Category Archives: Child abuse

Nov27

A Hope Deferred, and a Decision Made.

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A long time ago, many, many years, in fact, I wanted to be a doctor. That’s all I ever wanted to do from the time I was ten years old. And my grandmother encouraged me in that desire because she bought me these marvelous books of medical illustrations by this guy named Frank Netter, who was a physician, but he was also an artist who specialized in doing beautiful and highly technical medical illustrations.

Frank Netter is dead right now. He died in 1991. But they’re still using his books of medical illustrations.

Unfortunately, the realities of my life, kept me from fulfilling that dream, (the abuse I suffered as a child made it so I’m not able to handle much in the way of stress, and medical school is very stressful), and I never even got accepted to medical school. I took the MCAT ~ and did poorly ~ and I applied to one school, but I wasn’t accepted, I’m sure because my MCAT scores were too low. My GPA from UCI was good, 3.46, but it probably wasn’t good enough.

It was a crushing blow, because, as I said, that’s the only thing I’d ever wanted to do with my life.

That was over thirty years ago, back in the mid-’80’s, and to this day, I still don’t know what God wants me to be when I grow up. Once I lost that dream I was never able to find another. I tried music for about a year, but couldn’t stomach the idea of having to practice for hours at a time. I thought about being a therapist, but at my age, graduate school ~ plus the years and years of collecting hours for licensure ~ feels impossible.

I still might consider it, however.

I’ve thought of art, but not as a career.

I just can’t seem to find anything that suits me enough that I’m willing to put forth the time and effort necessary to make a career out of it.

I guess, more than anything, that makes me feel like an extraordinarily lazy person.

Harrumph!!

I do like to write, and I think I’m fairly good at it, but I don’t know if I’m good enough to be able to make a living at it. I’ve been told that my poetry is publishable. I’ve also been told that I should write and publish my story, because God has worked miracles in my life, and He’s set me free from a lot of my abusive childhood, and He’s continuing to heal me from the rest of it. I thank God for that. I’m just not sure if I’d be able to do a proper job of putting it in written form so people would want to read it.

Publishing my poetry doesn’t feel too intimidating because it’s already written, so all that would be needed is to find someone to publish it. Writing my story is another matter. That feels completely daunting to me, because, not only would I have to write it, but I’d have find someone to publish it, and I don’t really know how to do either one.

Maybe I should just do it and let God worry about the rest. If I’m doing what He wants me to do, then how it gets done is really His problem, isn’t it?

Yup, it is!

Maybe I should take a creative writing class with an emphasis in writing a memoir. That might help get me started.

Now I just have to figure out where such a class might be located…

Nov27

Christmas, In All Its Wonderfulness, Which Is Why I Hate It.

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I hate Christmas. There, I said it. Sacrilege I know, but that’s how I feel.

There are reasons for the way I feel, mostly having to do with Harry and stuff he did to me when I was little.

For instance, when I was about five, I made an ashtray for him for Christmas. You know, one of those ashtrays made out of clay that little kids make in nursery school or kindergarten for their dads? Well, the one I made for Harry was rather large as ashtrays go, more like a bowl you put fruit in, and I painted it yellow with green spots. I was rather proud of that ashtray because I’d worked very hard on it, and all I wanted was for Harry to like it.

To my great misfortune, not only did he not like it, but he hated it. In fact he hated it so much that he smashed it, and then he raped me. In front of the family he gave marginal approval, but once everyone else was gone from the room, he told me it was the ugliest thing he’d ever seen, and he threw it on the floor so it broke into a thousand pieces. Then he dragged me into his and Mom’s bedroom and raped me.

It just occurred to me that his reaction was way over the top, and even my statement of it ~ that it was way over the top ~ is grossly understated. I mean, if you don’t like someone’s gift, you don’t have to react by breaking it and then beating up the person who gave it to you. If you don’t like it, just don’t use it.

I’m extremely grateful for God’s gift of Jesus Christ, for the fact that Jesus was willing, even glad, to divest Himself of His majesty and power as the Creator of the universe so He could assume human flesh as a baby in a manger, and live a sinless life so He could go to the Cross and save us from our sins.

What I hate is all the hypocrisy and folderol that goes with the holiday. People seem to have forgotten why we celebrate Christmas. All they care about anymore is seeing how much money they can spend on their spouse, or their brother, or their boss, or their dad, or their aunt, or their dog.

