"Oh my soul" by casting crowns. Before you read any further, go listen the song. Especially you love, if you're reading this.
This is a hard subject for me... but after discussing it in brief this morning... I decided to make a post on it. Maybe in hopes of helping someone who has been through the same kind of thing.
See, I was attacked with a knife, in my home, five years ago. I was also sexually assaulted that night.
The whole thing probably lasted 30 minutes...but for me the terror felt like hours. I screamed as loud as my lungs would allow me. And no one heard me. Now, in this moment, tears well in my eyes. No one heard me. This wasn't a movie where some hero comes bursting in at the exact right moment. Unfortunately this wasn't even a nightmare. It was real. No one heard me scream, or if they did, they did nothing about it. No one came. I had sent a text to my then boyfriend, now ex (praise God) at the start of it all, saying, " come home I'm not safe". His response back was, "can't im cooking porkchops". Did I mention it was 11:30 at night. At some point when I managed to grab my phone to call the police, he, my assailant, wretched it from my hand. I remember picking up that phone after it was all over and seeing that I had dialed 919 and breaking into tears.
No one was coming. No one was hearing me. For me, that night, the Earth consisted of two people. Me, and the man assaulting me. I was not yet a Christian, but had always felt there was something more... I guess you would say I always felt His presence... I just didn't know at the time that's what it was. But that night... I felt completely alone. I didn't feel God's presence that night. To me, God, didn't exist that night. He didn't hear me. I screamed and I screamed and I screamed. And He didn't hear me. Nobody heard me. I've never felt more alone in my life. There is no way to feel more alone then when you do not feel the presence of God.
I struggled with the exist of God after that. Prior to being saved I had always wanted to believe He existed...I had all these deep feelings that something more, something higher was there, that life held much more meaning than I what I was seeing.
After the assault I decided that if the man who sexually assaulted me didn't get caught and serve time, that would ensure for me that God did not exist. My logic was, did He would not have let that happen to me. He wouldn't have left me alone. He would have saved me.
That man ended up turning himself in. Unfortunately, though a Max sentence for aggravated sexual assault is 5 years ( this is what I was told), he only served two. One of those years was spent in jail awaiting trial. So he only served an additional one year.
This was enough to prevent me from going into full denial about the existence of God. But I was still doubtful. I was still hurt. Yes I realize how...hmmm. .. what's the word.... contradictory... hypocritical.... and foolish it was to be angry at God when I doubted that He existed. Maybe He was watching thinking, "really Christina, you doubt that I am here, but you're mad at Me. Tell Me, does that make any sense?"
Three years after my assault, I had pretty much stopped thinking about God. The abuse that I had been enduring, by then for five years, had me down at the lowest I had ever been. But though I felt alone, I felt that presence. ( the only time in my life I didn't feel it was the night I was assaulted). I couldn't have put my finger on it.... I could not have named that feeling for you at that time...that awareness deep inside that God is with you. But it was there. Though I had forgotten about Him, He hadn't forgotten about me.
My entry "my story" also in this blog goes into more detail about the abuse and how God used my ex to reach me. Basically, after so many years of doubting, of feeling something I couldn't understand, something I couldn't name, I knew. God existed, God exists, and will continue existing. He was and is and is to come.
I look back on that night and realize that God was there. No, I did not feel Him. But He was there. Im alive as proof.
A couple of nights ago, I had a nightmare that I was held captive at gunpoint by two men. I cried out to God, but this angered the lead gunman and things worsened. I continued to cry out. And things continued to get worse. It just kept going until I woke up at bit. Only after I went back to sleep and the dream became lucid did anything change. With the dream under my control, the lead gunman was yelling nasty things about God as I prayed and then suddenly the other guy beans him over the head. He then pulls a cross on a long chain out of his shirt and says how tired he was of hearing the other one talk about God like that for all the years they'd been together.
I think that dream means that a part of me deep down is afraid of something awful happening to me again and God not doing anything to help me.
For a long time I thought the answer was to bury the memories deep down. Block them out. But eventually something triggers those memories and they surface. The real answer, the secret, is to give it to God. (I know, easier said than done. Im still working on it) Tell Him about the pain, even the anger. Give Him the broken parts. He'll restore you, piece by piece.
I used to mourn the parts of me id lost over years of abuse. But when you start letting go of the pain, a little bit, and then a little bit, (because it doesn't all go away at once like flipping a switch) you find that for every piece of you lost to that pain, you get pieces back. He restores you, piece by piece by piece. But those new pieces, they're stronger.
Im not who I was before I was broken. Im better than "whole" Im healed. Sometimes God has to break us to make us. And that's alright because who we are when He's done with the pieces will be even better than who we were. Not just restored, renewed.
Don't live in the pain of the past. Don't hold on to the broken pieces.
