person is in some kind of authority over me? The love your
enemy business is off the table. I will give them basic human respect (or try),
but I will not give them any space whatsoever to continue their abuse. Giving
them space to abuse is not love anyway. In my opinion, the most loving thing you can do is
get yourself out of the situation and remove the ability for that person to
hurt you (they are dehumanizing themselves while they dehumanize you…so best
for everyone if you cut off that supply). I will love my enemies who are equal
to me and who have less privilege than me. I will do so at my own expense if
the situation calls for it. But I will not love, at my own expense, the person
who has authority over me and is using it to harm me. It is WRONG to ask a
victim to love their enemy. If they want to show love to their oppressor because
they themselves choose so out of the security they have in that, that’s fine.
But no one and I mean NO ONE should be telling them how they should approach
that person. Ugh. The effect of this toxic belief in my life cannot be
overstated.
I don’t talk to my parents for the most part. And this is a
somewhat recent phenomenon. I wasted so much time, so much of my heart, trying
to repair things with them. And I think a big reason why I kept pressing on
towards reconciliation is that I thought it was what God wanted me to do. Love
your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you. I thought that if I loved them just the right
way, that they would someday see the light. That they would someday want a
healthy relationship with me where they respected my dignity. But the truth is,
it is very unlikely I will ever get that. And they will have to work on
themselves in a way that I can’t be a part of for that to happen.
So much of what I had to offer the world was lost in my
continued attachment to harmful people. If I had felt the freedom to let go of
those relationships at 18, who knows what energy I would have had for the world
that so desperately needs it. But instead, it was smothered by a seemingly
endless amount of emotional labor to try to fix things with people who didn’t
care for it to be fixed.
I go back to this podcast by Rob Bell again and again when I
need a reminder that it’s okay to have boundaries that protect me:
“You are a
sacred, precious resource that we all want unleashed in the world. And if
someone is constantly taking shots at you, part of your responsibility is to
protect yourself.”
“You can love someone from a distance.”
“Refuse to participate
in anything that degrades your humanity.”
“You can have bottomless compassion
and love and yet very firm boundaries. You can be open and loving and have a
heart as wide as the ocean for humanity and yet be very clear on what you
participate in and what you don’t.”
Wow. I didn’t have those words when I was
younger, but I do now, and I don’t plan on wasting them.
I really wish I could have told my younger self that I was being
abused (even just naming it has healing power). I wish I could tell my younger
self that I didn’t need to be the bigger person. That I had every right to
fight for my own dignity and never stop. Lord knows, I would have continued
fighting anyway, but it sure would have been nice to feel validated in that
instead of feeling like not only am I letting down everyone around me, but also God himself.
Long, slow shrug.
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