Still Room for Hope

by Alisa Kaplan

  Long after the class was over, I found myself returning over and over to Emily’s words. I found I was thinking about forgiveness more seriously than I ever had in the past.

  It occurred to me that God seemed to have been putting other stories about forgiveness in my path. Driving home one afternoon, for instance, about six months before I’d met Emily, I’d heard someone tell a story on the radio about a man—a pastor—whose son had been murdered in a bar fight. He developed a relationship with the young man who’d killed his son while the young man was in jail, a relationship that developed over the years from casual to more intimate. They became as close as a father and son; in fact, when his son’s killer was released and got married, the pastor performed the ceremony.

  When I’d heard that story (and I sat in my driveway so I could hear the end), I thought: I’m sorry, but that is completely nuts. I couldn’t wrap my brain around the idea, couldn’t imagine feeling that way. I thought about how much space that pastor must have in his heart, how much compassion and empathy and generosity, and I knew, without a shade of doubt, that I didn’t have that much love.

  But I couldn’t get the story out of my head, either. It would pop up at the weirdest moments—when I was driving to work, or doing crunches at the gym, or feeding my parents’ dogs.

  Then I remembered that in 2006, a man entered a one-room schoolhouse in Pennsylvania with a gun and killed ten girls, aged six to thirteen, and then himself. That very day, mere hours after the shooting, the Amish community extended forgiveness to the family of the shooter. They met with his widow, invited her to one of the girls’ funerals, and held the killer’s father while he wept. Members of that community went so far as to set up a charitable foundation for his family. I was using drugs then, and so I was pretty much oblivious to everything going on in the world around me, but I had followed the story of what had happened in that Amish schoolhouse closely while it was happening. Why had I been so interested in this story about the incredible capacity of a community to forgive?

  Then, at the Wounded Hearts group, I had heard Emily’s story. It was a story I could relate to, but that was from a perspective much worse than my own. More than anything, I kept thinking about how soft and sweet she’d seemed, how peaceful. I felt a lot of admiration for the open, honest way she’d told her story. There was nothing twisted about her, nothing hard or hateful. And so it was that I found myself wondering if could I forgive my own abusers.

  At one level, it seemed completely impossible. On the other hand, when Jesus was dying on the cross, he said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” And that was while his murderers were gambling for his clothes! If He could forgive them, who was I to harden my heart?

  I already had the slightest taste of what it might mean to forgive. Just a few months after my rape, one of the therapists I’d seen had encouraged me to write letters addressed to my attackers. We would never send them; they’d never see what I’d written. This was just for me.

  The therapist asked me, “If you could say anything in the world you wanted to, what would you say?”

  When I sat down to write to Seth and Jared, I spewed pure bile; there was nothing in there but white-hot anger, seasoned with a little hate and a few choice curse words.

  But my letter to Brian was a little different. I asked him, “Why didn’t you protect me? You were my boyfriend. I thought we really liked each other.” I let all of my confusion and hurt out onto the page. I wrote:

  I’m so sorry that you gave into that peer pressure. Unfortunately, it changed our lives forever, and not for the better. But I see now that it was a mistake—a terrible, disgusting mistake—but a mistake all the same. It was so wrong, but ultimately it was a horrible, horrible, decision, one that had horrible repercussions on all of us, and will for the rest of our lives.

  It was incredibly intense to write like that, to dump every single thing I was thinking and feeling onto the page without any self-consciousness or conflict at all. I was genuinely shocked at where I’d ended up. I thought I’d vomit every hateful four-letter word in my vocabulary onto the page, and then I’d make some new ones up. Instead, I found that I felt very compassionate toward Brian. I had ended up very close to a place of forgiveness, at least where he was concerned.

  Without realizing it, I had experienced why Christians say that forgiveness can be transformational. The strangest thing happened after I wrote that letter: I felt lighter somehow. It was so surprising, I even mentioned it to the therapist. But I’m pretty sure I would have laughed in her face (and stormed out of her office) if she’d implied that the lightness was somehow connected to my ability to forgive.

  By the time I met Emily, I was ready for the lesson. I was finally able to recognize that sense of lightness for what it was: freedom. That was the reason that story about the pastor, who became a father figure to the man who had murdered his son, had stuck with me, though I couldn’t understand it. The pastor and Emily were free in a way that I was not, and their ability to forgive was the key.

  Someone once sent me a Mark Twain quote: “Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.” There’s a physical aspect to that image that spoke to me: I pictured a metal oil drum, rusted out and corroded at the bottom. I was filled with rage for years, and that was the way it felt, too, as if there were a bowlful of vile and dangerous liquid sloshing around in my guts, ready to spill over and burn a toxic hole with the slightest jostle.

  I had to ask myself: Did I want to spend the rest of my life hanging on to the anger I felt toward those guys? Did I want to become ugly—corroded and broken—in my resentment? Was that what I wanted to be reflecting back into the world and to everyone I had relationships with? Hating them the way I did kept me shackled to them. It tied our lives together in a way that was openly hurtful to me, as if I’d never gotten up off that pool table. Was that truly where I wanted to spend the rest of my life?

  The answer, of course, was no. I tried feeling bitter and cynical and hopeless, and it didn’t work for me. Not only did it feel terrible and lead me to make a lot of pretty terrible decisions, but it wasn’t me. I’m a sunny, optimistic person at heart. I love to wear bright colors and giggle and be silly. I want to love and be loved in my life. Thanks to my volunteering, I’d had a glorious taste of what it means to help, to feel useful and necessary, doing God’s work. That was where I wanted to stay: in the light. I wrote in my journal:

  I don’t want to spend my entire life angry about the way it was hijacked when I was sixteen. I want to live my fullest, most joyful life.

  After I met Emily, I finally understood that I wouldn’t be able to do that until I’d learned what Jesus taught us, that all of us deserve to be forgiven.

  Wanting to forgive is one thing.

  The reality of trying to actually do it? That’s a different story.

  Crazily enough, I’m afraid to write that. I’m afraid of disappointing my readers. But it’s the truth. If you came to this book looking for a done deal—a woman who can look her abusers in the eyes with nothing but compassion and God’s love in her heart, then I’m truly, genuinely sorry, because I am simply not there yet. I’m a lot closer than I was ten years ago, and I get closer every day. But I can’t pretend that this forgiveness issue is closed for me, because that wouldn’t be the truth, and the one rule I have for myself now is that I will always do my very best to tell the truth.

  And the truth is that forgiving is hard. It’s turning out to be some of the hardest work I’ve ever done—harder, for sure, than getting clean or making amends. My path toward forgiveness has been a daily and mighty struggle.

  It’s also the most important thing I’m trying to do in my life. I believe in its power—for myself and for other survivors. But I will not (and couldn’t, if I tried) pretend that it has been easy for me.

  For sure, it’s gotten better. At the beginning of this journey, I’d pray on forgiveness, and I’
d find myself getting mad all over again. How could these men—people I thought I knew and could trust—abuse me the way that they had? I’d think about Susan Schroeder, who has spent her entire career dealing with violent crime, and what she said after seeing the video: “It really makes you question your basic assumptions about humanity.” I’d think about how cowardly the guys were to take advantage of me while I was unconscious. Of course, it still wouldn’t have been a fair fight if I’d been awake—I weighed about 120 pounds, and there were three of them—but at least I’d have had the satisfaction of knowing that I tried to fight back.

  Then I’d start thinking about the way my life had been derailed. Would I have become a drug addict living with a succession of abusive boyfriends if I hadn’t been raped? Nobody has a crystal ball, but I don’t think so. I’d compare where I thought I’d be—a glamorous journalist in New York City—with my reality: broke and struggling through college, years older than everyone else in my classes. Then I’d start thinking about how far behind I’d fallen in other areas of my life as well. My peers were getting married and starting families, while my own problems with intimacy made it hard for anyone I was dating to get past the glittery, hard surface I presented them with.

  And so it would go—on and on and on. I’d start trying to work on forgiveness, and I’d end up delivering a tired litany to myself on all the ways the guys had ruined my life. It was hardly the place of peace and compassion I was aiming for! I knew what I wanted to do—what I needed to do, in order to move on. Why, then, couldn’t I do it?

  And then I’d end up getting angry all over again—this time, at myself.

  The quote I found that helped me the most was from the death penalty activist Sister Helen Prejean, a Roman Catholic nun who counsels men waiting for execution and founded an organization dedicated to the families of the victims of violent crime. She once said, “Forgiveness isn’t something that happens. It’s something you pray for and struggle toward, every single day.”

  When I read that, I let out a little sigh of relief. You’d think knowing that would make it harder, but the idea of forgiveness as a process eased the pressure a little and still does, especially on those days when it seems completely out of my reach. Reading that quote, I understood that forgiveness wasn’t an item I’d be able to scratch off my to-do list. This was something I would spend a lifetime grappling with.

  If I had to describe where I am in terms of forgiveness right now, I’d say that some days are better than others. I’m making progress, but it’s not easy. I read a lot about the topic, I talk a lot about it with other Christians, and I pray a lot.

  So if you were someone who was drawn to this book because you thought there might be some guidance toward achieving forgiveness in these pages, the best I can do is share the insights I’ve picked up on this difficult path. These are the ideas that I find myself returning to, over and over.

  The first thing I always ask when I find myself holding a hard heart is a very simple question: Am I living as Jesus would? Where in my life do I need to be more like Him?

  Right away, that causes me to soften a little. I don’t know much, but I know that Jesus didn’t harden His heart or give in to hatred and judgment. And when I think about what He went through on the cross, I can’t feel anything but gratitude.

  I also try to remember that forgiveness is what allows me to see the defendants in my case as people. As I’ve already said, I believe dehumanization is behind most of the terrible things we do to one another. I’ve been dehumanized myself—first on that pool table, and again in the courtroom and in the press. And I don’t want any part of doing it to someone else—even to the people who did it to me.

