Talking to survivors about love is complicated. Often those of us who have lived through childhood sexual abuse were told horrible lies about love. Now, as adults, it can be difficult to sort out. We sometimes don’t know whether we can believe anything that anyone says about love.

So, as a supporter of survivors, very often it’s better not to bring up the subject. Don’t even talk about love. But there are other things that you can do:

–Show steadfast, godly love in your words and actions, consistently. Not just when you’re interacting with a survivor, but all the time. If your words and actions show affection for one person but they show contempt or indifference for others, people will not be able to trust you.  

–This means that you need to pray earnestly so that you will be confident that every single person is loved by God. Including you!  Why does God love us? Certainly not because we’re perfect. Not because we do everything right, not because we work super-hard to be nice. No, God loves us simply because we are God’s creation. Nothing can change that fact, so nothing will change Divine love for us. We can’t stop it or increase it.

–Concentrate on returning love to God. And we’ll talk more about that in the next post.