I have survived sexual abuse but apparently survival is not sufficient for one of God's precious children. I believe God wants us to conquer the results of this horrible injustice through God's personal deliverance. A personal, intimate relationship through Jesus can and will enable us to conquer the ultimate "you never get over it" trauma. It takes diligent seeking of God and lots of patience.
Trauma does not have to run OR ruin your life. Psalm 3 talks about a God who provides deliverance from our enemies. God not only delivers, he is able and willing to shower us with blessings throughout the process. The God in Psalm 3 is our deliverer, our shield around us, the lifter of our heads. I'm deep in this process of deliverance. It is a tough process and painful emotionally. God is not only blessing me spiritually through this process, He is blessing me in other ways that I would never have dreamed of--because the God of the Bible is amazing.
My deliverance started the moment I first prayed for God to help me. I was in my mid 20's. I didn't realize that this trauma, this abuse, was the reason. I had buried it so deep to convince myself I never had to think about it again. But I knew something was wrong with me and I knew it was something that God needed to fix. It was another 8 years or so before God started the healing. But were those years in vain? No. In looking back, I needed that time to really be willing to do my part of the work that God would eventually require of me. Part of that deliverance took several years and culminated with me finally confronting my abuser. I thought it was over and done with. But God, who knows each of us better than we know ourselves, still had work to do. God knows what we can handle and how much. It is so important that we remind ourselves that God's way is perfect, God's timing is perfect.
Why now? What has happened that has prompted me to talk about this in a blog, to further seek counseling, to open up myself to full spiritual examination by others including pastors? Because recently God showed me, without a doubt, that my abuser is continuing to abuse in many additional ways. A recent family situation has forced me to take a fresh look at this situation, and this abuser, from God's perspective. My abuser has failed to fully confess his sin against me and God. But I already knew that.
I found out that my abuser, who is my oldest brother, is now lying about the abuse and the details. It appears his motive is to gain control of my 91 year old mom's estate. Although my abuser has not bothered with my mom for several years, he has now reemerged. Apparently in my absence (I live in another state) my mom started asking him questions about some of the details I have shared with her about the abuse. Again, like 15 years ago, he made excuses. But now, he is blatantly lying and saying I'm making the details up. And I remember very vivid details. Victims of this kind of abuse remember details because they are so traumatic and confusing to a young child.
I confronted my brother with my mom's pastor. He lied about things he didn't even need to lie about (which was kind of funny actually.) Although I had a lot of doubts about my brother's Christian authenticity, I didn't expect this level of bold lying and deception. My brother put on this actually incredible performance of a holy man, declaring things to my mom's pastor that the pastor knew weren't true. My brother, who does not want to work and hasn't held a job for years, admitted he does not want my mom to spend her money on assisted living or in-home care because there won't be any money left for him. My brother has long had a reputation of being greedy and stingy. But to go this far? God opened my eyes to fully see the result of my brother's continued unconfessed, unrepentant sin. So why come after me, to discredit me? I am the executor/successor trustee and powers of attorney for my mom's Trust. My mom chose me over both my older brothers.
I know that exploiting the vulnerability of an elderly person for the purpose of money is a crime. Seeking to gain control of someone's estate, through lies and deception is a crime. The Bible does say "the love of money is the root of all evil." It certainly seems that this is as true today as it was three or four thousand years ago.
Each step in this process of deliverance is freeing. Through the lies of my brother I was finally able to reach a point of self-respect. I absolutely will not, in any way, allow him to ever again have any control over my life. I am free of the shame and I will no longer participate in a cover up. I boldly declare my freedom, courtesy of an amazing God.
My heart feels free to love, free to confess my own failures, free to be fully truthful and free to be courageous. I think I'm slowly changing in a lot of new areas. I finally feel free to expose this person for what he really is, to his church leadership, not for revenge but for repentance. Exposing for the purpose of bringing that person to confession and repentance is absolutely Biblical.
