Shelter from the storm...

Over the years from childhood to adulthood, I had become what you might call an expert in the field of suffering alone.  I had become a silent victim and attempted to hide my hurt at all costs.  I emotionally detached myself from others and truly believed I was strong enough to handle the devastation of being sexually abused all alone.  The isolation only intensified the torment inside me and confirmed my false belief that others would not be able to understand me if I did share my pain with them.  It seemed my only reward for my effort was extreme loneliness and brokenness.

Thankfully, God met me in the depths of my despair and provided me a way out.  His plan to end my silent suffering involved the very creatures I had worked so hard to avoid....people.  God had carefully placed specific people in my life who were the very ones who would share my burdens with me and walk with me through the pain.  It was never God's intention that I suffer alone, I had made that up all on my own.  The "all on my own" mentality was the very thing satan was using to destroy me, until God opened my eyes.

In my life walked the beautiful feet of two individuals who God has used to change my life.  When I finally found the courage to share with them my pain, my suffering alone officially ended.  I now had people who loved and cared about me carrying this burden with me, but God did not stop there.  I had just started going to a new church when during the announcements a video popped up of a woman sharing her story of sexual abuse.  She shared how God had helped heal her wounds and spoke of a sexual abuse support group starting in just a matter of weeks.  In that moment my heart was racing and I was just sure everyone was staring at me and somehow knew my story.  When I finally crawled back out from under my chair I realized that nobody in the church was looking at me....except God.  His gaze was focused on His broken child and He had a plan.  With the encouragement of my dear friends I hesitantly signed up for the class and a few weeks later, after standing outside the door of the room for 15 minutes shaking, I walked into a small group of women who knew wholeheartedly the pain I was experiencing.  Unfortunately, they felt its sting too....I was not alone.  If that wasn't enough, God had even more!  On the first day of this class one of the leaders spoke of a counselor who she highly recommended to anyone interested.  She gave out her number and within weeks, I sat in the office of this wonderful person who over the course of about a year has profoundly affected my life.  She helped me talk about and process through some of the darkest hours of my life and has loved me through it all.  She has spoken truth over my life in the areas where the lies dwelt for years.  Yes, she is my counselor...but she is also my dear friend. 

In the course of a few months I went from fighting this painful battle alone to having a whole army of warriors fighting with me.  Trust me when I tell you it is much more bearable with people supporting you.  The book we went through in my support groups just so happens to be titled, "Shelter from the Storm." One of the things it says about recovery from sexual abuse that spoke to my heart was "only you can do it, but you can't do it alone." It is still a painful and long journey, but God never intended for us to travel it alone. My God given guardian angels disguised in human flesh did everything short of take the painful journey of healing for me.  Though they couldn't run the race for me, they definitely carried me all the way up to the starting line.  They have been my biggest fans and have encouraged me with every stride.  They have picked me up when I have fallen and lovingly nudged me forward when I wanted to turn around a quit.  They speak truth over my life when the enemy tries to attack me..and oh does he ever try to attack.  The difference is now I have a safe place to turn and safe people to turn to.  I'm overwhelmed to know that the almighty God loves me enough to bless me with the gift of these incredible people in my life.  It is a beautiful day when you come to the realization that you are not alone.  Dear friends, I hope today is that day for you.

Discovering family...

Growing up in a true dysfunctional family can wreak havoc on your understanding of how a family system was designed to work.  My father's alcoholism was at the top of the list for methods of destroying my family.  All the attention and energy went into making sure that his needs were met.  I learned at a young age what I could do and say to keep him from blowing up in a fit of rage and how to escape his grasp and hide when he lost control.  Often my brother, sister and I sat huddled up in my sister's bathroom together, just hoping he did not make his way through her locked doors to our hiding place.  Other times I was able to hide underneath the dining room table in just the right place where I could see him but he couldn't see me.  When my mother would finally get some sense talked into her, she would pack up us kids and move us out.  Sometimes we moved out, and sometimes my father moved out.  I remember once when we moved into a little rent house and I had to share a room with my big sister.  While she hated every minute of it, I was the safest I had ever been.  Unfortunately, the moves were of little respite and were always short lived.  We always made our way back together, just the five of us living in our secret world of total dysfunction.  Amidst the secrecy and abuse, I had no way of knowing that my family of origin was not at all what God intended it to be.

