Category Archives: Suffering

Jun17

Fathers and Mothers, or Ever Onward With God.

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For most of my adult life I’ve had problems with the holidays. You know, Thanksgiving and Christmas, etc. Actually it started around Hallowe’en and continued through the middle of January. I would get horribly depressed, often to the point that I had a hard time getting out of bed, and it would be hard for me to blink and breathe.

Interestingly, however, in the last couple of years, God must have been healing me on the sly, so to speak, because all of a sudden I realized I wasn’t experiencing the usual horrible, soul-killing depression over the holidays like I always had.

What sweet relief! To know I won’t have to go through that yearly, terrible, mack-truck depression again fills me with joy and a deep, abiding peace. I can’t even describe how wonderful it feels to know I won’t have to go through that again! The only problem is, now God seems to have moved on to another set of issues.

Rats!

While I didn’t think I was completely done with healing, I thought at least He might give me a little respite before He started in on the next issue.

Not so! Silly me for thinking that! Ever onward with God!

What I’m experiencing now is the same kind of depression, only not to the same degree, around Mother’s and Father’s Day. When each of these celebrations comes around I start feeling all jumbled up and fragmented inside, like I did when I was multiple. I’m not losing time or anything like that. I think more than anything I’m just feeling sad.

Everytime I hear some DJ or radio commentator or news journalist talk about how wonderful and amazing fathers are, or how important and special mothers are, I want to yell at them that they don’t know what they’re talking about. And then I feel horribly depressed and sad for hours afterward.

In the middle of all this Mother’s and Father’s Day folderol I found a verse from Proverbs in an email from RZIM,

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom…My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother. ~ Proverbs 1:7-8, DRA.

DRA is the Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition of the Bible, for anyone who wants to know.

I read that passage and thought, this is what I was supposed to get from my parents, but didn’t.

For whatever reason, I don’t feel jealous of other people’s happy childhoods. I just feel sad because of what I missed out on, sad and lonely. It’s probably the only time I’ve ever felt lonely, because I like being alone most of the time. When I was a kid the only time I was safe was when I was alone.

My mom used to say that the best way to punish my sister was to isolate her, and the best way to punish me was to spank me. She knew she couldn’t isolate me, because if she did I would actually welcome it, and then go off and read a book for hours on end.

It was during that period that I became a voracious reader. I could read a book and get lost in the story, thus escaping the chaos and confusion of whatever was going on in my family. It still works for me to this day. Reading is the most relaxing thing I do, except for petting Lily, my cat.

I would make a great hermit, because I don’t feel alone, even when there’s no one around. I can feel God’s presence with me all the time. Please don’t think that makes me a spiritual person or anything like that. I think it’s a gift God gave me to help me during the difficult times of my childhood. At the time I didn’t know it was God, and it wasn’t until just the last five years or so that I’ve realized that He was there all along.

I am SOOO GRATEFUL to know that God has been sustaining me throughout my life! I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God is faithful and trustworthy, and that He will never, ever leave me nor forsake me. I know this because His Word promises He won’t, but I also know it because I have the proof from my childhood. He sustained me and kept me alive throughout, regardless of how bad it got. He saved my life a number of times when I would have died if He hadn’t been there.

So regardless of the fact that I didn’t have parents who cared about me, I still had God, and I think this is a season of healing that I’m going through, where I may feel depressed around Mother’s and Father’s Day, and whenever I think about issues surrounding mothers and/or fathers, as I did around Thanksgiving and Christmas for many years. Thank God I don’t experience what I used to feel around those holidays anymore, so hopefully this Mother’s-and-Father’s-Day season won’t last very long.

God is SOOO GOOD!!!

 

Jun11

The Sweet, Simple Joy of a Baby

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My friend Karen came over this afternoon (Saturday, June 8th), and she brought her year-old baby, Jonathan. We sat on the grass outside my apartment, and Jonathan, in perpetual motion, walked all around both Karen and I, and pulled up bits of grass, making mud-pies with the dirt and grass-blades.

Jonathan laughed and babbled in baby-talk. He’s getting close to saying his first words, making bi-labial sounds. He’s such a delight, and a joy to watch and listen to.

