The big R. rape

I think I was around seven the first time I was raped. Although I have some scary memories that make me wonder if I was younger. (Maybe 4?)

Before bing raped by flesh I was mutilated by pieces of metal. 

I'm learning that God didn't allow me to be raped, but he saw it all. He saw the years if assaults that followed. He saw me raped again as a teen, and then lastly by the man who had sworn to love me til death do us part. 

It wasn't until I'd survived marital rapes that I understood how thoroughly a husband can destroy his wife. 

Rape isn't like any other sexual encounter. It isn't about sex!. Rape is all about power, about humiliation, about creating powerlessness.  It's about destroying a person for fun. 

My ex told me he felt a surge of energy and power that was so enticing that just thinking about it made him hungry to taste that power again. 

I recall him angrily lashing out at me for dissociating when being violently raped. He wanted to see the fear, hear my cries as I begged him to stop. When my brain shut down and I began to leave my body to escape, the stiff frozen body didn't give him the reactions he craved. 

I don't know how many times I've been raped. I have flashes of memories and try to put things together. 

But it's like building a puzzle when met of the pieces are missing. It's impossible. 

I may always grieve the losses I've incurred from rape. There is no nice way to frame it. Roe is vile, horrific and destructive. 

Unfathomable

Unfathomable....

Every morning the mists rolls into the valley beneath our place.. The giant trees are swallowed up, the farms disappear, the enormous mountains hide their faces. Instead what I see is an insurpassable ocean, that isn't really there.  In a few hours I'll see lush farms, cows grazing, trees and mountains. But if you've never seen the valley below us, it would be hard for you to fatham. 

This is what being a believer is often like. We see only in part. We see the ocean of mist and start to believe that is all there is. But God sees everything we can't. He sees into or hearts and minds. He sees the past and future. He sees the heavenly realms. 

When we can not fathom a way through our oceans of trouble, he sees a way. There have been seasons in my life where the circumstances were dire.i was blinded by the fog and began to lose hope. As I called out to Jesus, he showed me a way. His was was mind blowing it was a way I never would have fathomed. He carried me through. 

" Trust in the Lord with all your your heart and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all your way acknowledge him and he will direct your paths." Prov 3:6.

Today I ask God to help me to trust in what I can not see, what I cannot fathom and what I do not net understand so that I walk by faith and not by sight.

Inner strength

Inner Strength....

I've seen so many social media posts lately telling what it means to be strong. Messages online can be so confusing and misleading.  So I will share what I believe it means, to be strong. 

1. Being strong means setting and maintaining healthy boundaries. It's ok to say No. 

2. Being strong means being willing to take a good hard look at yourself. Ask God to show you your rough spots, then start working on those areas. 

3. Being strong means you are willing to get help, get counselling, get coaching, get healthy on the inside. 

4. Being strong means choosing integrity, every time no matter what. 

5. Being strong means being accountable, before God and others. Admitting your mistakes, making amends and reconciling takes great strength. 

6. Being strong means humbling yourself before God and man. Leading through serving. Jesus was strong when he washed the disciples filthy feet. 

7. Being strong means staying soft in a cruel world. Being kind, compassionate, and loving. It's easy to hate but to truly love others (especially if you've been wounded) takes inner strength. 

All these things require inner strength.

He Sees and Redeems

I sat in the sanctuary listening to the Sunday message. It had been a tough week, as I came to grips with the new horrific memories of being violently raped and sexually mutilated me as a tiny child. 

I tried too focus but the memories kept surfacing. Waves of overwhelming emotions were threatening to spill out. I glanced up at the slides on the screen, trying to regain focus. It was then that I read this. 

" He was naked, and mutilated by the Roman whips." He chose this torture and suffering to pay for it only my sin, but he sins of my rapists. 

I couldn't hold back the tears. He saw as my small body was ravagaged, my insides mutilated and permanently damaged. She saw my shattered heart, and tortured screams. He sees, and chose to have. His own flesh torn.

The shame I've carried for so long has crippled me, robbing me of so much. Yet Jesus took the shame of us all I his shoulders as he paid the price for me and you. 

He paid this price long before I shed my first tear. I am not alone. He does know and understand. He saw then and sees the torment I bear now. He is the God who sees, and then redeems and heals. 

Broken little girl, or resilient survivor

Let me tell you about a little girl named Eve-Marie. Rejected from birth she didn't know or understand love. She knew what it was to be hurt, abused and violated in the worst ways. 

Her family was cruel and tormented her. Before she was even old enough to attend school, She was being sexually assaulted by multiple family members. This nightmare continued until she left home. 

As a little girl,  they mutilated her insides, raping her in the worst ways,  destroying the nerve endings inside her tiny body, causing permanent internal damage and triggering a medical condition that would leave her in agony every day for the rest of her life.  Her cries were Ignored. Her screams were silenced with beatings.

