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228 CHA P TER t en Empowering Women Jesus unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: “The Spirit of God is upon me, who has anointed me to bring good news to those who are poor, who has sent me to proclaim release to those who are captive and recovery of sight to those who are blind, to let those who are oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of God’s favor.” And Jesus rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on Jesus, who began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:17b-21) It may be that she is in your parish and believes from something you said in a sermon or something you announced in the bulletin that you will be safe to talk to. Or it may be that a colleague has referred her to you because you know something about the issue of violence against women. Or it may be simply that you are a woman. Or a sympathetic man who seems different from her abuser(s), and who, she may hope, somehow will redeem men for her. Whatever it was that made you seem safe, now she is calling you, now she is here with you in your office. She is entrusting you with a story. It is a sacred story: one of betrayal, of shame and half-buried anger, and of terror. How will you receive her sacred story? How will you hold it in your hands, hold it out so that the two of you can look at it together in safety and in reverence? Providing pastoral care and support to a person in a dangerous crisis past or present, a victim of violence, can be frightening and overwhelming. In any pastoral care session with a person seeking help, there are things that one can do, skills to learn, and certain things to avoid. But skills alone, though powerful, will not support you, the caregiver, through fear, doubt, and struggle with the feelings it arouses in you. The importance of self-care has been emphasized in chapter 8. Self-care must precede and surround any of our work with victims, or we will surely sink into our own internal issues, into fatigue, and into burnout. Perhaps the most important rubric of all is that it is not necessary to have the answers to her problems. In fact, we can’t. She alone has them. When we lose sight of this, we can bear in mind the sacredness of her story. It is her story, from beginning to end. If we honor the “Thou” in her—even when she herself cannot—by believing her, by reminding her of her courage, her power, her God-given right to abundant joy, and if, on a practical Empowering Women 229 level, we keep her safety always as a first priority and are scrupulously clear about our boundaries, then we are not likely to make “mistakes.” (We may make lapses in empathy and may fail in our insights because we are human, but this in itself can be healing rather than disruptive if we remain undefensive and committed to an honest process.) By simply offering presence, belief, and an unshakable confidence that she deserves a life free of violence—especially when she herself does not share that confidence—we are giving a gift of healing and empowerment. So, taking a deep breath and giving ourselves the gift of confidence to be with this fragile, strong, frightened, brave woman, how do we begin? Immediate Crisis Response: Sexual Assault/Acute Battering Incident Confidence in caring for victims of violence is built on a foundation of emergency skills, which help us to be flexible and, at least to a functional degree, “ready for anything.” In one of the most dangerous scenarios, a woman calls in the middle of an acute battering incident. This was what I feared and dreaded most when I worked on hotlines , and it did happen, although only twice. In neither case was I able to save the woman from being beaten. Because the batterer was already coming in the door when each woman called and she didn’t have time to go to a safer place, and because neither woman gave me a name (it could have been any woman in a large metropolitan area), I could not call...

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