I had picked up my mail during our walk, so after we sat down, I let Jonathan play with it. He was carrying pieces of it around and dropping them in various places. That didn’t bother me any, because I didn’t want any of it anyway, plus I loved that he was having so much fun with it.

Jonathan With a Dirty Face. He’s so CUTE!!

Jonathan With a Dirty Face, 06:08.2019

Being around Jonathan is making me realize something, a lot of things, actually.

The abuse I endured as a child was so extreme that I had to become multiple in order to survive, both physically and emotionally. Additionally, what was happening to me was so traumatic that I had to repress the memory of it, because, as a child, I wasn’t equipped emotionally to be able to process or handle what I was experiencing. The maturity required for that wouldn’t come until many years later. As a consequence, the first ten years of my life are pretty much blank.

As an adolescent, I babysat to earn money for clothes and other incidentals. One time, when I was about thirteen years old, I was taking care of a friend’s one-year-old baby, and the baby started crying and couldn’t stop. I think she had colic. Her crying turned into shrieking, and I couldn’t make her quiet down, and I didn’t know what to do. She kept on crying and shrieking and crying and crying, and I finally lost it, and started shaking her.

Immediately I got really scared, because instinctively I knew that what I’d done wasn’t right. So even though she was still crying, I put her down.

I’ve never forgotten that experience. Ultimately the baby did stop crying, thankfully, and I’m gratefully able to report that she suffered no lasting effects from being shaken. But I came to the conclusion after that babysitting session that I could no longer babysit, and I could not think of becoming a parent, even though, at the time, I had no memory of being abused. I was sure that, if I had children, I would abuse them. I had no idea on what I was basing that fear, other than that one time of babysitting. I just knew with a strong certainty that I would abuse any children I produced if I were married. So that also meant I could never be married.

At the time I was a little disappointed about the idea of not being able to be married, because I’d long held a dream of an amazing wedding ceremony with a beautiful wedding dress and lots of gorgeous flowers. But a wonderful day meant nothing along side a life of misery if the miserable life was made that way because I was treating my children in unloving and ungodly ways by abusing the life out of them.

In later years, after memories started to surface and I began to fill in the ten blank years with reality, I began to understand why I was afraid of having children. I began to see that my fear of abusing any children that I might have was realistic, based on what I’d gone through myself, though my reasons for not wanting to be married changed somewhat. Part of the reason still had to do with fear of abusing my children, but I now realized I was terrified of sex as well, because of what Harry had done to me throughout my childhood (see the post from October 10, 2016 called Am I Afraid of Anger or Do I Get Angry At the Fear? for a good explanation).

All of that is to say that God has done a tremendous amount of healing in me, and I’ve only come to realize just how much in the past year since being around Jonathan.

Once I knew what was in my background I made it point to never be alone with small children and/or babies. I’ve never been afraid I would abuse them sexually. I’ve never been tempted in that way. In fact, the idea of doing that is utterly repugnant to me. What I’m terrified of is that I would hurt them physically.

But since Jonathan came into my life, I’ve had several opportunities to be alone with him, and even though there were times that he began to cry, I was never triggered or tempted, not even a little bit, to hurt him or get upset with him.

Wow! Just Wow!! I’m in awe at the wonderful works of God! I can feel a qualitative difference inside from the way it used to be. It used to be that when I was around a child and that child started crying, I could feel a lump rising in my throat, and my fists would start to clench and unclench. I could feel tension building up inside, and the lump in my throat would begin to make my throat close. I would want to scream at the child, “SHUTUP!! STOPCRYING!!“ until the crying stopped, and I could barely keep from hitting or shaking the child to make him or her stop crying, though logically, if you hit a kid, or shake him, he won’t stop crying. He’ll cry even more. Duh!!

Needless to say, you can see why I had to stay away from children!

But it’s different now. All of those negative feelings are gone, thank God. Now I feel a wonderful peace, and a deep, abiding joy when I’m with Jonathan. I’m able to sing to him, and play with him, and just enjoy being with him, rather than worrying that he’s going to trigger me into abusing him. I will probably always be careful when I’m around children, out of an abundance of caution, because I would never, ever, want to be guilty of hurting one of God’s innocents in the way I was hurt. But I’m so grateful to God for healing me in such marvelous ways that I can now allow myself to be around children. Having to keep myself away from them always caused me tremendous heartache, because I love children! They’re amazing!

Thank you, Jesus!!

May5

Author and Finisher

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I love the phrase, “…the author and finisher of our faith…” in Hebrews 12:2. It’s talking about Jesus, of course. I like the way the NIV puts it,

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of [our] faith. For the joy set before Him He endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. ~ Hebrews 12:1-2, NIV.

It’s like my faith ~ my story ~ is a book, and Jesus is its author. He’s the One who began my story, and He’s the One who will finish it, as it says in Philippians,

And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue His work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns. ~ Philippians 1:6, NLT.

I love the Bible. It always tells the truth. The verses I quoted above tell the truth about God’s activity in my life. And the cardinal truth can be found in this verse in Hebrews,

Don’t love money; be satisfied with what you have. For God has said, “I will never fail you. I will never abandon you.” ~ Hebrews 13:5, NLT.

Throughout my life ~ through all the abuse, all the times my mother tried to kill me, all the horrendous and terrible things my father did to me, all my suicide attempts, even during the period where I was enraged at God ~ through all of it, God was there, keeping me alive, shielding me from the worst of the abuse, and even protecting me from myself.

He’s never failed me, He’s never forsaken me, He’s never abandoned me, plus He’s given me beauty for ashes, and the oil of joy for mourning, as it says in Isaiah,

To console those who mourn in Zion, to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they may be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that He may be glorified. ~ Isaiah 61:3, NKJV.

God has given me so much beauty in my life! He’s been so incredibly good to me, and He continues to be so on a daily, minute-by-minute basis. The cross is the best, most beautiful gift He could ever give me. It’s the best demonstration of true love anyone could ever give to another person, as it says in the Gospel of John,

There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. ~ John 15:13, NLT.

Apr29

An Ugly Mind Made Beautiful.

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When the movie, A Beautiful Mind came out I had a hard time watching it because I could relate to some of John Nash’s experiences, in particular the insulin shock therapy he was treated with while he was in the hospital.

The reason I can relate to the insulin shock therapy he endured is because when I was a child and being abused in the cult in the 50’s and 60’s, the cult abusers had to have a way to make their victims forget what they’d done to them, and insulin shock, sometimes called subcoma insulin shock, was the method they used. There were doctors and nurses present who were cult members, and they monitored the victims, who were usually children, to make sure nothing bad happened to them while they were unconscious, and also to administer the insulin in the first place. The correct dosage had to be calculated based on the victim’s height and weight, and doctors and nurses were the only ones who knew how to do that.

Seeing that movie is what triggered that memory, and I haven’t been able to watch it since, which is unusual for me. Usually I love seeing movies many times over.

The movie also reminded me that when I was little I used to crave sugar all the time. Regularly for breakfast I would have cereal with multiple heaping spoonfuls of brown sugar on it, and my mother never stopped me from doing it ~ something that only makes sense if I had a lot of extra insulin in my blood that needed to be metabolized. And now, while I’m not diabetic, thank God, I am insulin resistant. Another way of thinking of that is that because of the insulin shock to which I was subjected, my tissues aren’t as responsive to insulin as they would otherwise be.

It doesn’t usually affect me. Every once in awhile, if I don’t eat anything at all over a long period, I begin to get a little hypoglycemic, but that’s about it. Plus my doctor has prescribed a very good medication that helps to moderate things quite well.

I thank God that Jesus is my Healer, and my Redeemer! I pray that Jesus has healed me of insulin resistence! I forgive everyone who caused it, and I hope I’ll see them in Heaven so I can tell them I forgive them.

It was a form of torture. It makes me feel sad knowing that I was tortured. Even though I’ve described other cult rituals that could be said to be torture, this is the first time that I’ve actually said the words, “I was tortured.” This is the first time I’ve acknowledged it. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not. Maybe it’s because I’m accepting reality.

It also makes me feel sad knowing that people are cruel to each other so often. It makes no sense to me that people treat each other like that, because it seems like it would be easier to be kind. Being mean and cruel makes things so much more difficult, because then, in the process, a lot of times you break a law and have to go to court, and then to jail. If people would just be kind they could avoid all that, and they might learn about the mysteries of God into the bargain.