"Let Him show you how you can lay this down, cuz you're not alone."
This is a hard subject for me... but after discussing it in brief this morning... I decided to make a post on it. Maybe in hopes of helping someone who has been through the same kind of thing.
See, I was attacked with a knife, in my home, five years ago. I was also sexually assaulted that night.
The whole thing probably lasted 30 minutes...but for me the terror felt like hours. I screamed as loud as my lungs would allow me. And no one heard me. Now, in this moment, tears well in my eyes. No one heard me. This wasn't a movie where some hero comes bursting in at the exact right moment. Unfortunately this wasn't even a nightmare. It was real. No one heard me scream, or if they did, they did nothing about it. No one came. I had sent a text to my then boyfriend, now ex (praise God) at the start of it all, saying, " come home I'm not safe". His response back was, "can't im cooking porkchops". Did I mention it was 11:30 at night. At some point when I managed to grab my phone to call the police, he, my assailant, wretched it from my hand. I remember picking up that phone after it was all over and seeing that I had dialed 919 and breaking into tears.
No one was coming. No one was hearing me. For me, that night, the Earth consisted of two people. Me, and the man assaulting me. I was not yet a Christian, but had always felt there was something more... I guess you would say I always felt His presence... I just didn't know at the time that's what it was. But that night... I felt completely alone. I didn't feel God's presence that night. To me, God, didn't exist that night. He didn't hear me. I screamed and I screamed and I screamed. And He didn't hear me. Nobody heard me. I've never felt more alone in my life. There is no way to feel more alone then when you do not feel the presence of God.
I struggled with the exist of God after that. Prior to being saved I had always wanted to believe He existed...I had all these deep feelings that something more, something higher was there, that life held much more meaning than I what I was seeing.
After the assault I decided that if the man who sexually assaulted me didn't get caught and serve time, that would ensure for me that God did not exist. My logic was, did He would not have let that happen to me. He wouldn't have left me alone. He would have saved me.
That man ended up turning himself in. Unfortunately, though a Max sentence for aggravated sexual assault is 5 years ( this is what I was told), he only served two. One of those years was spent in jail awaiting trial. So he only served an additional one year.
This was enough to prevent me from going into full denial about the existence of God. But I was still doubtful. I was still hurt. Yes I realize how...hmmm. .. what's the word.... contradictory... hypocritical.... and foolish it was to be angry at God when I doubted that He existed. Maybe He was watching thinking, "really Christina, you doubt that I am here, but you're mad at Me. Tell Me, does that make any sense?"
Three years after my assault, I had pretty much stopped thinking about God. The abuse that I had been enduring, by then for five years, had me down at the lowest I had ever been. But though I felt alone, I felt that presence. ( the only time in my life I didn't feel it was the night I was assaulted). I couldn't have put my finger on it.... I could not have named that feeling for you at that time...that awareness deep inside that God is with you. But it was there. Though I had forgotten about Him, He hadn't forgotten about me.
My entry "my story" also in this blog goes into more detail about the abuse and how God used my ex to reach me. Basically, after so many years of doubting, of feeling something I couldn't understand, something I couldn't name, I knew. God existed, God exists, and will continue existing. He was and is and is to come.
I look back on that night and realize that God was there. No, I did not feel Him. But He was there. Im alive as proof.
A couple of nights ago, I had a nightmare that I was held captive at gunpoint by two men. I cried out to God, but this angered the lead gunman and things worsened. I continued to cry out. And things continued to get worse. It just kept going until I woke up at bit. Only after I went back to sleep and the dream became lucid did anything change. With the dream under my control, the lead gunman was yelling nasty things about God as I prayed and then suddenly the other guy beans him over the head. He then pulls a cross on a long chain out of his shirt and says how tired he was of hearing the other one talk about God like that for all the years they'd been together.
I think that dream means that a part of me deep down is afraid of something awful happening to me again and God not doing anything to help me.
For a long time I thought the answer was to bury the memories deep down. Block them out. But eventually something triggers those memories and they surface. The real answer, the secret, is to give it to God. (I know, easier said than done. Im still working on it) Tell Him about the pain, even the anger. Give Him the broken parts. He'll restore you, piece by piece.
I used to mourn the parts of me id lost over years of abuse. But when you start letting go of the pain, a little bit, and then a little bit, (because it doesn't all go away at once like flipping a switch) you find that for every piece of you lost to that pain, you get pieces back. He restores you, piece by piece by piece. But those new pieces, they're stronger.
Im not who I was before I was broken. Im better than "whole" Im healed. Sometimes God has to break us to make us. And that's alright because who we are when He's done with the pieces will be even better than who we were. Not just restored, renewed.
Don't live in the pain of the past. Don't hold on to the broken pieces.
"Let Him show you how you can lay this down, cuz you're not alone."