You can't force people to believe you. You can only speak truth. If others chose not to believe, they will have to answer to God. But to remain silent any longer is like giving the perpetrator permission to abuse all over again. If an abuser is continuing to abuse, no matter the type of abuse, he must be stopped for the sake of others. From truth will come prevention.
I still have anger, especially if I don't think my voice is being heard. But when you can get to that point where you realize the bigger tragedy is the life of the abuser, the abuser's family, the continuance of evil and its consequences, then you know a miracle of God is taking place in your heart.
Of three children in my family, I'm the only one who consistently chose to seek God's way in my life. I'd like to think that, even with all my failures, my parents saw something truthful, right and good in me. In spite of the abuse, instead of destroying me, it spurred me on to know God better and better and I'm still not satisfied. I'm still amazed, I'm still growing, and I still want more and more of God. I'm much quicker to confess and repent of my own sin and that feels good.
Isn't it ironic, that the one abused, is the one now blessed? Only through God does this happen, only through God.
Thursday, December 22, 2011
A Picture of an Abuser
There are consequences for sin - especially horrible, heinous sins like sexual abuse. You may think your abuser has fooled other people, and your abuser may think he has too. But I can guarantee you they are absolutely not getting away with it. I want to show you a "picture" of my abuser as he is today. He has yet to reap the full consequences of his sin, but you can decide for yourself if he is getting away with his sin.
Consider this "picture" an outline only, like a pencil drawing--without the colors and details.
The abuser in my life, my brother, claims to be a Christian. He is teaching at a tiny church and substitute preaching. He helps serve meals to the homeless at his church. He has served as chairman of a committee. He has had different people (including two women) living with him over the years, supposedly to "help" them, yet none of them seem to want "his" God.
He has been married and divorced three times. The first marriage was to a barely turned 16 year old who, after a few years, got fed up with him and had an affair. The second marriage was to a woman about 10 years older than him. They hadn't known each other very long and just eloped. He has one daughter with this wife. She finally divorced him and moved to another town with their daughter and her two sons from another marriage. The sons never had anything to do with him again.
The third wife was 40 years old, never married, and didn't show up for her own wedding rehearsal. I could devote an entire blog to just her. She claims to have a spiritual gift that God reveals to her things (like truth) that the rest of us don't know. Let me just say that she has a significant amount of static on her special line and I don't think it is connected anywhere close to Heaven.
His daughter by the second wife goes to church regularly. She had her first baby at 15, her second baby at 16, and her third baby, just recently, by a man she is living with, who is still married to someone else. She has been married and divorced twice. My brother wonders why his daughter continues to make unwise choices.
He is a hoarder - a person who can't get rid of anything because he thinks everything is valuable or important to keep. He thinks everything is going to be valuable someday. He saves grocery store receipts for food that is already eaten.
A few years ago a pipe burst in his house and flooded his entire house. While the house was being redone, the boxes and furniture were in storage courtesy of the insurance company. During the remodel of his house, he nit-picked about everything. He made the contractor repaint walls and re-stain doors if he saw even one tiny little speck or flaw. I think it took a year for the work to be finished because of all the delays caused by my brother. Like I said, this happened a few years ago. The insurance company delivered his belongings back to his house. To this day, he has never unpacked anything except for his bedroom. His house is wall to wall, floor to ceiling boxes. There is a tunnel, literally, from his front door to his bedroom and bathroom. He has been issued violations of city ordinances for having a fire hazard. But that was only for the outside of his house.
He is verbally abusive to my mother. He hollers at her and calls her "woman" like a cave man. It is incredibly disrespectful. In the year his house was being remodeled, he lived with her, without asking her first. He yelled at her if she touched anything of his. His mail would stack up in enormous, gravity-defying piles because he had to go through everything, every piece of junk mail, every ad. But he wouldn't go through it for weeks and weeks so the ads would all be expired by then. I remember visiting my mom and seeing a 3 foot stack of mail in his room, like the leaning Tower of Pisa.
When I was young, I saw him hit my mom in the face. He started a fist fight with my dad in the doorway of my bedroom.
