Forgiveness

Shortly after the birth of my son, one of my best friends and I were sitting around talking about baby names. A preschool teacher for many years, I think she would like to have a baby someday. We were talking about how working with kids for so many years, we both kinda got turned off by some names simply because we had to deal with difficult children who turned us off to ever using their names for our own kids.

"Ryan is a brat!" She would say. And I would retort with an equally bratty name.

"I worked with an Amber who was impossible", I would say. After all, with my more than 8 years of experience working with special needs kids, I had a few I had thrown out myself.

I had worked for one particular agency and special needs school during the time leading up to and after my missions trip to Russia in 1998 when my group went to minister in orphanages and to help the persecuted Russian Jews escape and go to Israel.

The prayer preparation for that trip was intense. And it was what I was born to do. It was the only time I had a clear open air vision from the Lord. The vision was of me on a map of Russia, behind a group of Jews, pushing them up and out of Russia by way of Finland. I had never heard of such a thing before, so after I had the vision, I asked the Lord to show me in His word what He meant and He immediately led me to Jeremiah 16:14-16 where the prophecy came through Jeremiah that God would bring His people the Jews out of the land of the North (Russia) and out of all the lands to which He had scattered them and bring them home to Israel. (The largest emmigration to Israel from any nation in the world second to the Egyptian exodus by the way was that of millions of Jews leaving Russia in the 1990's).

Just weeks prior to that trip, I was working summer school at the school for difficult kids. If the children became violent to self or others, we had to intervene by way of putting hands on them(retraints). Well, one such student became agressive during lunch and my coworker and I had to remove him from the area via a backwards escort. During the procedure, the kid (I would say he was about 12 years old) tripped me on purpose, twisting my ankle. I went down like ton of bricks on my left ankle. I pulled most of the tendons in my left ankle and although surgery was not necessary, I would spend weeks in physical therapy and be off work. I also had to wear a large boot for 6 weeks. My upcoming trip to Russia was in jeopardy.

Through hard work, lots of prayer and the comfort of knowing one of the people going on my trip was a massage therapist, I went to Russia. Interestingly, while we were there, a precious Jewish woman to whom we were ministering twisted and sprained her left ankle. (My hurt ankle was also my left) So when the time came, our director told us girls to lay hands on her and pray for healing. My faith was high and I was not about to let the devil have victory. She was subsequently healed and by the next day did not need any pain medication.

During and upon our return home, I did a lot of questioning God why He allowed such things to happen. Nevertheless, I know what Jesus commands regarding forgiveness and so as an act of my will, regardless of how I felt, I forgave the student who had caused my injury.

During the conversation on baby names with my friend, the story came flooding back to me and at the pinnacle of that conversation, I was stunned as shivers ran up and down my spine when I relized the name of that little boy. I must have sooo forgiven and forgotten because during the decision to name our son, I did not object to my husband wanting to name our son Benjamin. (It is Hebrew for 'son of my right hand', the shorter version, Ben, meaning 'son'). I actually liked the name. The name of the boy who injured me almost 10 years earlier you ask??

His name was Ben.