I Can Be the Villain
The more you heal, the more comfortable you are being the villain in the story of people who don’t want to do the work to heal themselves.
I saw this statement in a meme on Facebook a few weeks ago and reposted it
because it hit home with me.
I’m not sure if my FB friends read it the same way I did. A couple
people seemed concerned that it implied allowing yourself to be wrongly abused
or mistreated by someone. Which would not be okay, of course.
Exce-e-ept there’s that “turn the other cheek” bit that Jesus
gave us in the Sermon on the Mount. If someone slaps you on one cheek, offer
them the other one. If someone sues you to take your shirt, give him your coat,
too.
When we lived in Springfield, I spent a year working at an
office with an African-American woman who was my supervisor and became a good
friend. This was during the O.J. Simpson trial, so the topic of racism came up often
between us, particularly because we lived just north of the Ozarks, an area
that had a whole stretch of highway “adopted” by the Ku Klux Klan.
She told me once that she didn’t get angry anymore at
individuals who thought she was inferior because of her race. “I know who I am.
I’m a child of God. What they think of me doesn’t change me. It’s not a threat
to my self-image.”
Yes, I know – that’s almost too remarkable to believe.
But I think that’s kind of what Jesus is talking about here.
I had someone in my life in the past year who, I believe,
made me their villain. I don’t know why I got the honor of that role. I’m quite
confident I didn’t do them any wrong – in fact, I went out of my way to try to
do right by them.
Right after one particular difficult encounter with this
person, I happened to have an appointment with my therapist. And what we
discussed was how amazingly well I was dealing with this relationship. I mean,
it was not pleasant. I did shed a few tears. I tried to avoid the person when I
could. But many years ago, this situation would have absolutely devastated me.
I would have spent all my time and energy trying to figure out
what I was doing wrong and feeling like a failure at humanity.
But in this case, I did some serious introspection, talked
confidentially to a couple other people involved to get their feedback, and came
to the conclusion that this really was their issue. They seem to have
some past damage that is spilling out on me. I don’t deserve that. But since my
efforts to remedy the situation are not doing any good . . . whatever, friend. If you
need to blame me for all this right now, okay. If you’re not ready to address
the wounds that prompted your behavior toward me, that’s fine. I suspect that if I made an
issue of how wrong you are, you wouldn’t hear me out; it would only push you further into your damage, drive you to embrace it in self-protection. I
don’t need you to like me; I don’t need you to think well of me; I can be your
villain for the moment. Your eventual healing is more important than my personal
justification. My cheek is strong enough to absorb that slap and pray for you while I wait for
another if you need that kind of grace today.
I don’t say this to vaunt myself. Lord knows, I’m only here
by God’s grace. And I might not respond so well to another person treating me
this way. And I can’t promise that I myself haven’t villainized someone out of
my own damage sometime over the years. (If you’re reading this and this is you,
please accept my sincerest apologies and let me know if I can make amends.)
But I put this out there as the goal. I want enough Jesus in
my life to not get wounded by other people’s wounds. For my sake, yes . . . but also for theirs.
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