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By Jo Gamm Witt
Childhood hurts can be long-impacting and harmful, not only while a child, but well into adulthood and sometimes for an entire lifetime. And hurt continues to control us while we keep it locked up inside of us. It’s hard to understand why it is freeing to at last share a hurt with a trusted person, but for whatever reason when we share a hurt, it no longer controls us.
For many years I had told no one about what happened to me while I was in junior high as a seventh grader. It wasn’t until 25 years later and after two years of counseling that I finally one day spewed out all the hurts I had harbored for so many years. And after, I felt like a huge weight had been lifted from me.
Junior high can be a tumultuous time for youth in the transition process from being a child moving towards adulthood. Feeling the acceptance of peers in many ways comes to supersede the need to feel accepted by family, while feeling rejected or ridiculed by peers can be very damaging to a youth’s developing self-esteem. Commonly by junior high youth develop crushes. Such was the case with me—there was a boy in eighth grade that I had a crush on. I’m not sure how, but his cousin (a girl in my grade) learned of the crush. She offered to give him “love” notes from me. I felt excited, as she assured me that he supposedly was interested in me, too. Then one day in between classes while the hallway was filled with students, he loudly blew up at me, telling me he hated me. I felt incredibly hurt, humiliated, embarrassed, rejected, deceived, and like I didn’t belong. I will never forget how badly that experience hurt me. And it was all because of that girl in my class who presumably thought it would be funny to play what she presumably viewed as a joke on me. But it wasn’t funny. It was harmful. Long-term harmful. I’ve only attended one of my class reunions since then, my ten year class reunion, and she was there, flaunting herself about like she was the star of the show, and everyone was giving her the attention that she was so blatantly seeking from them. I was disgusted. Appalled. She is not deserving of people making over her. She’s someone who greatly damaged how I felt about myself for many years, damaged my interacting with and trusting others. And lately to learn that she was honored as a speaker at my alma mater high school. She went on to be successful in life. Not surprised. She had all the confidence in the world. Perhaps she bullied her way into success, squelching others in the process. But I digress….
This morning for the first time it entered in my mind, “But you haven’t forgiven her.” And I argued with the Lord about it. “Forgive her? How can I?” Maybe I would have been more successful in life had it not been for her so severely damaging my self-esteem. Maybe I would have been more trusting of others and let more people in my life, had it not been for her. Who knows. God doesn’t care about the what ifs—God wants me to forgive her. But I’m grappling with it, struggling with it. Should I write her a letter and tell her how what she did made me feel? Should I journal my feelings and finally try to be finished with them? Do I pray and pray and pray about it? I don’t know. It’s hard. But what I do know is this: God wants me to forgive her.
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