7x70

​I sit across from you. 

A table is between us. You’ve been leading this hopeless investigation, listening as I am forced to spill my inmost shames to a man I’ve never trusted. Sure enough, I feel my shoulders fall in defeat as you read me the verdict that I know will change the trajectory of my life. You deem the liar; the girl who cried abuse. With that one sentence, you subsequently tell the world that my abuser is innocent and the victim in this story. 

…

I walk past you. 

I watch as you quickly look away, knowing that you - my professor and mentor - lied. I see your shame as I refuse to stop looking at one of my own Judas’s. The first person I ever trusted with my story. I feel a seed of hatred in my heart as I secretly hope it haunts you for the rest of your life, knowing that you chose your job over a girl you were supposed to protect.

…

I walk up to you at your table with your family. 

We’d just talked yesterday; you’d taken my side in his abuse before. I couldn’t have imagined that as I approached you, you’d shoot me the look of disgust you’re giving me right now. I couldn’t imagine that you, my best friend, would turn against me. I feel the tears burn behind my eyes and nose as I struggle not to let them fall, and walk away from you. My best friend, who told me she was on my side just a year prior, only to decide I wasn’t worth it. 

…

I sit across you in your office. 

You tell me you believe me. You tell me that you think my abuser has fooled a lot of people. My heart swells with hope - you are an important person. You are the first important person who has told me they believe me…then I feel that hope drop into the pit of my stomach as you repeat what many other ‘important’ people here have said: “We have to be careful, because if this gets out, it will reflect poorly on the university, and no one wants that.”

…

I listen to you both in the next room, laughing and messing around in the way we all had just a few weeks prior. 

I listen as you, my suite-mates and once closest confidants, shut me out. Only a bathroom stands between us, but you locked that weeks ago. I listen to the two people who will never speak to me again, who testified on my abuser’s behalf. I curl up on my bed, sobbing into my pillow as I feel how alone I am. 

…

For two years after, it was pain and self-hatred and fear and loss and grief and hopelessness. It was complete aloneness in all of my trauma. Then slowly, it began to shift into something darker. In the following eight years, it evolved into an all-consuming bitterness. It turned into hatred and anger. It became a bitter hopefulness that all my Judas’s would experience the same level of pain they inflicted upon me. It was shameful prayers that they’d regret what they did for their entire lives. It became a deep loathing, hoping they’d know that when it happened again, it wasn’t just on him. It was on them and their lies, too.

And then.

10 years later, my Pastor, Brad, preached on forgiveness: “Then Peter came to Him and asked, ‘Lord, how often should I forgive someone who sins against me? Seven times?’ ‘

No, not seven times,’ Jesus replied, ‘but seventy times seven.’”

And I decided, right in the middle of that sermon, that I’d held this bitterness for long enough. It was not only painful to myself, it was un-Christlike. 70x7. 490 days. 490 prayers. 490 times to visualize myself in Heaven, pulling my bitterness into my hands like a burning ball of flames, and passing it to Jesus.

And then.

70x2. 140 prayers. 140 times visualizing myself giving Him that ball of flames. 140 days later…I stand across from Jesus. The Sea of Glass is between us. My shoulders fall in relief as I watch Him turn that flaming ball into ashes, throwing it into the air to dissipate. 140 days later, I lay in bed, tears falling down my face. My eyes are closed as I picture every one of my Judas’s and feel no bitterness, anger, or hatred. 

In 140 days, 140 prayers, I watched as my Father turned my ashes into blooming flowers. And I can never thank Him enough. 

Pictured is my amazing husband, who I would have never met if any of that horrible trauma hadn’t happened, and I hadn’t left that university. He makes any residual pain worth it every day.