when the internet actually helps

I have struggled these past months with a lingering hatred for my pedophile uncle.  Framing the problem in terms of sin, I thought I must be harboring some sort of mortal malice.  Every time I paused for self examination, I would face my own woundedness, not in what he did to me, but in my desire to kill him.  I was so frustrated.  I thought I had forgiven him, and yet here is all this anger, this malice, this will to kill him.  I tried reading the fathers about the passion of anger.  I tried reading Bonnhoeffer about how we bless someone when we say, despite all that has happened, I recognize you as one whom God has claimed as his own.  No dice, y'all.  My reasonable mind was at war with the reptile brain, which was ready to unleash its venom. 

Then, in desperation, I googled "How to Stop Hating Someone."  Most of the stuff that came up was banal and unhelpful, surface stuff meant for people who wer just jealous of someone or disliked someone for a petty reason.  Nothing approaching the visceral hatred that confounded me when I found it festering. But one brief page actually helped.  It explained that hatred is the mind's last line of defense against weakness and encouraged the reader to ask why s/he felt weak.  In a matter of moments, the dots connected for me.  I felt myself safe all these years because of my dad.  He was the only one who stood up for me against my uncle.  It was his threat, "if you touch her ever again, I will kill you," that stopped the abuse.  When did my hatred for my uncle show itself?  Last April, around the time I learned that my dad had a year to eighteen months to live, that he is slowly dying of paralysis.  I went through a list with my reptile mind: I have put a great deal of physical distance between the uncle and my children, he does not have a way to contact me directly, I can use my words, I can use the law, I can even resort to nonviolent physical barriers to protect my children.  I speak out about what he did so that my realtives are on guard.  I know that my cousins, very large built men, would be willing to make a human wall between us at my dad's funeral.  I know that as a last resort I would harm my uncle to keep him from my children, though I also know that will not  be neccesary. 

The hatred subsided, and I found myself unburdened by the sin of rage.  Is this what Jesus meant when he said to be wary as serpents but innocent as doves?  I am wary, but no longer hating.