Until I exposed the secret sin of sexual abuse that was allowed to exist within my family, I never knew how dysfunctional my family was.  It was made quite obvious very early in my healing journey that my family was not going to be a source of support for me.  When I changed the steps of the dance we were all accustomed to, they resisted.  They wanted me to keep this a secret and just get over it.  My mother's motto was and remains "just forgive and forget."  Along with the courage to finally tell my family the truth came the immense guilt that now I had destroyed them.  I once again believed a lie...that it was my fault that my family was falling apart.  What had I done?  Why were they not helping me?  I felt so betrayed, but really had I betrayed them?

It wasn't until I sought out the help and support that I so desperately needed that I learned that this a typical response from families involved in sexual abuse.  My family, like many other dysfunctional families, was not capable of handling the truth that for so long we tried to keep hidden.  They lacked the tools necessary to handle the devastation the abuse had caused.  They were unwilling to acknowledge the large elephant in the room.  Instead they chose to ignore it's ever present existence.  As one of my sweet friends always says, they chose to duck beneath the big elephant in the room and dodge it at every turn, just to avoid having to face the truth.  The truth was too painful...too uncomfortable...too scary.

Though the response from my family has only made my recovery all the more difficult, it did not make it impossible.  I am choosing to heal and to do whatever is necessary for me to get better, regardless of the choices my family makes.  I still love them and pray that they, too, will get help for themselves, but the first step is acknowledging the truth.  Speaking the truth is never dishonoring.  God is the author of truth, even when it is ugly or offensive.  The healing process begins with truth, no matter how devastating the consequences.  For me this was a heavy price to pay.  I have had to acknowledge the fantasy bond I had with my mother and realize that her love for me comes with conditions.  I have made the decision to cut off ties with my father at this time.  I know that exposing myself to his deep rooted sickness is not healthy for me, nor do I have any desire to have a relationship with a man who will take no responsibility for his actions.  I very rarely see or talk to my brother and his family anymore, as he has chosen to separate himself from the whole family in an attempt to avoid the pain.  I talk with my sister the most, though our relationship is strained at best.  I love her precious children like they are my own.  When I look into my niece's big, blue eyes I know without a shadow of a doubt that the consequences I am suffering are worth it.  I could not live with myself if she had to suffer the same fate as I did at the hands of my father...all because I was too afraid to face the truth.

The most beautiful part of this story is that God has blessed me with relationships that display His love and his purposes for what a family was designed to be.  He has given me a family that I cannot imagine living without.  We are not related by blood, but the ties go much deeper.  Just a few nights ago my dear friend who has become like a mother to me was praying and in her prayer she said these words to God about me..."help her to know that she is never unwanted here."  These simple words spoke volumes to my heart and I could not hold back the tears as I pondered the fact that I was never unwanted.  Her love for me is unconditional.  Now that is a true family...my family.  I pray that each of us would see that even beyond our earthly families we have a heavenly father whose love for us is unmatched and unfailing.  He is a father who rejoices in the truth and will never fail us.  He is our perfect family.

Hope

With all the pain and various emotions that I experienced after I exposed my secret, it did not take me long to realize that I was drowning.  There were definitely times in the beginning when I did not think that I would be able to survive and come out of this, it was just too hard.  Depression had officially made itself at home inside of me.  I have heard people describe depression as the feeling of being trapped in a black hole with no hope of getting out.  I found my way to that black hole.  I came to that deep, dark place of absolute sorrow….the place where hope is lost and sadness cannot escape….the place where you begin to picture what the world would be like if you were not in it….the place where you imagine the one permanent remedy to be rid of all the anguish.

