Silent No More: A Challenge from a Survivor

Warning: This post is about sexual assault. I am choosing to use the voice that took me so long to get back after I was silenced. It is my choice to do so. The stories that take place below may be triggering for some who have their own experiences. Some may not be at a place where they are able to read this. I believe that it’s done as tactfully as one can with this topic, but please use discernment in whether to read any further or not.

*          *          *

I didn’t realize there would be guys there. But she had invited her boyfriend and another one of our classmates over.

“You and him can hook up,” she said, pointing to the guy I’ve gone to school with for years.

“Um, no. I don’t want to,” I said, completely shocked.

“Ashley, come on. You have to practice now so you’ll know what to do next year in college,” she said as she slipped out of the room with her boyfriend.

I stared blankly after her. My mind was racing. I felt so uncomfortable. I wanted to go home. But I didn’t want her to ignore me like she so often did, or tell others to stop talking to me again. I was scared.

He was saying something.  And he was sliding over on the couch, bridging the gap between us. But at that point I had gone numb. I remember saying “no” and “I don’t want to” and “stop.” I remember him grabbing my wrist two different times when I tried to get away. I remember running out of the room and into another room, locking the door behind me. I climbed into the guest bed and only then did I realize I was crying. I felt dirty, scared, ashamed, confused, and guilty.

“Oh, come on. Quit crying. Stop being such a baby. When are you going to grow up?”

It wasn’t him at the door. It was my friend. She was the one saying this. I cried myself to sleep that night.

*          *          *

I had been dreading the appointment for a while. I knew the tears would come. It was the second time I’d be with a medical professional since all of it had been resurrected from the dark recesses of my brain. The first time, my nurse practitioner had paused, handed me tissues, and sat down to talk with me to offer words of comfort and understanding. The second time should go similarly, right?

The nurse practitioner that I had just met came in and got right down to business. She asked me questions in an abrupt manner, dismissed my concerns, scoffed at me when I told her that I didn’t want to go on birth control, and asked me if I was sure that I wasn’t sexually active even though I was single. I felt like she wasn’t listening to me. My voice was disregarded – again. I started shaking, and the tears were already threatening to plummet down my hot and flushed cheeks. And then she told my mom to step out of the room, asked me about my sexual activity again (like I was a teenager), and told me to lie down on the exam table. And the tears came. She looked at me and didn’t say anything.

“Can I explain why I’m crying?”

“You don’t have to.”

Rage bubbled up inside of me. I wanted to scream at her. I wanted to tell her that this is not how you treat patients.

“I want to,” I sobbed.

“Oh. Were you assaulted…?”

I nodded.

And instead of the pausing, instead of the tissues, instead of the words of comfort and understanding – this woman looked at me and asked me, “Have you been to counseling? Because you shouldn’t react like this – you should be over it by now.”

I stared at her in disbelief. She’s a nurse? Really?

“Oh, is this why you’re single?” She asked. “Is it a defense mechanism?”

I gritted my teeth, even though I wanted to tell her off. But she had sent me back to that place of being voiceless. Of feeling like anything I said would be disregarded just like every other word I’d spoken. I closed my eyes and just prayed until she left and my mom came back into the room.

“Ash, honey. What’s wrong?” She held me as I cried. She went and wet some paper towels in the sink so I could use them to cool off.

“I never want to see that lady again.”

*          *          *

I didn’t remember that night of my senior year until six years later, when I ran into the guy at the mall. It all came flooding back to me, including the stuffed away memories of a different instance with another guy.

I told a couple of my close friends. But that was it. Then, after a couple of months, I decided that I was going to invite God to do a work in that walled off area of my life.  I decided to get counseling. I decided to pray for healing. I decided to give forgiveness. I decided that I wouldn’t talk to either of those guys again, but I could give them forgiveness in my own heart.

I’m not a victim. Not anymore. I’ve lived in the victim mindset for most of my life. But I have learned that because I’m in Christ, I can claim His victory – even when I don’t feel very victorious. I’ve learned that if my Perfect Papa – glorious, just, and compassionate – allowed this injustice to happen to me, and if He causes all things to work together to bring Him glory and good to others, then what was meant to harm me, God was going to use for good. And therefore, a victim is something I can’t possibly be when I belong to a sovereign God.

Yes – He weeps with me over the consequences of the sin done to me. Yes – it breaks His heart. Yes – it wasn’t meant to be this way. But Jesus has flipped the script, and raises us up from the dust, because He was willing to pay the price of sin for the whole entire world. The sin that I have committed, the sin done to me, your sin, the sin that has been done to you – it’s all paid for on the cross. No one has to bear that weight and shame anymore. Forgiveness and grace is freely given – and this is a scandal. It doesn’t make any sense. Not one person deserves grace. We are all sinners from the womb.

However, we should still fight for justice. Justice is in line with the character of God. You can’t edit God’s character to something that’s easier for you to stomach. That’s false worship. God is gracious and loves, and yet He is also just and judges.

This past Sunday, I was sitting in church, excited for the sermon on Psalm 137 by Chris Gow – a young man who preaches at my church on occasion. Every time he preaches, I leave loving Jesus even more. And this Sunday was no different. In fact, God used him once again to speak hope to my heart. I really needed to hear these words – and there was so much grace and power in the fact that a man spoke them.

Chris said that, “ultimate justice - the justice of God - is hope for the victims of injustice. God – who cares about justice and hears the cry of the oppressed – is the boast of those in suffering. If God’s not going to make things right, then what hope do we have? Think about the #MeToo movement – all the women coming forward exposing sexual assault, sexual harassment in the workplace and other places. So much of the righteous indignation of these women – these victims – beyond just the offensiveness of the crime, is due to the fact that justice is delayed or deferred or denied. They are crying for justice where there hasn’t been justice.”

With everything that has been going on recently in the media, I have been openly weeping. Whether it be Weinstein, the #MeToo stories, or the amazingly brave women who testified against Nassar and exposing the MSU scandal – it has all made me sick to my stomach, angry, and all the more resolved to use my voice.

But I’m choosing to use my voice a little differently than I originally thought I would. Please hear me when I say that I will always stand with the victim. Because that is what Christ does. I will never look in the eyes of the wounded and tell them they asked for it. However, I want to challenge us to stop viewing this as woman vs. man.

In my experience, I’ve had plenty of women offer comfort and understanding. But I have also experienced some of the most invalidating and hurtful responses from women. Women who I expected to stand with me. I have had some really negative experiences with men, obviously. And I have heard plenty of ignorant questions come from men. However, I have also experienced some of the most compassionate and redeeming responses from men. For example, when I was a mental health worker, there was one time I was assigned a one to one with a male patient in a locked room. He kept saying really inappropriate things and I became very uncomfortable. My supervisor that night was a male nurse and when I radioed out to him to have someone cover for a little bit, he took me seriously. Upon seeing how shaken up I was, he recognized the occurrences of my past, and so he reassigned me to a different job. He told me that I wouldn’t have to go back in there and he took the heat when others complained.

As a survivor, I already have trust issues when it comes to men. Especially because in one of the instances, it was the same guy who told me he loved me, wanted to protect me, and intended on marrying me. By continuing to perpetuate this idea that all men are power hungry, “no”-ignoring men who are not able to have any sort of self control or compassion for women is further damaging. I have been praying for God to help me see each man for who the Lord made him to be – to not lump him in with the negative experiences I’ve had in the past. And the more we spread this message that it’s woman vs. man, the harder it is to see individuals as individuals. But that’s what I want to challenge us to do: to see this as victim vs. perpetrator.

You may ask “why?” Well, my friend, I fear that if we keep painting the picture as woman vs. man, we’re also subconsciously saying it’s good vs. evil. Because assault is evil. Violence is evil. Taking what isn’t yours at the expense of someone else because it pleases you in that moment is evil. But hear me when I say men aren’t completely evil. And women aren’t completely good. And vice versa. Not to mention men can be the assaulted as well. This battle of the sexes has got to stop if we want to pursue a better society. We need to recognize that we are all sinners in need of God’s grace. We need to recognize that as humans we have evil desires that we can and do act upon. We need to recognize that as humans we also have the gracious ability from God to do good. Apart from Christ, none of us are righteous, no not one. But in 2 Chronicles 7:14, God says “if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” We can do more when we come together. Together we can fight injustices – shoulder by shoulder. Together we can seek forgiveness. Together we can see God’s redemption come.

I know this isn’t going to happen overnight. And there may be plenty of people who refuse to look at it this way. Because honestly? It’s easier to generalize. It’s easier to stereotype – to put people in a box and never let them out. But what I believe is needed is to take it case by case, individual by individual, soul by soul. I challenge you to sit down with an actual person, to look them in the eyes, and to ask them what their story is. And listen. Offer tissues. If you don’t know that person on the television, then please don’t go voicing your opinion on their situation. You don’t know the story. You don’t know the tears they have cried. You don’t know the pain they have suffered. You don’t know the shame they have endured.

But, please – oh, please – hear me, friend. If you have a similar story, if you have cried these tears, if you have suffered the pain, if you have endured the shame – please know that there will be justice – if not on this side of eternity, then on the other. And you have choices. You may have not had a choice earlier in your life. You may have felt powerless. But I’m telling you as a friend, as a fellow survivor, you now have choices. You can choose to tell someone. You can choose to press charges. You can choose not to. You can choose to seek counseling. You can choose to – one day – forgive. And the most important thing that you can choose? To trust in the woman-venerating, leper-cleansing, miracle-working Christ – who bore the sins of the world, so that we may come to Him in relationship, be rid of our shame, be forgiven for our sins, and experience freedom and a full life for all of eternity. I pray that you choose that. Because it is only through Him that I have been able to walk away from “victim” and claim the victory that He purchased on that cross. And oh, how I want you to experience that, as well.

The Lord has given me a voice. And I am choosing to use it. I am not ashamed. And I will speak for those dear hearts that aren’t ready yet or choose not to. But I am choosing to use that voice to call us to enter into the harder journey – the journey of setting aside our knee jerk reactions to really learn this way of love – to listen and then to fight for justice. And may we all wait in anticipation for that glorious day when Jesus returns and makes all things new – when He will wipe away our tears. But I challenge you to remember the not-so-easy-to-stomach truth that He will come again to judge. And there will be justice.

“By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.” ~ 1 John 3:16-18

“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. And he who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new.’ Also he said, ‘Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.’ And he said to me, ‘It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son. But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.” ~ Revelation 21:4-8