She wanted desperately to earn love, so she remained the obedient daughter. She submitted dutifully serving like Cinderella, but there were no cute mice, just perpetual beatings and being denied food. She was stuck believing their lies and that she needed to be punished because she was somehow bad and utterly worthless. 

Rather than protecting her, her parents encouraged and created a family atmosphere where she was to carry the shame for all their incestuous crimes. They even adopted one of her rapists, knowing full well what he was doing to her. They used her, beat her, tortured her and shamed her. 

Her name changed from Eve-Marie to "Ugly". Her siblings abused her. She had no one to turn to. 

She was tied up, she was locked up, and tortured. She was punished without cause. She thought this was normal. She thought she deserved it because she was so worthless. 

After violent teen years filled with more sexual violence and rapes, she survived, barely, carrying even more shame and heartache and less will to live.

She met her first husband at 16, and  married into abuse. She was submissive and sought to please God by being the most loving attentive wife she could be. It wasn't enough. He was a stalker, rapist, pedopile and wife beater. 

 She continued to be cruelly abused. The violence became life-threatening, even causing her to lose the babe in her womb. After he tried to kill their 7-year-old she scooped up her three traumatized kids and ran away, without a penny. 

Her Pastor shamed her for running away,  blaming her for her husbands violence, his adultery, and his violent rages. "Good wives don't leave" he said.  She remained kind, submissive to the core trying to be good enough to earn God's love. But her pastor said. " Everyone says you are so sweet, so what, is it about your sweetness makes you so repulsive that he feels driven to do this." She lost all hope. 

Her father, a pastor discovered that she was separated and planning to divorce. He claimed her, as his property, under Jewish law He was coming for her with taunts to perpetuate the nightmare she'd once left. 

Meanwhile her husband was stalking her, broke in and raped her and threatened to kill her.  In her utter despair, She cried out to Jesus, pleading for help. He alone knew her heart. He made a way. He planned her grand escape though series of prophetic words that he miraculously fulfilled. He helped her and the kids escape, and change their identities. He gave her His name Emmanuel and began teaching her what love looked like for the first time. 

She remarriied, with the hope of healing, but her ex wouldn't relent pursuing her. Moreover Her childhood abusers cases had escalated with other victims surfacing. Court cases became her constant nightmare as her ex tried every possible legal tactic to force her out of hiding. While others were building a life she was fighting to keep hers, and escape the very real death threats. Instead of buying a house, she was paying legal fees and fighting to keep her kids from killing themselves out of fear that he'd murder them. It cost everything.  After year's of legal nightmares, even the sight of a legal email correspondence would shake her to the core triggering so much trauma. 

Finally, a page turned and a new season began. Slowly, she began to heal. But as one memory healed new flashbacks of horrors surfaced, shaking her to the core day and night. 

She clung to Jesus, sometimes pleading that he would protect her from the very real temptation of ending it all to make the pain go away. 

Now, sometime later.  She is learning to accept love. She has spent every day pushing through horrific memories, flashbacks and nightmares. But she has consistently pressed into healing and pursuing wholeness. 

She has slowly cut off toxic relationships with unrepentant criminal abusers who perpetuated harm against her. She has worked hard to establish boundaries, although it's a daily challenge to not submit out of fear of punishment or harm. 

After surviving more than thirty consecutive years of violence and sexual assault she finally is safe, and focusing on healing. 

She bears scars both on her body and in her heart that may take a lifetime to fully heal. But she is a strong, resilient survivor. A woman of profound faith and love for Jesus. 

Her name is Kirsten. 

Running from the past

Past traumas can be crippling as they affect every cell in your body, your hormones, your brain activity, your digestive systems, your nervous system and even your respiratory system. 

Some people say ignorant things like, just don't think about it. Ask yourself this, if you push it down, where does it go? When will it be triggered and cause you all consuming distress, and how will it affect your health, long term. 

Did you know that survivors of extensive child abuse are at much higher risk of cancer, stroke, and heart attack, let alone an extraordinarily high risk of severe auto immune conditions. 

Drs have a scale they use called ACE. Adverse  experience test. Anything over a 4 out of ten places you at high risk of so many medical conditions,. My A.C.E. score is a seven. 

A single 3 second flashback of being violently raped at age seven, makes my heart pound, tears pour, muscles contract. My blood rushes from my brain making me foggy. My insides react as if it's happening now, with muscle memories, phantom pain and multi system response. I feel sick to my stomach, struggle to breathe. Etc.... 

I have two choices now, I can push it back down. However trauma memories are like jack in the boxes, you never know when or where they will surface. If you are in mixed company, working or out in public, there is no way to time it. 

Or, my second choice is to face it. I contain it In my minds eye temporarily until I can meet with a therapist who can assist me through it. 

I hate fresh triggers like the one that had me sobbing today. They are horrific. But it's present now. I'm adult. It's just a traumatic memory, not a current happening. I already survived the horror, now it's time to heal. There is no running from the past, or it catches up to you and takes you down.