Their DOG, for goodness’ sake!

Or their cat. Same difference.

And then there’s those ridiculous ads for Lexus that they only show before Christmas. You know, the ones where they show someone getting a new Lexus for Christmas, with a huge, gigantic bow on the roof of the car. There are so many absurdities in those ads, the most apparent, of course, being the ginormous bow on top of the car. Another absurdity is the whole idea of just any ole schmo being able to purchase an expensive car like a Lexus, when most people are lucky to be able to buy a small economy car.

What CAN the Lexus people be THINKING!?! 

Oh, and don’t forget all the humungous light displays that are so popular now. ABC even has a show every year called The Great Christmas Light Fight that’s basically a contest throughout the country to see who can come up with the best Christmas light display, that has NOTHING, absolutely NOTHING to do with Jesus Christ. And tonight is this season’s first episode.

Oh joy!!

I don’t know but what there might be other issues I’m not aware of that also influence my feelings about the holidays. I wish I knew what they were. It feels like it would be easier to deal with present day realities if I knew what was in the past ~ kind of like the foundation of the past would make the present house easier to build.

Thankfully, I’m no longer experiencing the soul-killing depression I used to go through every holiday season, from the beginning of October through the middle of January. God seems to have healed me of that.

I can only hope that the issues continuing to hinder me from being able to enjoy Christmas for what it’s really about will be healed by the Lord. Then I’ll be able to accept those who celebrate it for other things, as well as commemorate it for the birth of Christ, which is the real reason we’re supposed to celebrate the holiday.

I can only hope.

Right!

Jul3

God Is God, So He Doesn’t Have to Play God.

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I had an interesting insight on the sovereignty of God recently.

I used to have big problems with God’s sovereignty in my life, because it seemed like it was God’s sovereignty that allowed me to be abused. And it used to make me SOOO ANGRY, because it felt like God wanted me to be abused, and it felt like cosmic child abuse.

I went through a whole seven-year period where I was enraged at God because of that, until I finally realized I was barking up the wrong tree ~ I was asking the wrong questions. I should have been asking who, what, and where questions instead of why questions. And once I started asking the right questions I actually got answers. God showed me where He was while I was being abused ~ which was all I really wanted to know in the first place.

But I realized recently that when someone is demanding that God explain Himself about something He’s done in that person’s life, what they’re really saying is, “How dare You play god with my life!” That made me laugh when I thought about it. How dare God play god with someone’s life? He IS God! He isn’t playing god, He’s BEING God! There’s a significant difference. The Apostle Paul says in Romans,

But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? ~ Romans 9: 20-21, ESV.

It seems to me Paul is saying here that God, because He is the Creator, has the right to do whatever He wants with the people He creates, and while those people can ask questions of Him, and pray for answers, they don’t have the right to demand explanations for His decisions.

You wouldn’t like it if your son demanded to know why you were taking him to the doctor’s office if his ear hurt, and then refused to go because he didn’t like the prick of needle from the shot. You would know why you were doing it ~ because the kid has an ear infection that needs to be healed, and if the doctor doesn’t give him an injection he could go deaf, or even die if it gets bad enough. You can see the big picture. You can see the end result, whereas the child can’t. The same holds true for God. The Bible says,

Only I can tell you the future before it even happens. Everything I plan will come to pass, for I do whatever I wish. ~ Isaiah 46:10, NLT.

I like the way the NIV says it as well,

I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say, ‘My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.’ ~ Isaiah 46:10, NIV.

What that says to me is that God knew everything that would ever happen to me before I was ever a thought in anyone’s mind. He knew every decision I would make, and every thought I would think. He also knew every decision He would make about me. The Bible also says He knows the day I’m going to die, something I find quite comforting.

Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. ~ Psalm 139:16, NIV.

The reason I find that comforting is because now that I know that, it’s something I don’t have to worry about anymore. It’s God’s problem, not mine. All I have to do is go through my days doing my best to glorify God in all I do, basing my life on His Word, and God will take care of the rest.

Such a deal!

May22

Bad Days and New Mercies

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Some days are amazing and wonderful, they’re so good. And then there are those days where you wish you’d never opened your eyes, never gotten out of bed.

Yesterday was one of those days.

Even though God’s mercy was evident in many ways (Lamentations 3:21-23), I spent the day feeling frustrated at myself and wanting to scratch my eyes out at every turn. I felt fragmented, to use multiplistic terminology, and like every cell of my body was fighting a battle with every other cell, and with every molecule outside my body. It’s irritating, exasperating, infuriating, disheartening, and aggravating to see that in hindsight. Why couldn’t I have seen it as I was going through it? If I had, I could have prayed and asked God to do something about it!

Hindsight is 20/20. Yeah, yeah. Not helpful!

Thankfully, when I woke up this morning, I felt much calmer inside. I think a lot of what was going on might have been due to exhaustion. I had gotten very little sleep in several days, and I was so tired I could barely think straight. I’m so very grateful that God’s mercies are new every morning:

This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope. Through the LORD’s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. ~ Lamentations 3:21-23, NKJV.

I am so grateful that God forgets my past and starts fresh every morning! I need to learn to do the same, and I also need to learn to be merciful to myself, because God is certainly merciful to me.

 

Jun10

The Continuing Saga of My Struggles With Mom’s Death, or Why Can’t I Cry?

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Well, it’s now May 8th, seven weeks to the day since Mom died.

I’m still struggling, though the issues are somewhat different. Now it’s more about realizing how much I miss what I had with her while she was here. And the frustrating thing is, while she was here, I didn’t know I had it.

Jeff says I was never, not from the very beginning of my life, able to establish a real bond with my mother, so it’s understandable that I wouldn’t feel much in the way of grief when she died. I can see where he’s right about that, but it still feels wrong that I’m not all broken up that she’s gone.

I still haven’t had a memorial service for her. I’m fairly certain there are people who would come to one, but I can’t seem to rev up any interest in planning it. I just want to forget about the whole thing and go on with my life, but I don’t know if it’s okay to feel like that, and even more, if it’s okay to do that ~ mostly because it feels like if I did that I’d be pretending my mother never existed.

I feel like my mother left a desert in my heart. I know that’s not true, because God has done a tremendous amount of healing in me, but somehow, that’s how it feels, and that’s the picture I get when I think about my mother’s influence in my life over the years. I guess I shouldn’t worry whether my feelings are right or wrong, and just accept them as my current reality. If I do that then I can ask God to heal what’s there and change my current reality to a new one that’s better and more God-honoring, as well as mother-forgiving, with no desert. Isaiah 35:4-6 says,

4Say to those with fearful hearts, “Be strong, and do not fear, for your God is coming to destroy your enemies. He is coming to save you.” 5And when he comes, he will open the eyes of the blind and unplug the ears of the deaf. 6The lame will leap like a deer, and those who cannot speak will sing for joy! Springs will gush forth in the wilderness, and streams will water the wasteland. ~ NLT.

That’s what I want my life to be like: where flowers are always blooming, and hearts are always joyful, and God is easy to find. In other words, Heaven!

Oct10

Am I Afraid of Anger, or Do I Get Angry at the Fear?

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I originally wrote this post back in April of 2013 for a blog that I kept on another blogging site. That blog was shut down by the website without my consent, and I was never able to get it back, so from time to time I’m going to repost some of the posts I wrote from that blog as they seem appropriate to what I’m dealing with now.

This post contains a letter that I wrote to my biological father to deal with some of the unexpressed anger and rage that I feel about what he did to me. My therapist suggested that I write it but not send it, so that’s what I’ve done. Here’s the post:

April 10, 2013 ~ I’ve come to realize that most of the anger I feel and/or express is misplaced and misdirected, either at myself, or at the people in whatever TV program I’m watching at the time, especially if it’s something having to do with someone being raped or abused, or being treated unjustly or unfairly in anyway. I also get angry at certain news stories having to do with violence against children or women, or about registered sex offenders.

I’ve also found it interesting and a bit puzzling that I’ve never once felt, much less voiced, any anger towards my father for all the awful, horrible things he did to me. I have forgiven him, and I’ve never ever had any desire for revenge, but by the same token, I’ve also never felt any anger towards him. I don’t know if it’s because I’m terrified that he’ll come after me or because I’m afraid I’ll go ballistic if I start letting it out, or just what.

So maybe it’s time for me to do something about it. It’s not good to hold anger inside, especially for long periods of time, and while I’m getting better at not holding my anger inside, when I do let it out it’s almost always directed at the wrong person. So I’m thinking I should do something to express some of it towards my father, instead of towards me and all the other people who aren’t supposed to get it. My therapist says I should write him a letter, but I wouldn’t have to mail it to him. So that’s what I’ll do.

