From Victimhood to Victory

Working in student ministries, I listen to a lot of hard stories. Every week I hear how my students struggle with family dynamics, trouble at school, dealing with emotions, and other problematic relationships. However, over the years I've noticed a trend. I see more and more students who are very quick to identify things as abuse, gaslighting, narcissism, toxicity, etc. Young students can identify their roles based on how research tells them they should. 

On surface value, this is a great skill to have. Yet, I've noticed more people would rather label themselves as a victim than as a child of God. Now, I'm not saying that they haven’t experienced real abuse, and I'm not here to take value away from people's feelings. What I am saying is that there is an increase in people who think that having trauma makes them "cool". It gets them the attention they desire, so they live in a constant state of victimhood. Now, what if I told you that God didn't intend for you to live this way? 

Let’s take a look at Exodus 12. In this chapter, the Lord instructs Moses and Aaron to celebrate and remember the Passover. If you remember anything about this, you might question why this should be something worth celebrating. The Lord sent the angel of darkness to kill every firstborn son in Egypt unless their door was painted with the blood of a perfect, sacrificed lamb. Scripture tells us that there would be wailing all throughout Egypt as the Egyptians mourned the death of their loved ones. So, why are we celebrating? Through this time of pain, God delivered the Israelites from slavery. Verse 14 says, "This is a day you are to commemorate; for the generations to come you shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord—a lasting ordinance." The Israelites could have easily lived in the sorrow of the years wasted in slavery and the utter darkness of the time, yet God calls them to celebrate and remember the deliverance of the Lord. All too often, we tend to dwell and remember our abuse and pain. But what if we turned our trauma anniversaries into deliverance anniversaries? What if we stopped viewing our pain as something that broke us and started viewing it as something that shaped us? 

I remember being handed my first-ever glowstick as a kid. I think, at first, I was really confused as to why I was being given a plastic tube with some weird gel in it. Yet, as I looked around, with every crack light began to illuminate the room. You see, in order for the light to shine, we had to crack, bend, and change the shape of the stick. Per God’s plan, He has to crack, bend, and reshape us to be His light here on earth. We need to experience Him before we can reflect Him. So often, God uses our pain to be a light to someone else's, and sometimes that light can't be seen until we've been in the dark with them. Christ gives us new life from our past. He gives us a new light to shine. However, in order to move past our pain, we have to make what Christ did FOR us bigger than anything people did TO us. If we don't, we will spend our whole life in victimhood. 

The biggest factor that is necessary to move past our pain is forgiveness. Despite popular belief, forgiveness is more for you than it is for the other person. It can be incredibly difficult to forgive people, especially when they've done something really terrible to you. When people hurt us, the only lens we can see them through is our hurt. Yet as Christians, we are called to tear back that lens and put on a lens of Christ. More often than not, the person that broke you was broken by someone else before you. When we start to break down the walls we’ve built up towards them, we begin to see them as they really are...the same as us. They are just broken people in desperate need of saving. 

My friends and I were having a discussion about forgiveness the other day. In that, we were questioning how we know if we have really forgiven someone. One of them told me something so profound. She explained, "A good way to know if you've truly forgiven someone is to evaluate the posture of your heart when you think of them in heaven. Does it make you angry thinking of them there? Do you feel like you deserve to be there more than them?". I don't know about you guys, but that was so convicting for me to hear. Forgiveness isn’t about saying what a person did was okay, it’s about letting go of feelings of resentment towards them. True forgiveness has no agenda. Choosing to live in victory instead of victimhood is not easy. Yet, it is the place where God calls us. 

To close, I want to turn our attention to John 5:6. In this chapter, Jesus encounters a very sickly man. The man had likely been this way for a long time. In this, we see Jesus pose what seems to be a silly question. He asks, "Do you want to be healed?". It seems like an obvious answer. Nevertheless, I've known many people whose answer to that question would be no because they're scared to face their pain, they've gotten comfortable in their pain, or they like the way the world responds to their pain. As Christians, our answer to that question should always be yes because Christ has already given us victory through Him. 

I remember when I broke up with a narcissistic boy I had been dating for two years. When it happened, I remember feeling lost, hopeless, and depressed. I had seen other people go through this kind of stuff, and I thought my fate would be the same as theirs. And I did live in that state of victimhood and brokenness for a while, always seeking out different ways to heal what he broke inside me. But I reached a point where God knocked on my heart and said enough is enough. I had to make a choice and say no to living a life always rooted in being a victim of another person's crime. I refused to let my story stop there. I refused to let a man keep a hold over my life for any longer than he already had. Often, I think about that time and how I should've turned out so much worse than I did. God had more pages in my story than the ones that man had ruined, but I had to choose to keep turning the page. So, I don't know what pain you need to surrender before the Lord today, but I pray the Lord will stir in your heart the way He did mine. Your pain is real, but so is your victory. There is more to your story, but it's up to you to turn the page. 

May your roots run deep, and your faith remain strong! As always, Stay Rooted, my friends! <3