Abba’s Beautiful Daughter – a True
Story.
As a teenager and young adult, whenever I heard a story
about God bringing a person through an addiction or deep rebellion into a right
relationship with Him, I would think, “Now THAT is a testimony!! I would look at my own faith story and think that
it was pretty boring; because I never drank or did drugs, and because I never
rebelled against God, I thought that my ‘testimony’ was not very powerful. However, that was because God had not yet
revealed to me the depth of my brokenness (indeed, I had not even experienced
the half of it yet), nor had I realized the true depth of His redemption. That would take 30 years to be revealed. Before the foundation of the earth, God knew
the healing words He was going to need to speak into my heart about my
childhood and my youth. He was there,
watching, waiting for the right time… His time.
My home life growing up was quite dysfunctional; I am the
youngest of four, and knew from a young age that my mother never planned a
fourth child. My parents were both quite
emotionally disconnected from me and looking back, I now see my emotional
neediness even as a young child. My
mother was a pretty heavy drinker and on medication for depression for years,
and often threatened to leave when us kids got on her nerves. My father was explosively angry and prone to
rage, and I rarely if ever felt his approval.
I was over 30 years old before I heard him say that he loved me. In addition to all this, there was a complete
lack of boundaries in my home. Pornography
was prevalent and not secret, to the point that once my brothers were older, my
mother would buy ‘all the men’ a Playboy calendar every year for their
Christmas stocking. Crude jokes
abounded, and I knew and experienced things at a very young age that I should
not have. It is no surprise, given this
environment, that there were innumerable incidents of boundaries being crossed
and people acting out inappropriately, to the point of outright sexual
abuse. Thankfully the abuse was sporadic
and over a relatively short time period – but along with everything else, it
was pivotal.
Despite all the above, my mother believed that knowing
about God was important and sent us all off to Sunday school regularly, and to summer
camp at least once. The summer when I
was 9 years old the only camp that she could find to send me to was an Alliance
camp, so off I went. I accepted Jesus
into my heart at that camp, but I didn’t dare tell anyone. As much as my mom wanted us to learn about
God, my parents were NOT okay with any of that ‘born-again’ stuff. About four years later a friend invited me to
a Pentecostal camp, and I really encountered God there. A year or two after that I finally got up
enough nerve to start going to the Pentecostal church, but my parents were
pretty convinced that I was in a cult. They
were so opposed to me getting baptized that I waited until after I had left
home to take that step of public declaration.
My mom had an aneurysm in her brain when I was 14. After spending six months in hospital she
returned home but was brain damaged, and although her recovery was quite
remarkable in a lot of ways, she ceased functioning emotionally as a wife and
mother. My dad didn’t handle mom’s
health issues very well, and their marriage basically disintegrated to one that
was in name only. Mom’s drinking
escalated to significant proportions, and over this time period she had some
serious medical issues which culminated in her death when I was 19.
About ten
months before Mom died, I moved to a small city about 45 minutes from home to
take a course at the college, and started attending the Pentecostal church
there. Little did I know the pivotal events
that would soon transpire. There was someone
else new in town and to the church; a 35-year-old divorced former pastor who
played the guitar and had an amazing voice.
The church was very excited to have someone with his talents around and
really, he was a pastor – well, except for the ‘technicality’ of his credentials
having been revoked when his marriage dissolved. He very soon was handed the high-teen Sunday
school class, and over the next 18 months or so I was groomed and ultimately molested
by this charming wolf in shepherd’s clothing.
He could’ve had any woman he wanted, but he was more interested in
developing a friendship with me – a naïve 19-year-old girl with a huge, neon
‘needy’ sign on my forehead. I just
wanted someone to love me and to make me feel worth something, so I was a very
easy target. Two people that I know of
complained to the pastor about this man’s behaviour specifically related to me,
but nothing was said or done. He
abruptly moved away, and I eventually came to refer to this experience as me having
been in ‘an inappropriate relationship with a man 17 years older than me’. I carried a measure of shame and embarrassment
over this for 25 years.
God
began my healing journey in 1986 and it has progressed in stages, starting with
baby steps. Initially it was dealing
with the abuse that occurred during my childhood, and a big step was in 2001 at
an Ancient Paths seminar. Jesus showed
me in my spirit how He was actually there with me, through the very worst of
what happened. He saw it all, and it
broke His heart so much that He was weeping. That was so very, very significant. Then
in late 2010
through a series of events that started at a women's conference, God revealed the
truth and I saw things as they really were... I had not been ‘in an
inappropriate relationship’ with a man 17 years older than me – I was abused by
my Sunday school teacher at my church.
He sought out the most vulnerable, emotionally needy person that he
could find, and he used his position of authority, trust, and endorsement by
the church to manipulate me and to exploit my emotional vulnerability. Because of the age difference, his position
of power, and my neediness, it was not at all a relationship of equals. When God opened my eyes and I saw this man's deliberate
exploitation and my deep brokenness, I was completely undone. At
that moment God and I embarked on the most excruciating, remarkable, and ultimately freeing journey of
deep healing that I ever could have imagined.
It’s like God said, “Enough with the baby steps – let’s fix it ALL!”
A few
months along this excruciating journey, on a Sunday morning one of our pastors
led our congregation in an exercise in ‘listening prayer’. We were asked to pray and ask God if he loved
us, and then we were to write down anything that we thought or felt, any
impression or picture that we received.
I said, “God, do you love me?”
IMMEDIATELY I felt these words in my spirit: “Yes.
So much. I want to heal you. You are my beautiful daughter. Wait.
You will see.” However, just as
quickly – even as I was still writing these words down – I thought, “I just
made that up.” It did absolutely nothing
for me; it meant nothing, and was simply a mental exercise that I dismissed out
of hand.
The very
next day I had a meeting with that same pastor, and she asked me what God the
Father looked like. Every picture that
came to mind was of Jesus. You know –
the long brown hair and beard, brown eyes – from Sunday school years ago. Try as I might, there was no picture of the
Father in my mind or heart. What WAS there
was the sense that God the Father was not really even a person. He was more like an ominous force; kind of a
brooding presence over in the corner of the room, and you really didn’t want to
tick Him off. We decided that this
probably wasn’t very accurate and that I should ask Jesus to introduce me to
His Father, so we began to pray. In my
spirit I could see myself, sitting on a log by a brook in a rainforest, and
Jesus was there with me. I was waiting
for him to take me wherever we needed to go to meet his Father. I presumed we were going to go to His office,
which must be extremely large, and that He was most likely terribly busy and I
was going to interrupt Him. He of course would be polite,
but it would be awkward and I wouldn’t know what to say, because after all, He
is God and I am just - me. So I’m
waiting, but Jesus isn’t going anywhere.
Suddenly a man appears behind Jesus.
He is the kindest-looking grandfatherly man – who looks just like Jesus,
but older. In a flash I realize it is
HIM!! God the Father left His big busy
office and all that He was doing, and came there, to where I was, to find me,
to meet - ME. The God of the Universe
looked me full in the face and said, “I love you so much. I want to heal you. You are my beautiful daughter. Wait.
You will see.” Then He held me
and rocked me while I wept and wept.
Daddy
God helped me to see Him as He really is – my loving Father, and to see myself
as I really am – His beautiful daughter that he loves so very much. He has redeemed every broken area in my life,
and He calls me His masterpiece. It amazes
me how I went to Him asking Him to heal the abuse, and He healed what really needed
to be healed – which was my understanding of His love for me, and who I am in
Him. Once those two pieces are in place,
then all brokenness is healed. It can’t
not be.
I
love Jeremiah 29:11: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord,
“plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a
future.” This was written to a people
who were in bondage – who had no hope of escape. God is faithful, and will bring total
healing. He draws near to the broken
hearted, He will give beauty for ashes, and He will finish that which He
starts. It hasn’t been easy; I was
deeply broken for months, and still have times where I deal with ‘triggers’
from my past. Every time I go into all
the details again is very painful. But it
is only in speaking the truth of my story that I gain power over it, and then God is free to use my scars to bring hope
and healing to others. Those very same
things that were meant for evil, God can use for good – when they are
surrendered to Him. He is trustworthy.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Previous: #11 Helpful Resources
Next: #13 Epilogue
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Previous: #11 Helpful Resources
Next: #13 Epilogue
No comments:
Post a Comment