May 15, 2013 ~ I think it’s curious and probably significant that, after I start thinking about writing a letter to my father to tell him how angry I am at him, even if I know he’ll never see it, all of a sudden I avoid this blog like the plague. I wrote the first part of this post at the beginning of April and now it’s the middle of May.

Up until now I’ve always avoided dealing with any real feelings about Harry, and I think the reason is because I’ve been afraid, terrified, actually. Terrified that I wouldn’t be able to control my anger, petrified I’ll go ballistic and do something I’ll regret later ~ all because I’m panic-stricken at the idea of no longer hiding my true feelings about him. As I was sitting here thinking about what to write, I beat a retreat in the middle of this paragraph to play solitaire. Sometimes it helps me to think. Actually I think it’s an excuse for not having to think or write about what I’m supposed to be working on. Anyway, I started playing Solitaire and it wasn’t going the way I wanted it to (I was losing game after game) so I got more and more frustrated, and I ended up hitting myself a whole lot. Which is the point of all this in the first place: I get angry at myself instead of getting angry at the person ~ Harry ~ who’s the one I should be getting angry at.

So I’m going to step out in faith, and instead of being afraid of the anger, I’m going to get angry at the fear, and I’m going to start writing that letter. So here goes.

Harry:

First, I have to say that there are certain things about my childhood for which I’ve always been grateful: the piano lessons, and the love for classical music that you and Mom instilled in me, plus the keen intelligence, analytical mind, and desire for knowledge that have made me a voracious reader, and given me a life-long love of learning.

I thank you for those things. As I said, I’ve always been grateful for them, and I consider them a gift. However, there were many things I got from you for which I cannot be grateful. That will be the subject of the remainder of this letter.

I have a lot of things to say to you. A LOT. You’re supposed to be my father, at least that’s the title they gave you on my birth certificate. I have to tell you, however, that I don’t buy it. You’ve never been a father to me. I’ve had a lot of memories of things you did to me when I was a child that no father should ever do to ANY child, much less his own daughter ~ that no human being should ever do to any other human being. Even animals shouldn’t be treated the way you treated me. So I have a hard time calling you my father.

You abused me. You abused me physically, verbally, emotionally, sexually, and spiritually. You made me hate you, and you made me hate myself. Everytime you abused me you told me you had to do this to me because God hated me. Everytime you abused me you told me I was as ugly as if someone had thrown acid in my face. I don’t know why you felt the need to say those awful, hateful things to me. It took me many, many years of healing before I could believe that God didn’t hate me, and many more years after that before I could believe that anyone, much less God, could love me. I’m still working on whether or not I’m ugly. I think I can finally say that I’m not ugly, but I’m not sure I can take it any farther than that yet.

I’ve finally decided that maybe you told me those things because you were projecting onto me how you felt about yourself. However, that’s no excuse for that kind of cruelty! Do you have any idea the kind of pain just those two statements spoken over and over into my life have caused me? Agony! Do you hear me? Agony! You caused me years and years of anguish and agony, plus nine suicide attempts just from those two statements, not to mention the torment from all the other horrific and terrible things you did to me.

You abused me within an inch of my life. The only reason I survived infancy is because God gave me the ability to become multiple.

You forced me/us to lie about what you were doing to us so you could keep on beating, raping, and otherwise assaulting the life out of us. You told us that if we ever told anyone what you were doing to us you would kill us, and then you played Russian Roulette with your revolver between our legs to make sure we believed you. There was no way we could have known back then that the gun was loaded with blanks. We were children, tiny children, so we had no choice but to believe you, and we had to become liars that no one could trust as a result. You stole our integrity,  our innocence, our childhood, and our hope when you did that, because you left us with no recourse and no ability to seek rescue.

Do you remember our habit of picking our cuticles? We started doing that at a very early age, as young as two years old. Do you know why we did that? Because you told us we couldn’t tell anyone what you were doing to us, so we had to come up with a way to tell people without using words that we were in peril. So we picked holes in our cuticles, sometimes to the point of getting them infected. Tragically for us, our efforts were all for naught, because no one ever caught on or reached out to help.