It sounds like a good deal to me. Maybe not to other people, but certainly to me.

 

Apr18

Revenge Is God’s Job, Not Man’s.

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I think I know why vigilante justice is wrong. It occurred to me that vigilante justice is man’s attempt to get revenge when God said specifically that vengeance was His responsibility. It says in the Book of Romans,

Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” ~ Romans 12:19, ESV.

And Paul is quoting Moses in the Book of Deuteronomy when he says that (Deuteronomy 32:35).

That says to me that revenge is God’s job, not ours. I often wonder if the reason people practice vigilante justice is because they either don’t believe God exists, so they feel they have to get justice themselves, or they don’t trust that He’ll get the justice they want, or need, or think they deserve for that crime. Either way they’re wresting control of when justice is served out of God’s hands, and into their own hands.

When someone has a vested interest in seeing a particular person convicted for a crime, regardless of that person’s actual guilt or innocence, if the person is acquitted then the one with the personal stake in his conviction can be a prime candidate for vigilante justice because he didn’t get his desired outcome.

God knows the whole story. He can see the whole picture, whereas we only know what we can see and hear and feel. We will never know another person’s motivation for what they did, and we won’t usually know if that person is lying, unless they break down and confess that they lied.

What if the person we’re pursuing is actually innocent of the crime we’re accusing him/her of? Even though we think we know who committed the crime, we don’t know everything, and we might be wrong. There’s no such thing as a perfect murder where God is concerned because God knows everything, EVERYTHING, and even if the real killer is never apprehended here on earth, God still knows who did it. That person will still have to face God’s justice and judgment in the end, regardless of what happens here on earth.

I know it’s hard to trust God about something so personal and painful as when someone dear to you has been attacked and/or murdered. I’ve been a victim of serious crime myself, and I know how difficult it is to trust God when you’ve been deeply wounded.

You might be saying, “How can I trust God when He allowed me to be so savagely hurt?” But I’ve come to know that it was God who protected me from the worst of the abuse. If God hadn’t been there I wouldn’t have survived. I would be dead, because those who were abusing me would have killed me, or I would have succeeded in one of my suicide attempts. And you might respond, “But if God is as powerful and as good as everyone says He is, then why was I abused at all? Why didn’t He stop the abuse from happening altogether?”

Unfortunately, there are some questions for which there just isn’t a satisfactory answer this side of Heaven, and this is one of them. The problem of evil is one of the great mysteries of the Christian faith, and it’s also one of the main reasons people give for doubting God’s existence. The argument usually goes, if God is omnipotent then He could have stopped the evil from happening, and since He didn’t then He must not be omnipotent. And by the same token, if He’s completely good, then He wouldn’t have allowed the evil to happen in the first place, and since the evil did happen, then He must not be completely good.

My response to those arguments is that the people proposing them aren’t considering all the factors. There is the all-important detail of man’s free will. God created every single human being with a free will, and He cannot violate that will in any way at any time, otherwise it wouldn’t be free. God desires humans who will freely choose to fellowship with Him, and He can only get people who will make that choice by creating them with a completely free will. And that means a free will to reject Him just as much as to choose Him.

I can say that God is absolutely faithful, and He solved the problem of evil once for all at the cross. Colossians 2 says,

He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross. In this way, He disarmed the spiritual rulers and authorities. He shamed them publicly by His victory over them on the cross. ~ Colossians 2:14-15, NLT.

In addition, it says in the Book of Revelation,

I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death. ~ Revelation 1:18, KJV.

Jesus triumphed over Satan at the cross, and took the keys of hell and death away from him at that time, and as a consequence, death has lost its sting, as it says so well in 1 Corinthians,

“O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. ~ 1 Corinthians 15:55-57, ESV.

Even though Christ dealt with Satan at the cross, making a show of him openly as it says in Colossians, we won’t see the complete outworking of that victory until Christ returns at His Second Coming.

I think I’ll stop now. I’ve covered a lot of ground here, and meandered around a bit. I probably could’ve made this into two posts, especially because it got kind of long, plus I ended up on a different topic than I started out on, but I’m not sure I want to. Maybe I can tie it all together.