He is greedy and stingy. He has been known for being that way for a very long time. He never picks up the check at a restaurant and he thinks less than a 10% tip is enough. He gorges himself knowing someone else is paying for the food. He will take home everyone's left overs.
He would buy my mom something then show her the receipt and tell her how much he owes her. These were for things she didn't want and didn't ask for. It is unfortunate but my parents are partly at fault for giving in to this kind of nonsense.
He would do things for my parents, like mow the lawn, drive them to the doctor, etc. But he always expected to be paid to do anything for them and always at his convenience, not theirs.
In contrast, my brother would repair cars for friends and do all kinds of things totally free. I never could understand this until a very wise friend of mine explained it. She said when people do this it is because they are trying to appear like a really great person, so willing to help people. But the reality is that they aren't doing things to actually help people, they are doing it so the others watching will think how wonderful they are. This explains why he charges his parents and family to do things that normally other family members wouldn't. He has nothing to gain personally from helping family, so instead of wasting his time, he expects to be paid.
He hasn't held a steady job for years. In his last job, he bragged about how he told his boss that HER job was to make sure he could do HIS job. It is very sad to see a man in his 50's that has never learned how to be a good employee. Yes, he was eventually let go from that job.
I remember a few years ago taking him to a very well respected Christian psychologist to try to help my mom and him resolve some issues. My brother boldly told the psychologist that he would take my mom to the doctor and she'd only give him 20 bucks. My brother doesn't have a clue how that sounded, or that there was something wrong with his thinking.
The psychologist offered him free counseling through a church's professional counseling/psychology ministry. He first wanted my brother to go to a psychiatrist to be evaluated. He refused everything that psychologist recommended.
In October 2011, I found out he is lying, once again, about his abuse of me. He already acknowledged it many years ago when confronted with it. But now he is lying about it in order to deceive our mother. I again confronted him with this and he lied, over and over, in front of a pastor. It was interesting, actually, because some of the lies were things that he didn't need to lie about. He made up things completely out of nowhere. He seemed to delight in telling his lies as he would get a smirk (sort of a half smile) on his face while lying to the pastor. It seemed, from some of his comments, that he thought he could fool this pastor by putting on a holy man facade.
I have been giving my brother the benefit of the doubt for years, that he was truly sorry for what he did to me and was repentant. I did know he back-tracked many years ago when our parents confronted him. But I never truly knew HOW much was wrong with him until this meeting with the pastor. I believe that God used this confrontation to show me the extent of my abuser's sin and the consequences upon his life.
I never truly thought of my abuser as a deliberate liar and a deceiver. I know now that is exactly what he is. And it has taken a toll on his life both mentally and spiritually.
An abuser looks like the continuing consequences of their unrepentant sin. As the sin continues, so do the consequences. In our small one-dimensional perspective, it may seem like an abuser is getting away with their abuse and sin. But, not from God's perspective. Only God sees the entire picture. We only see the outline.
Consider this "picture" an outline only, like a pencil drawing--without the colors and details.
The abuser in my life, my brother, claims to be a Christian. He is teaching at a tiny church and substitute preaching. He helps serve meals to the homeless at his church. He has served as chairman of a committee. He has had different people (including two women) living with him over the years, supposedly to "help" them, yet none of them seem to want "his" God.
He has been married and divorced three times. The first marriage was to a barely turned 16 year old who, after a few years, got fed up with him and had an affair. The second marriage was to a woman about 10 years older than him. They hadn't known each other very long and just eloped. He has one daughter with this wife. She finally divorced him and moved to another town with their daughter and her two sons from another marriage. The sons never had anything to do with him again.
The third wife was 40 years old, never married, and didn't show up for her own wedding rehearsal. I could devote an entire blog to just her. She claims to have a spiritual gift that God reveals to her things (like truth) that the rest of us don't know. Let me just say that she has a significant amount of static on her special line and I don't think it is connected anywhere close to Heaven.
His daughter by the second wife goes to church regularly. She had her first baby at 15, her second baby at 16, and her third baby, just recently, by a man she is living with, who is still married to someone else. She has been married and divorced twice. My brother wonders why his daughter continues to make unwise choices.
