AN OPEN LETTER TO SURVIVORS OF ABUSE by Justin Holcomb Lindsey Holcomb for Core Christianity
Dear survivors of abuse,
What happened to you was not your fault. You are not to blame. You did not deserve it. You did not ask for this. You should not be silenced. You are not worthless. You do not have to pretend like nothing happened. Nobody had the right to violate you. You are not responsible for what happened to you. You are not damaged goods. You were supposed to be treated with dignity and respect. You were the victim of assault and it was wrong. You were sinned against. Despite all the pain, healing can happen and there is hope.
While you may cognitively agree that hope is out there, you may still feel a major effect of the abuse—disgrace, a deep sense of filthy defilement encumbered with shame.
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Disgrace is the opposite of grace. Grace is love that seeks you out even if you have nothing to give in return. Grace is being loved when you are, or feel, unlovable. Grace has the power to turn despair into hope. Grace listens, lifts up, cures, transforms, and heals.
Disgrace destroys, causes pain, deforms, and wounds. It alienates and isolates. Disgrace makes you feel worthless, rejected, unwanted, and repulsive—like a persona non grata (a “person without grace”). Disgrace silences and shuns. Your suffering of disgrace is only increased when others force your silence. The refusals of others to speak about abuse and listen to survivors tell the truth is a refusal to offer grace and healing.
To your sense of disgrace, God restores, heals, and re-creates through grace. A good short definition of grace is “one-way love.”1 This is the opposite of your experience of assault, which was “one-way violence.” To your experience of one-way violence, God brings one-way love. The contrast between the two is staggering.
One-way love does not avoid you, but comes near; not because of personal merit, but because of your need. It is the lasting transformation that takes place in human experience. One-way love is the change agent you need for the pain you are experiencing.
Unfortunately, the message you hear most often is self-heal, self-love, and self-help. Abuse survivors are frequently told some version of the following: “One can will one’s well-being”2or “If you are willing to work hard and find good support, you can not only heal but thrive.”3 This sentiment is reflected in the famous quote, “No one can disgrace us but ourselves.”4
This is all horrible news. The reason this is bad news is that victims of abuse are rightfully, and understandably, broken over how they’ve been violated. But those in pain simply may not have the wherewithal to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps.” On a superficial level, self-esteem techniques and a tough “refusal to allow others to hurt me” tactic may work for the short term. But what happens for the abused person on a bad day, a bad month, or a bad year? Sin and the effects of sin are similar to the laws of inertia: a person (or object) in motion will continue on that trajectory until acted upon by an outside force. If one is devastated by sin, a personal failure to rise above the effects of sin will simply create a snowball effect of shame. Hurting people need something from the outside to stop the downward spiral. Fortunately, grace floods in from the outside at the point when hope to change oneself is lost. Grace declares and promises that you will be healed. One-way love does not command “Heal thyself!” but declares “You will be healed!” Jeremiah 17:14 promises:
