ABOVE All—CHARITY 

“The whole concern of doctrine and its teaching must be directed to the love that never ends. Whether something is proposed for belief, for hope or for action, the love of our Lord must always be made accessible, so that anyone can see that all the works of perfect Christian virtue spring from love and have no other objective than to arrive at love.” (CCC, Above All—Charity)

PROLOGUE

(1,200 words. 5 minute read)

There is an everydayness to healing and forgiveness that I embrace in the refuge of Christ, our Gentle Healer. Without shame or despondency, I concede, healing is progressive. Twenty years ago I balked at the notion. I desired instantaneous healing. Alas, God’s will for some, was not God’s will for me. Today, the miracle I celebrate is the constancy of Divine Mercy as I journey towards heaven faithfully yet flawed. Divine Mercy, “God’s love reaching down to meet the needs and overcome the miseries of his creatures,” is an extraordinary tenet of our faith, an anchor of hope in the sorrowful mysteries of a childhood story once steeped in secrecy and shame. (www.thedivinemercy.org/articles/what-does-divine-mercy-actually-mean)

I was in my thirties when the coping mechanisms I had developed throughout years of torment bumped up against the Christian imperative to forgive. Like many survivors, I was too traumatized to forgive straight away. The status quo asserts forgiveness is a choice—feelings catch up later, but my feelings lagged like out of shape runners who had lost sight of the finish line. When they were not lagging, they ran fiercely ahead of reason. I had invested in enough therapy to understand that feelings are not facts. (I can feel bad on a good day and good on a bad day.) But the implication that human emotion, i.e., “the passions” held no significance in the choice to forgive fueled my frustrations all the more, albeit unknowingly to my pastor.

Drawing from the insights of Thomas Aquinas, “the passions are the feelings, the emotions, or the movement of the sensible appetite—natural components of human psychology—which incline a person to act or not act in view of what is perceived as good or evil. The principal passions are love and hatred, desire and fear, joy, sadness, and anger.”

(Compendium CCC, 370. What are the passions? Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2006).

Jesus, who suffered my childhood two thousand years before I knew it as my own, understood my aversion to “going through the motions” in an act of obedience. With a litany of failed attempts, I ceased insincere “lip service,” boldly went to the throne, and invited Sacrificial Love into my struggle to forgive. He, in turn, invited me to follow him into the heart of the matter. I extend the invitation to you.

“Whether prayer is expressed in words or gestures, it is the whole man who prays. But in naming the source of prayer, Scripture speaks sometimes of the soul or the spirit, but most often of the heart (more than a thousand times.) According to Scripture, it is the heart that prays. If our heart is far from God, the words of prayer are in vain.” (CCC 2562.)

A “heart far from God” often represents a wounded part of one’s soul that is inwardly detached, yet outwardly functional. Victims of abuse and/or grievous betrayal are prone to suffer crippling shame for what is felt, not felt, or desired in response to the endured evil. Add to this, a lack of adult catechesis on the Catholic understanding of human emotion and you have a perpetual nightmare on your hands. Some sins leave a person cold and thin and stripped of dignity. For the faithful with no personal frame of reference for this causation, it is charitable to measure words carefully before pressing a broken heart to forgive its breaker. As our faith teaches:

“Jesus’ call to conversion and penance, like that of the prophets before him, does not aim first at outward works, ‘sackcloth and ashes,’ fasting and mortification, but at the conversion of the heart, interior conversion. Without this, such penances remain sterile and false; however, interior conversion urges expression in visible signs, gestures and works of penance” (CCC, 1430).

Nearly two decades ago, in utter frustration, I abandoned my efforts to forgive and opted to seek consolation in a makeshift prayer room in my home. Little did I know this unconventional morning routine would lead to interior conversion and disentangle me from the thickets of unforgiveness. I set my alarm for six a.m. with plans to sit quietly on the floor of my walk-in closet. With a heart full of sorrowful mysteries, I welcomed the company of Christ with no end-date to our experimental rendezvous. Initially, the only words I prayed were, Jesus, I invite you into the center of my pain. Morning after morning, Love obliged amid smelly running shoes, the clothes I had to have but rarely wore, and tucked in the corner like an extravagant dress I aspired to wear again; hung hope.

Years passed before I was compelled to write about how Unfailing Love had empowered me to forgive what I will not forget. As journaling transitioned to writers’ conferences and content writing workshops, I met countless others who internalized shame due to their own struggles. And so, from 2014—2019 I set out to test the relevancy of my message with the following special interest groups:

  Victims of

o   Domestic violence

o   Sexual assault/child sexual abuse

o   Sexual exploitation/Human trafficking

  Women’s prison ministry

   Alcohol and Substance Abuse Recovery

   Women’s groups (Protestant and Catholic)

With the exception of prison ministry (due to restrictions), I invited each group to share specific ministry phrases they found hurtful, confusing, frustrating, or all of the above. In turn, I wrote their comments on a dry erase board. I couldn’t write fast enough. Straight away, identifiable patterns of shared themes surfaced in every group. When it was permissible, I interviewed group participants individually. The collective voice of these women, aka, “feedback from the flock” affirmed that the perceived need for a fresh approach to forgiveness was not unique to me.

I found it surprising that women in church groups, Protestant and Catholic, alike, expressed similar spiritual and emotional needs around the topic of forgiveness. That being said, the purpose of this book is twofold. First, to demonstrate the need for a trauma-informed approach to forgiveness that is easy to read and share. And second, to offer a glimpse of Divine Mercy at work inside a broken heart, where fragments are gathered, nothing is wasted, and forgiveness flows freely.

Each chapter can stand alone and as such begins with a definition of trauma and specific learning objectives. Special features include:

                         ·         Abuse statistics

                         ·         “Feedback from The Flock”

                         ·         Discussion questions

Whether you struggle to forgive or seek to understand the struggle, discovery awaits as we venture into the heart of the matter.

Let’s make an impact together,

Wendy Redroad, Founder
The Wilderness Initiative