He is a hoarder - a person who can't get rid of anything because he thinks everything is valuable or important to keep. He thinks everything is going to be valuable someday. He saves grocery store receipts for food that is already eaten.
A few years ago a pipe burst in his house and flooded his entire house. While the house was being redone, the boxes and furniture were in storage courtesy of the insurance company. During the remodel of his house, he nit-picked about everything. He made the contractor repaint walls and re-stain doors if he saw even one tiny little speck or flaw. I think it took a year for the work to be finished because of all the delays caused by my brother. Like I said, this happened a few years ago. The insurance company delivered his belongings back to his house. To this day, he has never unpacked anything except for his bedroom. His house is wall to wall, floor to ceiling boxes. There is a tunnel, literally, from his front door to his bedroom and bathroom. He has been issued violations of city ordinances for having a fire hazard. But that was only for the outside of his house.
He is verbally abusive to my mother. He hollers at her and calls her "woman" like a cave man. It is incredibly disrespectful. In the year his house was being remodeled, he lived with her, without asking her first. He yelled at her if she touched anything of his. His mail would stack up in enormous, gravity-defying piles because he had to go through everything, every piece of junk mail, every ad. But he wouldn't go through it for weeks and weeks so the ads would all be expired by then. I remember visiting my mom and seeing a 3 foot stack of mail in his room, like the leaning Tower of Pisa.
When I was young, I saw him hit my mom in the face. He started a fist fight with my dad in the doorway of my bedroom.
He is greedy and stingy. He has been known for being that way for a very long time. He never picks up the check at a restaurant and he thinks less than a 10% tip is enough. He gorges himself knowing someone else is paying for the food. He will take home everyone's left overs.
He would buy my mom something then show her the receipt and tell her how much he owes her. These were for things she didn't want and didn't ask for. It is unfortunate but my parents are partly at fault for giving in to this kind of nonsense.
He would do things for my parents, like mow the lawn, drive them to the doctor, etc. But he always expected to be paid to do anything for them and always at his convenience, not theirs.
In contrast, my brother would repair cars for friends and do all kinds of things totally free. I never could understand this until a very wise friend of mine explained it. She said when people do this it is because they are trying to appear like a really great person, so willing to help people. But the reality is that they aren't doing things to actually help people, they are doing it so the others watching will think how wonderful they are. This explains why he charges his parents and family to do things that normally other family members wouldn't. He has nothing to gain personally from helping family, so instead of wasting his time, he expects to be paid.
He hasn't held a steady job for years. In his last job, he bragged about how he told his boss that HER job was to make sure he could do HIS job. It is very sad to see a man in his 50's that has never learned how to be a good employee. Yes, he was eventually let go from that job.
I remember a few years ago taking him to a very well respected Christian psychologist to try to help my mom and him resolve some issues. My brother boldly told the psychologist that he would take my mom to the doctor and she'd only give him 20 bucks. My brother doesn't have a clue how that sounded, or that there was something wrong with his thinking.
The psychologist offered him free counseling through a church's professional counseling/psychology ministry. He first wanted my brother to go to a psychiatrist to be evaluated. He refused everything that psychologist recommended.
In October 2011, I found out he is lying, once again, about his abuse of me. He already acknowledged it many years ago when confronted with it. But now he is lying about it in order to deceive our mother. I again confronted him with this and he lied, over and over, in front of a pastor. It was interesting, actually, because some of the lies were things that he didn't need to lie about. He made up things completely out of nowhere. He seemed to delight in telling his lies as he would get a smirk (sort of a half smile) on his face while lying to the pastor. It seemed, from some of his comments, that he thought he could fool this pastor by putting on a holy man facade.
I have been giving my brother the benefit of the doubt for years, that he was truly sorry for what he did to me and was repentant. I did know he back-tracked many years ago when our parents confronted him. But I never truly knew HOW much was wrong with him until this meeting with the pastor. I believe that God used this confrontation to show me the extent of my abuser's sin and the consequences upon his life.