I have tears in my eyes as I think back to the loneliness and how close I came to giving up the fight.  Had God not intervened on my behalf and put certain people in my life, it is doubtful that I would be writing this today.  I say all this because I want you to know that I have been there.  I know how bad it hurts.  If you hear me say nothing else I beg you to hear me say this….there is hope for you.  I have experienced the intense pain and overwhelming sorrow, but I have also experienced the joy that comes with healing.  I recognize that I’m nowhere close to completing this journey, but I am so much further than I once was.  I look back with a grateful heart that God spared me from making the biggest mistake of my life.  He was protecting me as I spit a mouthful of pills into the toilet when I was a teenager.  He was with me in those days when I lived at home and tried to escape from the emotional pain by cutting my legs with a razor blade.  He was with me then just as He is with me now.  He has a plan for my future.  My life is worth living…..and your life is worth living too.  You are a prized treasure.  Don't give up because in Him, hope abounds.

Not mine to own...

Reflecting on the heinous crimes that had been carried out against me as a child was a very sobering experience.  As I began to look the evil surrounding sexual abuse square in the eye, I made a very grave mistake.  Like so many others who have walked in similar shoes as mine, I was deceived into believing that somehow the abuse was my fault.  Satan was so good at whispering little lies in my ears.  These whispers began at a very young age and by the time I became an adult, I completely owned the sin of sexual abuse.  Even though I hated every minute of it and desperately wanted it to stop, I thought I must have done something wrong and somehow deserved this.  Besides, I never told anyone, so I must have wanted it to happen right?  Surely if I hated it so much I would not have just laid there and let him do those things to me right?  If I didn't like it, it wouldn't have sometimes felt good right?  If I really wanted to stop it I would have screamed out a little louder, closed my legs a little tighter, refused to open my mouth, etc....right?

WRONG!!!!!

Please hear me when I say that this was not my fault... nor is it any child's fault.  I did not have the mental or emotional capacity to even understand what was happening to me much less consent to such perverse acts.  I was the child and my father was the parent.  He was given the responsibility to love and protect me and he failed.  Nothing I did or did not do caused this to happen to me...he made the choice to sin all on his own.  I didn't tell because I was a child and quite honestly, I didn't even know it was wrong.  He was my dad, I trusted him.  I just laid there because I was terrified and paralyzed with fear.  Even if I would have fought him, he would have still won.  It felt good at times because that is a normal and healthy physiological response.  God created our bodies to enjoy sexual stimulation.  It is not your fault if your body had a healthy physiological reaction to an unhealthy act against you. 

Believing the lie that the abuse was your fault will continue to damage an already broken spirit if left untreated.  Trust me, I know.  I grew up to be a very sad and lonely person, devastated emotionally as an adult....until God's truth intervened.  With the support of those who love me and my incredible counselor, I am learning to replace the lies with truth.  No matter how much satan continues to berate me and force his lies upon me, I know without a shadow of a doubt that this was not my fault.  I refuse to hold myself accountable for my father's sin.  Please don't misunderstand me for saying I'm completely innocent...I have made mistakes along the way.  Unfortunately, I have plenty of my own faults and sins that I am responsible for...but sexual abuse is not one of them.  It is not mine to own and I have given it back to it's rightful owner.  No matter how powerful satan's lies are in your life, God's truth is stronger still.  We just have to start believing it.

The monster has a name...

In my struggle to verbalize the abuse that had happened to me as a little girl, one of the things my counselor had me do was write a third-person story about one particular experience in the eyes of a child.  The title of my story was, "Nightmare in the Woods."  I told of how this shy, blonde headed, blue eyed little girl was kidnapped by a scary monster and driven out to the woods.  In the story, the little girl's life was changed forever that night as the monster stripped away a piece of her innocence with his own bare hands.  The story ended with a foreshadowing of the little girl's future and the realization that this was only the beginning of the things she would have to endure. Anyone who would read this story would agree on one thing, the antagonist in this story was indeed a vicious monster.  The problem is the monster had a name.......daddy. 

