Dear Savior,
This is a letter to you.
You, who are always ready to stand up for a just cause.
You, who sees abuse all around you, and who can’t tolerate what you see.
You, who ”step in” and “speak up.”
I see you.
I see your heart. I see your sense of justice. I see your pain. And I see your trauma.
I have been you. Spending years of my life fighting against the evil outside. Being a righteous savior. Refusing to look within.
Today, I hold up a mirror — to you, and to the savior that still lives in me.
I will be blunt.
Your actions, in the long run, often do more harm than good.
Your infantilizing of victims disempowers them and keeps them dependent on you.
You often fall into an incontrollable frenzy to “save” everybody — whether they want it or not.
You make choices for others because you don’t trust them to be empowered enough to make their own.
You end up trapped on your high horse, from where you can’t touch the ground anymore.
You become a zealot, then a crusader, then an inquisitor.
Ultimately, you become part of the problem, creating drama, pain, and dependency.
Your inability to tolerate the existence of shadow in others, because you can’t tolerate your own shadow, closes your compassionate heart.
Your role, now an identity, traps you in a fantasy world of good and evil, of knights and damsels in distress.
Of abusers and survivors.
A world where all the mirrors have been removed or covered by tapestry with glorious symbols of redemption.
Yet, sooner or later, you stumble into a lake and have to take a hard look at yourself.
At the predator, the scared animal, and the selfish, power-hungry monster that live within you.
Those parts that you have repressed, shut down, locked in the basement so that you could continue your crusade.
If life really wants to teach you a lesson, you get caught doing something you can’t admit, even to yourself.
Then the tables are turned, and you find yourself in the perpetrator’s chair.
It’s a hard fall.
Yet when that happens, believe it or not, I will be by your side.
I will not exile you, or seek punishment or revenge.
Because I know that we are all trapped in the same drama.
I know that it takes a huge amount of effort to break free from it.
I know that it takes relentless discipline for you to contribute to the healing of all, without taking sides.
I have failed at this myself many times.
I have been the savior, the persecutor, and the victim.
I know the love that burns at the core of all three of them.
I know the desperate desire for awakening that moves all three of them.
I know that there is intelligence, wisdom, and compassion in all three of them.
I know that there is a beating heart in you that longs for love. And I know that you need, from time to time, to be reminded to look in the mirror.