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A hook

Helen Grace Lescheid

As a street child in Pusan, Korea, Stephanie Fast suffered incredible abuse.

Later, as a Christian young woman in North America, she prayed a prayer of forgiveness for all those who had hurt her. Yet she could not shake a revulsion of anything Korean.

Her adopted father, sensing a spirit of bitterness in his daughter, longed for her to be truly free. One day, while the two of them were fishing, he raised the subject.

“When you hook a fish, who leads it about?” he asked his daughter.

“I do.”

“As long as that hook is inside the fish, you control the fish, right?”

“Well, yes.” Stephanie studied her father’s face. What was he trying to tell her?

I have a hunch you’ve got a hook inside you still,” he said quietly, “the you-owe-me hook.” He looked off into the quiet expanse of the lake. “Resentment is like this fishing line. It leads you in a direction you don’t want to go.”

As they talked, Stephanie agreed. Although she had verbally forgiven her abusers, she had clung to the injustice suffered during her childhood. “Those Koreans owed me a better childhood,” she had thought bitterly.

Her father was right. She did have a you-owe-me hook inside her, and she was the only one who could take it out. In the privacy of her bedroom, she prayed this prayer: “Lord Jesus, I take out this hook and give it to You to keep. Please release me from all resentment.”

Today Stephanie prays this prayer whenever she feels that somebody has not treated her fairly.

Helen Grace Lescheid is a freelance writer from Abbotsford, BC.

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Last modified August 31, 2000.

© 2000 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
Published by the Canadian Conference of MB Churches.
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