When I think about my father I have very conflicted feelings about him.  On one hand he is an evil monster who I hate, but on the other he is my father and I really do care about him.  As a little girl I was terrified of my dad but at the same time I longed for his love and approval.  There was this inner turmoil within me filled with mixed feelings of love and hate.  I desperately wanted the abuse to stop.....but I wanted a daddy too.  I can close my eyes and remember him touching me beneath my clothes and forcing me to open my mouth and "help him feel better", but I also remember him being present while playing putt-putt with my brother and shopping with he and my siblings for Christmas presents. 

It took me a long time to accept that I would never have the earthly father I so desired.   God created us with a longing to be loved by our parents, and it is okay to grieve that loss if it was stolen from you.  It also took me a long time to understand that it is okay to remember the pleasant memories I had with my father while at the same time detesting the abusive ones.  At first I thought there was something wrong with me that after all my father had done to me I could remember certain times of happiness.  It is okay to have enjoyed the healthy parts of our relationship, and I'm actually very grateful that I have these memories because often many victims aren't so fortunate.

I have come to learn that these confusing feelings are actually quite normal.  It is possible to care about your abuser and still hold them accountable for their actions.  If your abuser was good to you at times, that does not excuse the sin committed against you.  As you experience intense feelings of anger, hurt, hatred, confusion, love, and affection toward your abuser, know that this emotional roller coaster does not mean you are doing anything wrong.  God sees your pain and confusion, and He will meet you right where you are.  He will help you sort through all the mixed emotions and restore to you all that was lost with your earthly relationships.

God gave me moosies...

One of the most distressing challenges I had to face as I began processing through my experience was the uncertainty about where God was when the abuse was happening to me.  I was plagued with confusion of how God could be present, yet allow such perversion and injustice.  I questioned if He was even there at all or if He really cared about me.  In my mind I could recall the many Bible verses that speak of God’s love for His children and how He never leaves or forsakes us, but truly believing this in my heart proved to be more difficult.

As I began to process and talk about the evil things I had experienced with my earthly father, I also began to question my heavenly father.  I wish I could say I had some unique and remarkable faith that caused me to never suffer with doubt or mistrust God, but like the rest of us, I too was born of human flesh with the innate desire to know why.  Why didn't God help me?  Why didn't he stop my father?  Why did God even allow me to be born?  Why me?  The why questions were endless and overwhelming...that is until God reminded me of the moosies.

When I was a little girl I had this blue bedspread with matching curtains above my window decorated with moose.  The theme was "moosle beach," and all the moose were doing different things at the beach.  Some were surfing, some building sand castles, some playing with a beach ball, and some just laying on the beach in sunglasses.  I recognize how odd this sounds.  Most girl rooms are decorated in pink or purple with flowers, polka-dots, or princesses....but my room was decorated in moose!  Oh, how I loved those moose.  You see, when my father would come into my room for me to "help" him I would often escape to moosle beach and play in the sand with the moose....or moosies as I called them when I was a kid.  Little did I know God was using these silly moose as a means of protection.  The more violent the abuse, the quicker I was able to dissociate from what was happening to me physically and go to the beach with my moose friends.  God had given me an escape route from the unimaginable pain, both physical and emotional.

When I think about the moose on my curtains as a little girl, I am reminded of God's faithfulness and ever present help.  God never left my side and I am convinced that nobody was more heartbroken than He was over what was happening to me.  God did not cause this to happen nor was He trying to "teach me a lesson."  My father out of his own free will choose to partake in this evil crime and unfortunately I had to pay the consequences of His actions....but I never suffered alone.  Now I can look back and see that God never abandoned me, but it took me a long time to get to this point.  I want to encourage you to be patient with yourself and give yourself time.  It is okay to ask the tough questions, but I urge you to seek God for the answers instead of running away from Him.

