“Do I pursue justice or extend grace?” The truth is, I needed to do both. I reported the incidents and the men to the company. Then as I continued to talk openly with my faithful and godly community, by God’s grace I was able to extend grace. I was able to offer forgiveness to them and hold no bitterness against them.

 
Several years ago I was in a work situation where men often said sexual, inappropriate things to me and about me. One coworker even went as far as to grab me and then made it a big deal when I asked him not to and pushed him away. It was jolting, and there was no amount of education or discipleship that prepared me to deal with sexual harassment.

I knew it was wrong the whole time it was happening. As a Christian, I felt the tension of how to respond to the sexual harassment: do I pursue justice or extend grace?

Once I finally admitted to myself what was happening, I talked to a few friends. They said I should take the verbal harassment as a compliment and not overreact. “What woman doesn’t want to be seen as attractive?” In a culture driven by sex, if it isn’t sexy, it doesn’t sell. So, according to my friends, I should take what those men were saying as a compliment. But I didn’t, and I couldn’t.

The words of those men were debilitating, because I knew that my fundamental identity had nothing to do with my physical appearance. I knew that the type of beauty I wanted to be recognized for wasn’t fundamentally for my looks or body shape, but with the God who dwells in me. “Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting, but a women who fears the Lord shall be praised” (Prv 31:30).

Sadly, my friends and those men didn’t get that.

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After my first experience of sharing with someone, I waited a few months to talk to someone else about it. I had just reported one incident to human resources, but the comments only continued to come from those men. I decided to talk to an older Christian woman in the workplace to get her advice on how to handle it.

She said that I, as a woman, must be doing something to encourage it, because she had never experienced sexual harassment. I left thinking that now I was somehow to blame. I dreaded going to work and would cry almost every night while begging the Lord to remove me from the situation.

By God’s grace, I finally admitted my feelings of shame in enduring sexual harassment. As I shared with my roommate the truth, she graciously stepped into all of the mess with me. She assured me that what was happening was not right. She reminded me that I was not responsible for the men’s comments.

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