You used rape as punishment for wrongdoing, and you kept changing the rules so we never knew what they were. It didn’t matter what we did or how we did it, it was never good enough, so no matter what, we were wrong and had to be punished, which meant you had yet another excuse to rape and/or hit us. I don’t know what we did to become the brunt of your rage; I doubt we did anything. We think you just needed a scapegoat, and we were small and weak enough that we couldn’t fight back.

And then there was the time when we were three when you decided that just raping us yourself wasn’t enough; you needed to spice it up by getting your friends involved. So you orchestrated a little gang-rape with four of your cronies. I don’t know what you were hoping to accomplish that day, but it certainly couldn’t have been anything good.

Do you have any idea of how traumatic that event was for us? That one incident was so devastating, so damaging to us that you caused the creation of 12, that’s right, twelve, new alters. It was so horrific that Catherine Belinda, the core personality, decided she’d had enough of your lies and betrayals. She determined that she couldn’t stand your abuse any longer, so despite the risk and menace inherent in your threats, she resolved to tell someone, anyone, what you were doing to us.

But God and the rest of us knew that you meant business when you said you’d kill us if we told. So we all hid Catherine Belinda away and put her to sleep, and kept her that way for the next fifty years. In her place someone else was created to run things. The new alter’s name was Sarah Abigail Kuriakos, but she answered to Catherine Belinda’s name so no one would notice or suspect anything was different.

You know, all we wanted was to be accepted and loved. That’s all any child wants. Was that too much to ask? We don’t think it was, but you couldn’t even give us that. A child is a gift from God, yet you treated us like trash. A child is a reward from the Lord, but you acted like we were your personal property to kick around and beat up as you pleased. We were a small, innocent child! You were nothing more than a cowardly bully, picking on your own daughter, someone who was too small and defenseless to stand up for ourselves. If you’re going to pick on someone, pick on someone your own size!

I think the thing that hurts me more than anything else about all the horrors you visited on me/us throughout the years of my childhood is that you made it nigh unto impossible for me to have a relationship with a man, or with God. I’m terrified of men and I’m terrified of sex. As a consequence I’ve never been able to consider even going out on a date, much less anything more serious, because I might have to let him touch me, and ultimately I might have to marry and have sex with him.

Fortunately, as far as a relationship with God is concerned, God had other plans, and it’s only by His grace and mercy that I’m alive to tell this story, or that I know anything about Him at all. I owe my life to God and to my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and it’s only because of His healing power that I’m able to trust Him or believe in Him. I will never be able to express enough gratitude to God for all He has done for me in setting me free from all that you did to me. One thing you should know however, is that the same God of Love who healed me won’t allow me to hate you anymore.

That’s right. Jesus loves you just as much as He loves me or anyone else, without reservation or condemnation, and because He’s healed me, He’s helped me to forgive you for everything you did to me. And yes, I have forgiven you. I don’t want revenge, I don’t desire any kind of evil to come to you, and I wish only good for you. This teeny weeny paragraph stating my forgiveness may sound a little trite, like nothing more than a bunch of platitudes after my great long letter expressing a lot of pent up rage and apparent vitriol.

In truth I was only expressing my heart and my truth as I saw it, plus this is the first time I’ve ever expressed my anger towards you all in one place and directly towards you. But my forgiveness is real and heartfelt, and the ball is now in your court. It’s your choice as to whether you will accept or reject it or not, because with my forgiveness, I’m also offering reconciliation with you and the possibility of a relationship. I don’t know if that’s something you desire, but my offer is there if you choose to accept it.

That’s all for now. I wish peace with God and health for your body and soul. I know that you now suffer from emphysema and are on 24-hour oxygen, and I wish healing for you from that as well.

Blessings and Peace,

Sarah

Well, thankfully it’s finished. As an addendum, I want to add a little bit of history to bring the story of the multiplicity aspect up to date.

As I said in the middle of the letter, at age 27, in October of 1980, I changed my name from Catherine Belinda Pfaff to Sarah Abigail Kuriakos. At the time I was only just beginning to have memories of being abused and I had no idea I was multiple. I thought I was changing my name to cut myself off from a heritage of abuse, and I thought I was choosing a new name. So I chose three names that were Bible names with really good meanings, and that meant things I had never meant to anyone before: Sarah means, “Princess,” and Sarah, of course was Abraham’s wife and the mother of Isaac. Abigail means, “a father’s joy, or a joy to the Father,” and Abigail was one of David’s wives, and a virtuous woman in the Bible. And Kuriakos means, “belonging to God” and is used twice in the New Testament.