In one of Beth Moore's bible studies I have been reading, she says of her own life, "I don't believe Satan would have gained permission from God to defile my young life had my faithful Heavenly Father not known without a doubt how He could use it.  God is never more glorified than when He brings an oak of righteousness out of a once damaged root."  I still do not have all the answers to the why questions and quite honestly I never will.  The difference is that now in the depths of my heart I am confident that God was with me, that He loves me and cares about me, that He heard every cry and counted every tear.  I am convinced now that God will use what satan meant to destroy me to actually help others heal.  My prayer is that if like me, you find yourself questioning God, that He will begin to show you your moosies.

What goes in must come out...

There is nothing easy about sharing the details of sexual abuse with others, even if the person you are sharing with is your most trusted confidant.  In my heart I knew I needed to just let the demons out, but I was just so afraid.  I tried to to keep the memories and emotions tucked away, hidden in the deepest parts of me where nobody else could see.  The silent suffering I was torturing myself with was like a deadly poison that was slowly eating me alive.  The only remedy was to let it all out, but still I fought it.  All day I was consciously battling the lies of the enemy to keep silent, but at nighttime it was a whole different story.

When I could no longer contain all of the disturbing secrets inside of me, I began having terrible flashbacks.  The secrets came seeping out of me little by little when I closed my eyes at night and lost my conscious efforts to keep them in.  Instead of sleeping to get rest and regain my strength, I was engaging in the fight of my life.  I was re-living what had happened to me and I had no way of stopping it.  The only thing worse than enduring the sexual abuse as a child was living through it all over again night after night.

I attempted everything you can think of to avoid the nightly torture.  I  tried to force myself to stay awake all night and not fall asleep at all.  I tried to set an alarm to wake me up every hour so that I would not fall deep enough asleep for the nighttime terror to take over.  I tried medicine, listening to music, reading books....you name it I tried it, all to no avail.  The worst part was I could not be woken up once the flashback began.  My incredible friend who has become a mother to me once again came to the rescue.  Night after night she stayed with me and never left my side.  She desperately tried to wake me up and rescue me from the terrifying flashbacks, but without success.  There was no way around this, I simply had to go through it.

My heart cringes just to think of how frighteningly real the nightmares...the memories were.  I could feel him, hear him, smell him.  It was like I was 4...7...10 years old again.  The difference was this time, I had someone there to help me and protect me.  Even though I could not remember my treasured friend/second mother being with me when I finally came out of it, I am comforted to know that she was there.  She, unlike my biological mother, never turned a blind eye to my pain.  She could have easily jumped ship, but she didn't.  Instead, she held me, wiped my tears, sang to me, prayed for me, fought the monster off of me, put me back in bed when I wandered outside in the middle of the winter, put my clothes back on me when my father was done misusing me and I laid there naked and trembling, rinsed out my mouth when I couldn't get rid of the offensive taste left behind, cleaned up my mess when out of pure terror I had an accident and soiled my pajamas, and the list goes on.

Quite honestly, it is difficult to look back at how bad things were.  I hit rock bottom in the midst of these flashbacks.  Besides being completely humiliated, I was exhausted both physically and emotionally.  Every morning I felt like I had been completely violated, yet had to force myself to get up, get dressed, go to work and act like nothing had ever happened.  I had mastered this as a child, but now I was barely surviving.  I honestly thought God had abandoned me at this point.  Thankfully even when I was giving up on Him, He wasn't anywhere close to giving up on me.  He was right there with me, and the evidence was right in front of my face.  He had sent me a guardian angel to see me through this.  She chose to live the torture with me every night...her only payment being complete exhaustion after sleepless nights.  She is my hero, and I know now that God was comforting and protecting me through her.  I will never be able to thank her enough for allowing God to use her to save me.  I love her with all my heart, and I'm so thankful God gave her to me.