When someone is seeking their own justice, which is basically what vigilante justice is, they’re committing murder because they don’t trust the criminal justice system. Trying to exact your own justice is the wrong way to go about it. Killing another human being is always wrong no matter what, except if it’s in self defense.

God must be the judge, not man, and He works through the criminal justice system, as flawed as it is because it’s run by human beings. We need to trust that the truth will come out in God’s timing. You can’t hide anything from God. It says in the Book of Numbers,

But if you fail to keep your word, then you will have sinned against the LORD, and you may be sure that your sin will find you out. ~ Numbers 32:23, NLT.

So that’s all, folks!

Mar31

God Is Completely Other. Harry Is Just Evil.

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The last time I saw McT we talked about the difficulty I have with taking showers. And just to clarify, taking a bath is just as hard for me as taking a shower is.

The very first abuse memory I had was of Harry trying to force me into having oral sex with him when we were in the shower when I was about two years old, and I had it during a therapy session with McT. Harry forced me to have oral sex, so I got confused and lost control of my bowels and pooped on the shower floor, which enraged him. As a result he picked up the feces and threw it at me, and then forced me to eat it.

First off, I forgive him.

Needless to say, the shower is an emotionally charged place for me, and it’s nigh unto impossible for me to take one without major advance preparations.

There are a number of things I’m afraid of. For one thing, I’m terrified I’ll have new and more horrific memories of things Harry did to me in the shower while I’m taking a shower. It’s happened before. That seemed to be a favorite place of his. I don’t know what his deal was, but he just loved to get to me while I was in the bathroom, and especially while I was in the shower. And that first memory was one that he initiated.

The other memories I’ve had mostly centered around him bringing other men in to have sex with me while Harry watched, sometimes in the shower, and sometimes not. I’ve had memories of them paying him; it was always a very small amount of money, because Harry didn’t want me to get the idea that I was actually worth anything. He allowed me to see the amount of money, and told me how much it was, so I would know just how little I was worth, and just how bad the sex was that they were getting from me.

Seriously? I didn’t ask for this, damnit!! You’re the one who forced it on me!! If you didn’t like what you were getting, then you should have gone some place where your presence was desired!!

And always, Harry watched. He got his jollies watching. And always, I forgive him.

Sometimes I get tired of forgiving him. It doesn’t seem to do any good. But I have to remember that I’m not forgiving him for him. I’m doing it for me, because that’s what God commands. And I desire above all else to please God. God isn’t Harry. God isn’t my father. God is my Father, and completely OTHER. God is absolutely different from Harry, completely OTHER.

I have to remember that. God is completely OTHER.

Feb27

Confronting Evil By Talking About It

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When I was a teenager I was forced into having two abortions by the cult in which I was being abused. Well, first they raped me to get me pregnant, and then they aborted the babies that were the product of the two rapes.

The first one happened when I was about thirteen, and the pregnancy was terminated in an abortion at about three months, before the baby was viable outside the womb. It was a boy, whom I named David Adam Christopher.

The second one, when I was about fifteen, was terminated somewhere between four and five months, at a point when they knew the baby would be viable long enough for me to be able to bond with her before she was murdered. And yes, it was a girl. I named her Emily Margaret Rose. For both babies I tried to pick the most beautiful names I could think of, names that were not only beautiful, but were also at least partly biblical with good meanings.

In the abortion that killed David Adam Christopher, I have a very clear picture in my mind of a machine that I’m assuming was an abortion machine. It was a large blue rectangular box with a clear plastic dome on top, and as they were sucking the baby from my body I can see his tiny body parts mixed with blood swirling in the dome as the machine was running.

With Emily Margaret Rose it was even worse. I was the one who had to kill her, though in reality it was murder. I had no choice; they forced me.

After she was born they made me hold her, and they forced me to nurse her. At the time I didn’t understand exactly what they had planned, and I didn’t know why they made me bond with her, but I was glad for it. Then they took her away and put her on a table, which turned out to be an altar. She was naked, and they made me take off my clothes as well, something I always hated doing.