  The guys who sexually assaulted me made a sequence of terrible mistakes, mistakes that derailed all of our lives, and many others, too. But they’re not animals or aliens—they’re people, just like you and me.

  I think this is an important point, not just in my particular case, but when we’re thinking about healing the road to Jericho, too. It’s tempting (and very dangerous) to categorize men and boys who rape as animals. Too often, when we read about a rape case, our tendency is to dismiss the perpetrators as sociopaths. “Who are these sickos?” we ask ourselves. But the truth is that most of the men who rape aren’t lunatics or sick aberrations, but brothers, sons, boyfriends, husbands—participants in a society that does little to discourage rape. We will never stop rape until we acknowledge this.

  So I try to remind myself, when I am struggling to forgive, that it’s the right thing to do, the thing that Jesus would have done. I also feel a moral imperative to do it, because it forces me to acknowledge the men who attacked and abused me as people. But the thing that helps me most in my struggle toward forgiveness is the realization that a refusal to forgive gets in the way of my relationship with God.

  I also often reread the story in Matthew in which a servant is forgiven a major debt but then fails to forgive someone else who owes him a little money. The king orders the servant to be tortured until he has paid everything he owes back, and Jesus says,

  This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart. (Matthew 18:35, NIV)

  When I’m struggling, it helps me to remember that I myself have been forgiven. It took me a long time to connect the fact that I have been forgiven with the act of forgiving my attackers. Now that I’ve seen it, though, I can’t deny that the connection is there. When we say the Lord’s Prayer, we say, “forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us” (Luke 11:4, NIV). I believe that there’s a reason we ask for forgiveness for ourselves first. Whatever compassion I have stems from knowing that I myself have been forgiven an enormous debt, one I never have expected to be forgiven. It is my responsibility, my part of that covenant, to share that forgiveness with others.

  I want to allow for the possibility that the guys might themselves experience the feeling of being forgiven, although I’ll never know if they do. I do hope and pray every day that they can forgive themselves, though. If there’s one thing I know from my own experience, it’s that if they don’t forgive themselves, they’re never going to be happy.

  The other thing that has really helped me is returning to the Joseph story. I try to put myself in his shoes. When Joseph was in jail all those years, did he dwell in hatred? I’d certainly understand if he did. Did he think about revenge? Did he fantasize about all the ways his life would have been different if he’d never been sold into slavery? The Bible doesn’t tell us, but there’s a very revealing passage a little later. When Joseph reveals himself to his brothers later, he tells them not to be afraid. He explains that they shouldn’t feel bad for what they’ve done, because of all the lives he’s saved by being in Egypt.

  And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. For two years now there has been famine in the land, and for the next five years there will be no plowing and reaping. But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God. He made me father to Pharaoh, lord of his entire household and ruler of all Egypt. (Genesis 45:5–8, NIV)

  He says that God sent him ahead. In other words, he has risen above the pain by finding meaning in what happened to him, by trusting that God had a big-picture reason for all the pain and suffering He put Joseph through.

  That is what I am trying to do, too.

  Over the years, it’s helped me a lot to isolate what forgiveness is from what it isn’t.

  I know now that forgiveness doesn’t mean apologizing for my attackers or letting them off the hook for what they did. It doesn’t mean that I was wrong to seek justice in the courts. It doesn’t mean that I fully understand how they could do what they did, or that I ever will. It definitely doesn’t mean condoning their actions.

  Forgiving them doesn’t
even have to mean that I feel particularly forgiving. But I choose to forgive them anyway. Forgiveness is in the choosing.

  Another thing about forgiving: It doesn’t mean forgetting. I’ve tried to explain this to my dad many times, as he has a harder time separating the two. What those guys did is a part of me, a part of who I am. Not a day goes by when I don’t think about it in some way, and I’m pretty sure that’ll be true for the rest of my life. So there’s no question about forgetting. But as much as the rape is a part of my story, it’s by no means the whole story. I know that, and so does God.

  Forgiveness certainly doesn’t mean reconciliation. If this were the movie version of my life, maybe the final scene would be a long shot through a window, showing the four of us sitting down around a table and breaking bread together. But this isn’t a movie, and the thought of seeing one of them makes me feel nauseated. If I ran into one of them at the grocery store, I’m pretty sure I’d just flee. I think about the story of the pastor who was able to bless his son’s killer and have that person in his life, and I’m not sure I’ll ever get there—or that such a thing is even a worthwhile goal for me.

  So how far have I gotten on this long and torturous path toward—hopefully, eventually—forgiving the men who assaulted me? I want to forgive them, I have chosen to forgive them, and I am working on it, every day—one at a time.

  I can tell you that I pray every day of my life for them. I pray that they have been able to go on and live happy lives—that they have work that fulfills them, a community that nurtures them, and relationships that sustain them. They did a terrible thing, but they have paid for it, and they deserve to be happy now. Everybody does.

  And when I do achieve forgiveness—even for a moment, a split second—I know it’s a miracle. Left to my own devices, I cannot forgive. It’s only with God’s help that I can feel it.