I say all this because I want you to know that no matter what you are going through and no matter how defeated you feel, God is with you.  When you can't see Him, He's there.  When you give up on Him, He's there.  When you are angry at Him, He is still there.  As horrific as the nightmares were...and still are at times...God used them in my healing process.  I wouldn't wish it on anybody and I urge you to somehow find the courage to share the yucky secret parts of you with someone you trust.  To find healing, the secrets have to come out one way or another.  Rest assured, no matter what journey you must take to find healing, God is going to see you through.

Ashamed to be me...

One of the hardest things for me to do was to talk about what had happened to me.  For 26 years I had been a locked up vault when it came to talking about the sexual abuse.  Quite honestly, I didn't even know how to talk about it.  Deep down inside I still felt that if I exposed the fullness of my secret that I would be looked upon in absolute disgust.  I was so ashamed of this secret sin.  My biggest fear was that others would see me the way I saw myself.  When I looked in the mirror I saw someone who was dirty...repulsive...gross; someone who was not worthy to be loved and cared for.  I settled for hiding inside my own skin, trying my best not to let anyone in to see my brokenness and heartache.  I was ashamed to be me.

I was too afraid to disclose my ugliness to anyone, including the two people in my life who had proven to be safe.  I trusted them the best I knew how, but that is not really saying much.  I thought if I exposed too much or made one minor mistake, they would stop loving me.  I could not handle the thought of them abandoning me.  I desperately needed them to love me and care about me and I would do anything not to mess that up.  I tried to do and say the things that I thought would make them like me and accept me.  I struggled to be exactly who I thought they would want me to be so that they would love me. 

The funny thing about this is that in all my attempts to be the person I thought they would love me for the most, I was missing the one person that they truly wanted me to be.... me.  They simply wanted me to be me.  But who was I?  I had no idea who I was apart from the sexual abuse.  It had become my secret identity.  With every memory and every flashback my heart was flooded with shame and guilt.  There was only one way to rid these painful emotions I was drowning in...I had to talk about it.

Talking about your abuse is one of the greatest challenges for any victim of sexual abuse.  When you start to verbalize and put words to the horrific crime committed against you, your nightmare turns into a reality.  There is no more hiding.  I want to encourage you if you are in a place like this to seek out professional help.  Thankfully, my dear friends strongly encouraged me to see a counselor...and by strongly encourage I mean everything short of dragging me kicking and screaming!  I did not want to go, but deep down I knew I needed to.  Let me tell you, it has been one of the best decisions I have made.  I have a wonderful counselor who has become a dear friend to me.  She loves and cares about me and is another safe person walking this journey along side of me.  I have shared with her some of the most humiliating parts of my abuse, and never has she looked at me in disgust or backed her chair away from me. 

I don't want you to think that this was an easy or fast process for me.  Quite the opposite.  It took me almost a full year to get my story out to the one person I love and trust the most in this world, my dear friend who I consider a mother to me.  The more I told her though, the less power the secrets had over me.  I was beginning to find the real me....the me that God fearfully and wonderfully made....the me that God knit together in my mother's womb.....the me that God looks at and calls beautiful.  Sexual abuse is not my identity any longer.  I am a loved and accepted child of a perfect Father, and my hope is that you will realize...you are too.

The beautiful feet....

When I was able to go back to work and take care of myself again, I put all of my effort into putting back on my mask that had once fit so conveniently.  After the response I got from my family, I figured putting the mask back on was my best option....the only option.  However, for some reason this once snug-fitting mask now seemed quite uncomfortable.  Now that I had exposed the truth, no matter what I tried I could no longer wear the fake, secret keeping mask with ease any longer.  Trying to hide the disturbing secret that I was sexually abused kept me isolated from forming any healthy human relationships.  I became withdrawn, lonely, and empty inside.  I was broken.   

