Have you ever been deeply wounded by another person?
Have you ever been deeply wounded by another person who, with deliberate action and malice aforethought, hurt you on purpose?
Have you waited for justice to be served?
And waited some more?
Are you still waiting?
(Maddening, isn’t it?)
In our broken world, wounds come in three ways. Sometimes people wound us unintentionally. It is to be expected in the rough and tumble of imperfect people living on Planet Earth. These wounds are easier to forgive because there was no malicious intent.
Sometimes we wound ourselves by our own poor choices. We make bad and/or foolish decisions. That pain is at the self-serve pump. No one to blame but ourselves.
Then there are the wounds inflicted by others who hurt us on purpose. They knew exactly what they were doing and they did it anyway. Perhaps it was a quick measured decision. Perhaps it was a long process of planning to do evil to us. And when we are blindsided by their harmful actions we stagger back, wondering how anyone could do so much intentional damage with no regard or conscience?
In the middle of our pain we console ourselves with the thought that certainly justice will be coming. The account will be set straight. They will have an attack of conscience and come to us with apology and we will have our satisfaction. Then we will be vindicated.
At first we hope for that.
Then we wait for that.
Then we wait some more.
Then we seethe over the delay and think, “It will happen. It must happen.”
(Not you, of course. But people I know. They think this way.)
Then one day we wake up and realize that the apology we’re waiting for will never come. Their conscience has cobwebs on it. More infuriating, the one who did evil to us is cruising through life without hitting so much as a speed bump.
What to do?
Here’s what my friend Jennifer has to say on the topic. I don’t think anyone could say it better. If you see yourself at all in the above paragraphs, this will hit you like a train. Read this carefully, let it sink in. Apply it to your life if you need to, then pass it along to anyone who could benefit.
“Picture yourself walking through your life at this moment. But turn yourself around in your picture….you’re walking backwards. Not traveling to the past, but moving forward into your future, while facing backwards.
Instead of seeing your future and all the new people in it, you are constantly staring at your awful past. Especially at those who did evil to you.
As long as you continue to want to be vindicated and wish for an apology while looking back at how wrongly you were treated, reflecting constantly on how you were gipped, you will walk your life moving in a forward motion, only facing backwards.
Walking forward, facing backwards you will miss all the beauty of the things and people in your life right now. Because in your soul you are not facing them, you are looking backwards. And because of that you will see your future through past events. It will cause you to guard your heart and miss out on all the joy because of your “facing backwards” perspective.
It will happen in your thoughts. It will happen during what should be happy moments. All are tainted by facing backwards.
When you decide to grab your healing by the horns and shout it out that you refuse to allow one more day to be stolen, you will find yourself turning around and walking forwards, facing forwards. Then you will see the new things, the new people and the good things that are happening in your life.”
“This one thing I do: Forgetting what lies behind and straining toward what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”
– Philippians 3:13b-14
Todd A. Thompson – January 18, 2009