I never truly thought of my abuser as a deliberate liar and a deceiver. I know now that is exactly what he is. And it has taken a toll on his life both mentally and spiritually.
An abuser looks like the continuing consequences of their unrepentant sin. As the sin continues, so do the consequences. In our small one-dimensional perspective, it may seem like an abuser is getting away with their abuse and sin. But, not from God's perspective. Only God sees the entire picture. We only see the outline.
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Discouraged and Annoyed With God
What a dreary title for my first blog! I'm starting in the middle of a major family crisis, so I'll catch you up as I go along.
Last week I was so discouraged and frankly, a little annoyed with God. I wish sometimes God would work on a faster timetable. God must not have any clocks or calendars near His throne in Heaven. Would Jesus just get Him a Rolex, please, and set it to Pacific Standard Time?
It is discouraging to be waiting for God to answer prayers. I know you've been there. We've ALL been there. And no matter how much we want God to work faster, we aren't omnipotent and we can't see ALL the things going on that God is working out for just our one teensy little request. Sure things are easy for God, I get that. But God has to work out MY answer to prayer using other humans. We humans are notoriously stubborn and ignorant. Can you just imagine what God must think every time he's trying to get one of US to do something?
So, really, WE are the ones that need to thank God for being so patient with us! We have to remind ourselves to fathom the very majesty of our God, that HE loves US! God, Jehovah, Yahweh, is working out my prayer requests and problems in the perfect way for ME. Little, puny, inconsequential ME.
And what I want to share with you is that while God has been working on my problem for months, He has been giving me frequent reminders of His presence and His control over the situation. When I open my Bible, I read HOW BIG IS OUR GOD! The Psalms are where I go for my personal time with Jesus. Many of the Psalms I just read/pray to Jesus, mostly because they express so much better what is on my heart.
But the coincidences of God's awareness of ME, go far beyond the Bible. Whatever I'm going through in a particular time, I can turn on the television and there will be Charles Stanley or Joel Osteen talking about EXACTLY what I was discouraged about. Now I can say one week is a coincidence, but 3 weeks? 12 Weeks, 4 months? So I think after 2 or 3 weeks, we can safely say "this is God."
If you are a Christian and you are wondering why you aren't seeing the presence of God daily, please feel free to ask me questions. I've been there.
Last week I was so discouraged and frankly, a little annoyed with God. I wish sometimes God would work on a faster timetable. God must not have any clocks or calendars near His throne in Heaven. Would Jesus just get Him a Rolex, please, and set it to Pacific Standard Time?
It is discouraging to be waiting for God to answer prayers. I know you've been there. We've ALL been there. And no matter how much we want God to work faster, we aren't omnipotent and we can't see ALL the things going on that God is working out for just our one teensy little request. Sure things are easy for God, I get that. But God has to work out MY answer to prayer using other humans. We humans are notoriously stubborn and ignorant. Can you just imagine what God must think every time he's trying to get one of US to do something?
So, really, WE are the ones that need to thank God for being so patient with us! We have to remind ourselves to fathom the very majesty of our God, that HE loves US! God, Jehovah, Yahweh, is working out my prayer requests and problems in the perfect way for ME. Little, puny, inconsequential ME.
And what I want to share with you is that while God has been working on my problem for months, He has been giving me frequent reminders of His presence and His control over the situation. When I open my Bible, I read HOW BIG IS OUR GOD! The Psalms are where I go for my personal time with Jesus. Many of the Psalms I just read/pray to Jesus, mostly because they express so much better what is on my heart.
But the coincidences of God's awareness of ME, go far beyond the Bible. Whatever I'm going through in a particular time, I can turn on the television and there will be Charles Stanley or Joel Osteen talking about EXACTLY what I was discouraged about. Now I can say one week is a coincidence, but 3 weeks? 12 Weeks, 4 months? So I think after 2 or 3 weeks, we can safely say "this is God."
If you are a Christian and you are wondering why you aren't seeing the presence of God daily, please feel free to ask me questions. I've been there.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)