Living a life void of any hope is a very dangerous place to be, yet this is exactly where I found myself.  I did not know where to turn or who to turn to.  I knew God was there somewhere, but could He hear me? Did He care?  Like many of you, I came to the conclusion that my dirty past had so disappointed God that perhaps there was no hope.  As I believed the lies satan continually whispered in my ears...that I was unlovable, unworthy, dirty....I began to lose faith that I would ever survive this.  I have to be completely honest with you, there were times when I even thought about giving up on life itself.  Thank God I never acted on it, but the thoughts definitely entered my mind.  Even as I lost sight of hope, God never lost sight of me.

Just as I was giving up, God's provision prevailed.  In the depths of loneliness and despair when I was desperate for help,  two women I knew from work began to love and care about me.  They invited me into their homes and into their families and loved me like their own.  As they invested into my life, I began to share with them bits and pieces of my story.  Every time I expected them to look at me with disgust and send me packing, but instead they just kept loving me.

At a ladies retreat through my church this weekend we talked about verse in Romans that says, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news."  When I think of this verse and what it looks like to have beautiful feet like this, I think of my two dear friends who walked into my life and rescued me. When I had no hope, they held the hope for me.  When my faith was almost gone, they held onto the faith for me.  They encouraged me and supported me and provided me a safe place to heal.  If their beautiful feet would not have walked into my life when they did, I do not know where I would be today.

I want you to know that God never loses sight of his children.  In the darkest hour in my life, God was still there even though I couldn't see Him.  He had a plan and knew just the right moment and the right people to put into my life.  Never in a million years would I have imagined when God put these two women into my life, that one of them would become like a mother to me.  The Bible says that God restores to us what the locusts have eaten, and for me, that manifested in a person who I can't imagine having gone through life without knowing.  God has used her to change my life in so many ways and she has been such a vital part of my healing process.  I could not have have taken this journey without her, and God knew it.  He did hear my cry.....and I promise He hears yours too.  The journey has been long and often very painful, but God has walked every step with me and He will walk every step with you too.  Just don't give up.

Mourning the loss...

The next few weeks of my journey are almost a blur to me.  I had slowly lost myself to the depths of depression and despair.  I was merely surviving from day to day, but there was no life in me at all.  To make matters worse, the surgery I had on my shoulder had not worked.  The physical pain was almost unbearable, yet made no comparison to the even more tormenting emotional pain I found myself in.  I had proclaimed war on the enemy when I disclosed the truth of my past, but little did I know that the battle would be so exhausting...so grievous...so lengthy.

By the time I was finally able to live on my own again and go back to work, I was dangerously close to holding up the white flag of surrender to the enemy.  It seemed like a losing battle and quite honestly, I was too tired to fight.  I desperately needed some help, but I did not know where to turn.  I quickly learned that the "family" I grew up in was not capable of helping me.  Unfortunately, I have come to realize this is all too common. 

Growing up, I thought my mom and I were close.  She took me to church, cared for me when I was sick, cheered for me at all of my sporting events...she loved me.  In my mind, she often made up for some of the horror I experienced with my father.  I thought she was my safe person.  When I told my mom about the sexual abuse, you can imagine the shock I felt when she looked at me and said the words, "that is what I was afraid was happening."  What??  My nightmare suddenly worsened.  My safe person was really not a safe person at all.  Quite the opposite really.  Now I know that my mom knew all along what my father was capable of.  She was very much aware of his sick, sexual fixations.  From the words of her own mouth, she knew my father always "looked at me with a lustful eye."  She knew my father had molested his own sister as a child.  She had even been warned about leaving us with him.  So what did she do....absolutely nothing.  She failed her God-given responsibility of protecting her children.  She put us in harms way simply to protect her own reputation.  She chose to turn a blind eye to the evil that was right in front of her face.  I often ask myself what kind of mother would do that to her own child, and then I cringe at the answer....my mom would.