In reality, I was already Sarah Abigail Kuriakos, but I wasn’t consciously aware of it. Everyone inside decided that the name of the body, which had been Catherine Belinda up until then, should be changed to match my name so there would be more congruence between inside and outside. It made sense. Catherine Belinda was hidden away and asleep, and had been for a long time, and would remain that way indefinitely, so it didn’t make any sense to keep using her name. It made much more sense to use my name because I was running things, so we found a lawyer amongst the people at my church, and we went to court and changed it to my name. And strangely enough, the change wasn’t at all hard to adapt to. It was like that should have been my name all along. I’d had this weird feeling for awhile that Catherine Belinda was a name that belonged to someone else ~ which turned out to be true in a strange sort of way. Plus all my friends said that Sarah Abigail fit me much better than Catherine Belinda did. Funny thing! Maybe that was because Sarah Abigail was actually my name and Catherine Belinda wasn’t.

And, being Sarah Abigail Kuriakos has made a huge difference in my life, and brought me closer to Him. Everytime I hear the names I hear their meanings, and God has used that to heal me a tiny bit everyday. Plus I’m no longer multiple. In October of 2001 I decided I wanted to seek integration, so I went to the pastor of the church I was going to at the time, and asked him if they could help me with that. I knew that the process of integration takes many years, often in excess of ten, if it’s done in therapy, and I wanted God to do the healing, not some shrink. So my pastor and some people in the church who knew of my background set up a team of prayer warriors, and they prayed for me once a month over a period of 18 months, and by the end of that time I was fully integrated. It was a wonderful thing. Instead of being many I was one ~ for the first time in my entire life! There was no longer any chaos or confusion inside. Blessed peace! Wow!! Praise God!! And the really cool thing was that the process was complete right around my fiftieth birthday. And just before the final integration was done, God woke up Catherine Belinda and brought her out of hiding so that she could be integrated into the whole along with everyone else. Amazingly, God had been watching over her the whole time, and had been causing her to grow while she was asleep, so when she came back it wasn’t a huge shock to her system, or mine. I was seeing a really good Christian therapist at the time, and she was fully supportive of the prayer group’s work.

And then there was the whole situation with Klepto, who was a little four-year-old girl who stole things because that was the only way she could get what she wanted. Of course, stealing is, and always has been, absolutely antithetical to everything I am, so when she came out and started stealing stuff from work (I was working at an arts and crafts store then), I got very upset. The first thing we did was talk to her and told her she couldn’t do this. She had to take everything back, and put it back where she got it without getting caught, because I didn’t want to lose my job. Then, on the advice of my therapist, we changed her name to Elizabeth, because Klepto as a name was like a self-fulfilling prophecy. She came out one more time in a toy store where she tried to shoplift a game. Fortunately I came out and stopped her before she could leave the store with it, but it was rather embarrassing. And then she was integrated into the whole, and was no longer a problem, thank God!

So, God gave me the most amazing and wonderful birthday gift for my fiftieth birthday, and I’ve been eternally grateful ever since. I can’t thank Him enough. Certainly I’ve had my struggles since then. There was the whole seven-year period where I was angry at God because I couldn’t understand how He could allow me to be abused. It turned out that what I really didn’t understand was about God’s sovereignty, and that I didn’t have the right to challenge it, which was what I had been doing.

And then I realized that all I really wanted to know was where God was when I was being abused. And ultimately God showed me. He showed me that He had been right there with me, protecting me by making me multiple, saving my life by creating new alters as they were needed. Each time there was an abuse incident that was severe enough to require a new alter, God put His finger on my personality in the exact spot where He wanted the split to occur. It was God who created Sarah Abigail Kuriakos, and chose her name ~ which gives the meaning of the names even more significance when I think of it in that light.

Well, I guess I’d better finish this and post it. It’s turned out to be VERY long, a lot longer than I expected, though all of it was important and needed to be said.

Until next time then…

Jul13

Passive-Agressive Issues Notwithstanding…

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I realized something the other day, or rather, the Lord showed me something. He showed me that I’ve been passive-agressively not paying Mom’s bills to get back at her for not protecting me from Harry when I was little, and for abusing me herself. It explains a number of things and I’m glad to know it, because now maybe I can do something about it.