Then they made me go to the altar and they put a dagger in my hand. The dagger had a special kind of double-edged blade that had a thick electrical cable coming out of the handle. The cable was hooked up to a machine that generated electrical current, and as long as the machine was on, current flowed into the knife. As long as current was flowing I couldn’t let go of it because my muscles couldn’t stop contracting. The only way they would allow me to drop the dagger was if I stabbed Emily until she was dead. I had no choice. Not physically, nor emotionally, mentally, or spiritually.

I can see very clearly in my mind’s eye the images of having to do this to my beautiful baby girl. And I can distinctly hear her shrieks of agony as I plunged the dagger into her tiny body.

I take great comfort in Psalm 139:8 when I contemplate this horrific memory, because I believe what it says, that I was not alone in that Hell-on-earth, that God didn’t abandon me even there,

“If I ascend into heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.” ~ Psalm 139:8, NKJV.

I also believe I will one day meet both my beautiful babies when I get to Heaven. I hope they can forgive me for what I was forced to do to them. I’ve often felt that I should have been willing to die myself rather than allow them to be aborted and murdered like that, though if I had died I wouldn’t have saved them from anything. They were created by the cult for abuse, and they would have been sacrificed before very long, as appalling and unspeakable as that is.

I feel so many things as I relive this event. I don’t go back to it very often, and  I didn’t expect to do so today, but it came out as I was talking to McT about other things in therapy. And once I start talking about it, it doesn’t take much to take me right back to that scene again.

I don’t know if that means I haven’t truly put it behind me or what. I’ve repented to God over and over again, and asked His forgiveness for every aspect of it, but it’s just such a horrific thing, it feels like I can never repent enough, even though I know that Christ’s work on the Cross was completely sufficient to cover even this awful sin. I know, at least in my mind, that I had no control over what happened, that I was forced into it, but I’m not sure if I know that deep down inside.

I say that because whenever I think of it my feelings get all jumbled up and chaotic inside. They kind of flit and fly all over the place and I have a hard time catching them so I can look at them. It’s like they’re trying to escape detection so I don’t have to deal with the underlying issues.

The problem is, I want to deal with those issues. I need to deal with them.

I do feel a great deal of guilt and shame about what happened, and I also feel a huge amount of sorrow, grief, and distress about it ~ sorrow and grief at what might have been for those two babies had they survived and escaped the cult, and distress at what I put them through in the process of aborting (David), and killing them (Emily).

Of course there’s absolutely no guarantee that they would have been able to escape. Given that they were created by the cult for child sacrifice ~ the reason they raped me in the first place was to get me pregnant so they could use the baby that was the product of each rape in rituals, with the ultimate goal of sacrificing the baby’s life ~ something expressly forbidden by God in the Bible,

They have built high places to Baal on which to burn their children in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, something I have never commanded or mentioned; I never entertained the thought. ~ Jeremiah 19:5, CSB.

They have built the high places of Baal in Ben Hinnom Valley to sacrifice their sons and daughters in the fire to Molech ​— ​something I had not commanded them. I had never entertained the thought that they do this detestable act causing Judah to sin! ~ Jeremiah 32:35, CSB.

What the Christian Standard Bible (aka CSB) calls a detestable act the King James Version calls an abomination, which the dictionary defines as an atrocity, a horror, an obscenity, an evil, a crime, an outrage, and a monstrosity. In Hebrew this word means a morally disgusting thing, ethically wicked, and an abhorrence.

It’s good to know that God finds what happened to my two babies as morally repugnant as I do. I just wish I hadn’t been forced to participate in it.

I guess what I’m getting at with all of this is that, even though I’ve made a lot of progress, it’s obvious that I still have a whole lot of work to do. Thankfully, God is able and He’s still on the throne of my life. He’s been doing miracles in my life from the beginning on, and I don’t expect He’ll stop now.

I thank God for that!!

Feb5

An Interesting Yet Painful Paradox

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I just realized an interesting paradox, that I’m able to accept the fact that I’m flawed and imperfect, yet while recognizing that fact, I still expect myself to be perfect.

My pursuit of perfection has led to thousands of incidents of self-abuse over the years, yet if I acknowledge that I’m imperfect ~ as is every single member of the whole human race ~ then such a quest is a fruitless endeavor, and will always be one.

