Good Morning!
How’s things in your little piece of the planet? They’re good here. Yep – I do have my cup of coffee. Lol I’m
kind of predictable that way, though my family would call me a coffee addict
lol. I’m not that bad, it’s more of a
comforting routine. I have a cup while I
study my Bible, and I have a cup while I write to you. And that’s usually it. Sometimes on payday I’ll have another cup
while I figure out bills and such.
Last time I told you that I would tell you about how God
taught me to see me as He sees me. And
I’d really, really like to share that with you, but I'm going to break it up over two posts so it will be easier to read, so here goes. . . .
Let’s start with a little clarification on my part.
I told you that the devil will throw things at you to try
to steal your faith, and that one of the ways could be sexual abuse. And I know this because he used it against
me.
As a child I was molested by both men and women, some of
them extended family members, the rest babysitters, or the family members of
babysitters or friends. And the cycle continued on into adulthood, which is
usually called rape at that stage of life.
But because I learned at a young age that the less that I fought, the
less it would hurt, as an adult I didn’t looked like the TV and movie version
of a rape victim. But regardless of whether or not I was
bruised and bloody, when a person is not given a choice as to whether they
participate in the sexual act, it is rape.
It took me years of counseling, over four to be exact, to
learn that. But even with the
counseling, I still believed deep down inside that I was unlovable,
undesirable, and even to God. That’s one
of the things that sexual abuse trains you to believe, that you are not
valuable. That your feelings, physical
safety, and especially your sexual safety is of no value, and that the only
thing that matters is the abuser’s needs.
And that’s exactly what the devil was trying to do, cause
all of those feelings in me to make it harder to have faith in God. Think about it, when you have negative
feelings about yourself, are you going to believe that God loves you? No, you don’t.
I never stopped believing in God, I never lost my faith,
just my faith in my value to
God. I truly believed that there was
something wrong with me that caused all those people to hurt me, and that whatever
was wrong with me would keep God from thinking I was good enough for Him.
And with that explained I’ll jump to 1993, right after
Thanksgiving. I hadn’t met my husband
yet, so, I was still dating, and around this time I started dating a guy, let’s
call him “K”. He was a kind man with a
good heart, but he had his own scars from his own childhood sexual abuse. Which ended up playing a big role in his
leaving me for a woman who was an abusive person herself. But, while we were together though, he ended
up being able to heal some of the sexual abuse scars that I had. He put a lot of time and effort into
convincing me that I NEVER had to let anyone take sex
from me again because my feelings, my needs in that area DID MATTER and had VALUE!
By the spring of 1994 though, our relationship started
falling apart. He had met the other
woman, and she was very adept at playing on his own scars to convince him he
was better off with her. But because of
what “K" had done for me, I became so desperate to not lose him that I begged for
God to cause “K” to come back. I
couldn’t believe that I would ever find someone else who would ever love me
like that again.
And when God didn’t answer my prayer, I lost it. I drove to a secluded part of the park, got
out of my car and started screaming at God. (I
didn’t know it at the time but it was because He knew He had someone better
planned for me.) I called Him every
dirty name in the book, told Him that I hated Him, and I questioned Him as to what
good was it to believe in Him. Every
hateful thing I had verbally, I used. Every
bit of hurt, fear, and disappointment came out in the ugliest of words.
But then, as the energy of my feelings started to die
out, I started to feel guilty and I started thinking, “Oh man! God’s never going to forgive me now! I’m going to hell. I have committed the worst
of sins, I blasphemed God,” along with every other version of that guilt that I
could imagine.
I started sobbing and begging God to forgive me.
Every time I would pray and beg God to forgive me, he
would put the same Bible verses from Luke in front of me.
He would put someone in my path who would tell me to read
those scriptures, or He would put the need in me that would cause me to pick up
the right devotional and turn to the correct page. And on those Sundays that I didn’t have to
work and was able to go to church, the preacher would mention those
verses.
And I caught on to the “coincidence” of all this, I just
wasn’t getting the message. This went on
for over two years. Yep, it took me that
long to finally get the message. Hey! I
admit it, I can be slow sometimes, but at least I do catch on . . . eventually!
LOL
Anyway . . . .
We will stop here for a brief intermission during our story. Stay tuned. The second half is coming right up. . . I promise!
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