The image I had built of my mother only intensified the hurt I felt when I realized she was not at all who I thought she was.  She claims she never knew my father would go as far as he did, but that offers little comfort to me.  Though there was not an actual physical death, I had to mourn the loss of my mother nonetheless.  The grief was intense.  The sense of betrayal and abandonment was overwhelming.  Letting go of the mother I thought I had....the mother I wish I had....has been one of the hardest aspects of this journey for me.  I have had to walk through sorrow, confusion, and ultimately a lot of anger toward my mother.  I can say with assurance that I know my mom loves me.  It is a very fragile, diseased, and imperfect love...but it is the best she can offer me in her condition.

I don't want to miss this opportunity to share with you the one thing I will forever be grateful to my mother for.  She provided me the opportunity to get to know the one whose love is absolutely perfect.  She took me to church week after week, and it was within the four walls of that church that I met Jesus....who loves me so much that He gave His life for me.  He was the only one who could get me through this.  What a wonderful thing it is to know that nothing, including the evil surrounding sexual abuse, can separate us from the unfailing love of a perfect daddy.

A letter, a monster, and perhaps a mistake...

The weeks that followed my meltdown with my mother were very difficult, to say the least.  I would love to say that the moment I told my mother the truth of my childhood she did everything she could to help me gain some distance from my father, to help protect me.  The truth is, we drove right back to the house where my father was.....like being thrown back to the wolves after finally escaping.  In the physical condition I was in, I seemed to have no alternatives but to go back and let my mom help me.  In the emotional condition I was in, I simply did not have the capability of standing up for myself.  While on the inside I was screaming and begging not to go back to that place where he was, all that seemed to reach the surface was a shallow whimper for help, a shallow whimper that went unheard.

For the next week and a half I became what felt like a prisoner in my own house.  I used every resource I had to get out of the house when my mom was gone to work.  When I was out of options, I did the next best thing, I hid!  I would literally lock myself in my sister's room, which just so happened to be the farthest, corner room upstairs.  There were times when I heard my father come home for lunch that I would lock the bedroom door, go into the bathroom and lock the bathroom door, and just sit and pretend I was not there until I knew for certain he was gone.  The very second I knew my mother was off of work, I was on the phone begging her to hurry home.  I did not want to be alone with that man.  

One night, my father came home after he had been out drinking, walked in the door half slurring and half stumbling, and begin to say some really ugly things to me.  Something inside of me snapped.  Once I was safely upstairs, I got on my computer and began to type a letter to my father.  In the wee hours of the morning I wrote a letter to my father that was fairly short and simple, but filled with some devestating truth.  I stayed awake the majority of the night...consequences of a full mind and a heavy heart.

The next day is a day that will forever be etched in my mind.  It honor of my 26th birthday, I decided to come face to face with evil, knowing the only way to defeat it was with truth.  With my mother in a nearby room, I walked into the living room and within feet of my father began opening up my heart to the same man who tried to destroy it.  It was not a scene that you would secretly want to be a fly on the wall for.  It was ugly.  When my father would no longer let me speak, I handed him the letter to read for himself.   In the midst of yelling and screaming, I sat with my eyes clamped shut paralyzed with fear, just hoping I would actually walk away with my own two feet.  By the grace of God, my father in a rage stormed out of the house that day.         

There is a quote by a man named Ted Dekker that says, "Evil only survives in the dark...the simplest way to deal with evil is to force it into the light of truth.  Expose its secret.  Sin thrives in the dungeon, but slap it on the table for all to see, and it withers rather quickly."  Though I came out of the confrontation with my father practically laying on the floor in the fetal position in a pool of my own tears, the evil that had surrounded me for so many years was withering in front of my own eyes, as painful as it was.

Though I do not regret for one second confronting my father, I would not recommend to anyone else to take the approach I took.  You see, confronting your abuser prematurely is often a mistake.  Though I mustered the courage to bring the truth to light, I put myself in a dangerous situation that day.  I had not yet stepped foot inside a professional counselor's office much less step foot inside a room face to face with the abuser.  With no support after this pivitol moment in my journey, I set myself up for a painful and isolating time.  Thankfully God's hand of protection and ever present support was with me, giving me everything I needed to get through this situation.