Then why do I continue to pursue it?

I don’t know.

Maybe I can figure it out, with a little Spirit-led assistance.

For one thing, it may be rooted in the cult and its rituals, which seemed to be never-ending. For instance, there was the one that they started doing to me when I was as young as two years old, where they had me in a room with a high ceiling, and a huge bonfire in the middle of it.

There was a metal table suspended from the ceiling by pulleys and a big timeclock on the wall, and there was a naked man tied down to the table. They would ask me questions, questions which had no answer, but they would expect me to come up with the right answer, and when I couldn’t the pulleys would lower the table closer to the bonfire. And the timeclock gave me a certain amount of time before it dinged. Once it dinged it was too late for me to answer that unanswerable question, and the pulleys were triggered to lower the table.

Because the table was metal it was like a frying pan, so as it got closer and closer to the fire the man’s skin began to burn, and the man started screaming in agony. He begged me to make the table stop moving towards the flames, and pleaded with me to answer the questions correctly. But given that the questions were unanswerable, and that I was only two or three years old, that was an impossibility. So all his screaming and pleas did was confuse me and make me panic-stricken and frantic.

That was the kind of perfection that was expected, even demanded, of me throughout my childhood. Nothing I did was ever good enough, no matter what I tried, and if I made a mistake, my mother made like I’d done it on purpose if I didn’t act remorseful enough. I remember spilling a glass of milk at dinner a few times when I was a kid, and if I didn’t act abjectly apologetic, she accused me of doing it on purpose.

Like, who knocks over a glass of milk on purpose, especially if doing so is going to result in a beating and/or getting raped, considering that Harry used rape as punishment for anything and everything.

I’ve wondered if having to feel that kind of abject remorse for a simple mistake is the seed that was the genesis for the self-abuse. It makes sense to me that it was, but even knowing that doesn’t seem to make any difference in being able to stop doing it, and that is extremely frustrating to me. Sometimes I feel desperate in my desire to not do it anymore. Lately I’ve taken to asking God to take me Home ~ that’s Home to Heaven ~ just so I don’t have to go through it anymore.

It’s just so painful, and I hate doing it!! It can’t be pleasing to God! It just can’t!!

The first incident of self-abuse I remember was while I was a student at Ripon College, and it was during my junior year. I was taking pipe-organ lessons (Ripon had a small, two-manual pipe organ), and one day during a practice session that wasn’t going at all well, I got so frustrated that I completely lost it, and I scratched my forehead so badly that I drew blood. I ended up having to find a Kleenex to staunch the blood-flow so it wouldn’t ooze down my face and make a mess. I also ended up ripping the pages of the music, so I had to figure out how to mend them so they were still readable.

The other early incident of self-abuse that I remember was when I was visiting Priscilla and Malcolm in Colorado, and they asked me to macramé a plant hanger for Bernice (Malcolm’s mother). They paid for all the supplies, and everything, but I only had a week to complete it, and somewhere in the middle of it I figured out I’d done a whole series of knots wrong and had to rip out a huge section of work and do it over, so I was terrified I wouldn’t be able to finish by the deadline Priscilla had given me. As a result I scratched my forehead and my arms, making an enormous bloody mess of myself.

They didn’t ask me how I got the scratches on my face, but I’m sure they knew, and I was too embarrassed to mention them.

I was able to get it finished on time, even a few hours early, though I ended up having to stay up all night to do so. I was so sure Bernice wouldn’t like it that I couldn’t be in the same room with her when they gave it to her. I had to hide in the other room. That’s how afraid of her criticism I was.

Fortunately, all my fears were for naught, because she loved it, and it remained hanging in her house until the day she died, several years ago. In fact, from what Katharine says, it’s still there.

So that’s my story, my terrible, horrible, no good, very bad, perfectionistic, and painful story. I feel a desperate craving to be free of it. If I could open up my skull, and find the part of my brain that contains the self-abusive perfectionism, I would rip it out so I wouldn’t have to struggle with it anymore.

But I can’t, so I won’t. I guess I’ll have to trust God to do that part.

Rats!

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!