Monday, July 14, 2014

Travelling Backwards

I cannot travel far distances any more. ...and yet I do, as I write my story.  I retrace my many travels and experiences of a lifetime. Everybody has a story.  Jesus told stories (parables) that had an eternal meaning. I trust that mine do.  Today's story will not be about someone I met on our travels, but will be about my own journey out of darkness. Perhaps it will shed some Light on any hidden darkness that may keep you from believing you are precious to God. ....worth, to Him, every drop of His Son's blood.

Recall that last week I related the story of the Lady in the Lobby, a survivor of the Holocaust who awoke from shock by her own screams that she no longer had to stifle.  The week before I told you of being for a time at a Retreat center where my son sent me for rest and recovery from depression and exhaustion. Others who were there, most of whom were in full-time Christian ministry, were able to pick up bats and beat on mattresses that represented people who had abused them.  For some reason I was held back from displaying my anger at this Retreat, most likely because of my pride.  The counselor/owner told me: "You are the last woman I ever expected to see here."  All that says is that I was pretty good at masking my pain by working hard in ministry. My hurt went all the way back to birth. My self- appointed assignment as a little girl in my family was that of being lighthearted in the midst of a grueling farm life.  Elder abuse, masked as "guarding the purity of the church"  put me over the edge, but long before that,  my abuse by two intimidating, demeaning older brothers and teenage boys who tried to get me to have sex with them had been so buried I could not admit my confusion even to myself. ...but my Jesus knew.  My anger was centered on two six feet two much older brothers who were intimidating and demeaning to me from the time I was born.  Both desperately needed women but both were abusive to women. It's not hard to figure out how those two behaviors feed into one another. Those two brothers showed up on nearly every church Board we ever endured. All that changed were the places and the faces.  As I listened to Joyce Meyer's story the other night of being sexually raped by her own father over two hundred times, I wondered if I could have survived without going completely insane. She is one "tough" woman, straight-forward and pragmatic. I too have a reputation of being a woman not to be messed with.  Yet both Joyce and other women like us have tender hearts that break for others.

One day my son Doug took me on a flight in his ultra light.  From somewhere deep inside me, high above the Texas terrain, a scream came out of me that caused Doug to nearly jump out of his skin and immediately start his descent to the ground.  He helped me disembark from his little grasshopper and stumble into the house where the family was gathered.  I sat in the midst of the most precious people in the world to me and cried and cried.  I, who had spent countless hours holding and comforting others as they cried and poured out their rage could not talk about what was hurting me. The Lord
sends to me grown men and women who have harbored unthinkable memories about attacks upon their bodies and souls, believing that nobody loves them enough to care about their pain. ...not even Jesus.  "If He did, where was He when the molestation was going on"?  is their question.  There are other kinds of molestation than sexual. Emotional and verbal are equally as damaging to the soul. 
 It took me a long time to trust even Jesus. I have a pastor friend who has written a fine book entitled: "Egoless Elders".  There is something that can happen to many men (and women) when they are given a position of  authority in an institution.  For years Ted  could not discern that controlling spirit and made some mistakes in judgment about leadership.  Ted Stone always thought the best of everybody's motives. That would be just fine in a perfect world. ...but it isn't.   I am not at all shocked by the increase in lesbianism and homosexuality.  Add pornography to the slime pit and no one is safe from its effects.

He has always understood when I could not embrace a scripture such as 'Come unto me, all you who were weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. When Ted and I team-counseled for many years I could detect the minute a husband came through the door whether or not his mission was to  prove that he was smarter than me and had no intention of listening to anything I might have to say. I walked out on more than one counseling session, leaving a wife, husband and my husband staring at a closed door. By His grace,  many of my closest friends are men. Now that I am ancient, I am no threat to any wife (Drat!).  Without the indwelling Christ I would have been an angry woman's libber.  Men in uniform are often the worst because that uniform and the institution behind it give an otherwise insecure little fellah the guts he needs to do his job.  I know beautiful exceptions to this statement:  ...Many, many exceptions.

Jesus had the power to kill those who killed Him, but opted to show them mercy.  Justice has yet to be served about what they did to Him, but it's coming. Oh, yes, it's coming and I want a ring-side seat at that last event. Satan continues to try to suck me back in to his dark hole of fear, guilt, shame and blame. There is only one Place of Safety: in His Word and in the arms of the One Who was and is the Toughest and Tenderest Man of All Time: The Man Christ Jesus.  Emmanuel.

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