I’ve managed to significantly lower, and maybe even ruin Mom’s credit rating because I haven’t paid her bills in a timely fashion. It’s not something I’m proud of, and I hope it’s fixable. It seems like it would be. All I’d have to do would be to consistently pay all her bills on time over a long period of time, and keep on doing it, and keep on doing it, etc., etc.

So anyway, once I realized it, I took it to therapy and asked Jeff to pray about it, and he did. So now I have to start paying the bills! I’ve lost any excuse for not doing it. (In case you can’t tell, I’m not crazy about paying bills, passive-aggressive issues notwithstanding.)

I’ve often pondered the wisdom and plan of God in making me the one who’s in charge of my mother’s affairs once she reached a point in her life where she couldn’t handle them on her own. If my sister had survived her battle with cancer it would have been her, but she didn’t, so it was left to me. I’ve never been any good at managing money matters, though I am pretty good at paying my bills on time. My sister, on the other hand, was always meticulous about those issues, about everything really, to the point of being completely anal about it.

I asked God once why He gave me the responsibility of taking care of Mom instead of my sister, because in many ways I’m no good at it. His answer to me was that while she had the skill, I have the heart, and heart is better. Which makes me wonder, did He remove her from the scene by having her get cancer?

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,” declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts. ~ Isaiah 55:8-9, ESV.

I’m so very grateful for God’s mercy in all of this. In many ways I’ve completely bollixed  everything concerning Mom’s finances, but God is so good, and so kind to me! It’s hard for me to fathom sometimes. Despite my clumsy handling of her affairs, she still seems to be in fairly good shape, thank God.

Thanks be to God for His unspeakable Gifts!!

Jul2

God and Me, In Words

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So, I’m doing it. Starting my new blog, that is. Finally! After Google shut down the old one I couldn’t figure out what to do for a long time, and finally I decided I couldn’t just not write, nor could I allow my posts from the Google blog to just disappear. So I determined to copy/paste the posts from that blog onto a Pages document so I’d have a record of everything I said, and then I’d find a place to start another blog. And SOOO, here I am on wordpress.com!

The purpose of this blog is to keep a written record as I recover from my childhood. I come from a background of extreme child abuse. My biological father was an angry, evil, and abusive man who made me the scapegoat of his rage. In addition, my mother was afraid of my father and abusive as well, though not as violently as my father was.

As awful and horrifying as my childhood was I’ve been able to forgive both my parents with God’s help. I couldn’t have done it without His help ~ I couldn’t have survived any of it without His help, but that’s neither here nor there, at least for now.

I’ve often had people tell me that I should write my somewhat remarkable story. Well, maybe this blog is a way of doing that, mostly because I’m not sure I have the emotional wherewithal to go through the process of writing a book and getting it published. Maybe that can come later and I can use these blog posts as fodder for that process, though at age 62 I’m not sure I want to put myself through all that. I’ll have to wait and see…

Well, I believe I’m done with this… It feels done anyway, this first post. Certainly there will be others, lots of them. I don’t know yet how often I’ll post. On the old blog it went in fits and starts, mostly fits. I’d start a post and then let it slide for months unfinished, or I’d post three or four right in a row and then go for six or eight months without a word. I’m hoping I can do better here. I think I’m a better frame of mind now, plus I’m more eager to put my thoughts out there~and maybe even let other people read them this time. No one ever read the old blog. No one, at least not that I was aware of. Well, maybe one person, but she was a Muslim who was out trolling for someone to convert to Islam, so that probably doesn’t count.

I think I was too afraid of people’s criticism and rejection to let anyone read what I was writing, both in terms of the spiritual content and in terms of what I was writing about my emotional life. But I’m more confident of my writing now, plus I’m more confident of what I have to say~in a number of different arenas. Yes, I’m branching out! I’m taking an apologetics course and it’s giving me courage and boldness to speak out about what I believe. In addition, I’m finding as God heals my mind that I’m able to think more logically than I ever thought possible. It’s the strangest feeling sometimes. I’ll be reading something and all of a sudden I’ll realize that it’s something I was never able to understand before and now I’m understanding it perfectly. Then I’ll start to giggle as I’m praising and thanking God for His mercy and grace in healing me.

So, now I really am done. Hehe…