Recently I was listening to something that made me ponder the question: if I could ask God for a “re-do” — if He could take me back in time and prevent every instance of sexual abuse, rape, and intense suffering at the hands of others — would I want that?

I was reminded of something I wrote a decade ago in a private online forum. We were a “tribe”, a group that were helping each other heal from sexual abuse and trauma. This is a slightly edited version of my response to an eloquent post from one of our members:

Yes, we’ve lost a lot. And the losses are overwhelmingly painful and deserve to be grieved, need to be grieved. But I’ve clung for hope to the second part of that journaling assignment, where we write about what wasn’t stolen from us. I’ve also clung to a phrase from the Old Testament about “God restoring what the locusts have eaten”.

When I felt like a hollow, decimated shell, barely alive, little more than a reservoir of pain and desperation, irreparably broken and crushed, my therapist and you, my tribe, saw in me what I couldn’t see. You helped me to believe in the truth of what you saw.

God doesn’t undo the past or replace everything that’s been lost. But I’m living proof that He restores, that He gives beauty for ashes, joy for mourning, and a beautiful garment for our tattered, heavy-laden spirits. My prayer is that He would continue to do that for you, my dear friend.

Back to now… would I wish that these debilitatingly painful, anguishing, despicable acts had not been done to me? I found myself wishing that certain people, for their own sakes, had not sinned so egregiously, but I could no longer say that I wished such things had not been done to me. (I wish that I had sinned far, far less, and that I had not responded so sinfully to the sins of others.)

What I am even more sure of now is that God is a redemptive God. He is the God Who heals. And I’m not just clinging to hope — I have tasted and seen the goodness of the Lord. And, although the past decade has had its own share of loss, difficulty, and grief, I’ve experienced depths of beauty, joy, and praise that I never dreamed possible.