How do you do it? It's been over 4 years now...and while I don't think about it as often...and I'm faster at getting it out of my head...I still don't forgive myself...I think it's my fault, and that I'm wrong to even call it "rape"...that calling that is a lie, an excuse...and that my problems now are punishment for calling it that when maybe i shouldn't....I don't know how to make it go away...though they're not as frequent, I still have nightmares at times...I wish I could make it all just gone
I don't talk much about my own abuse, I don't know maybe it is still too painful, but maybe it is time to talk. As a high school kid, living in an abusive home, I wanted to be "normal". Mini skirts were the rage, and so one afternoon after school, I rolled up my skirt to mini length, my brother saw me, and well, that turned into repeated attempts at "sexual assaults" (is that acceptable lang.) Anyway, that was long long ago, and I still blame myself, still feel "dirty". That day, if I simply had changed clothes and moved on, would things have been different? I don't know, I found out later that it wasn't limited to those incidents, my brother also "peeped" when I was bathing, etc. I guess the point is, there is no indication that if I had done anything different the situation would have been different, I think that is more true than we are comfortable with. We go through life wanting to blame someone and we are the easiest to blame.
For me, I still see that moment in which I pretended to be something I wasn't, a beautiful, confident, sexy youth that society said I should be...in reality, I have always been my "daddies" (God's) little girl and I think to myself that if I had only realized that, allowed myself to be content with that, nothing bad would have happened. But this world is evil, the hearts of man are evil. Evil touches us because we are creatures who love sin.
As I began to grasp the love, the role I actually have in this world, the guilt of the abuse began to fade into forgivness, into acceptance, that what happened, happened, and the future can be different. I can face the future as the very person God created me to be. I don't think I will ever forget the pains of that time in my life, the guilt I felt, that horror of knowing that kind of evil, but I can learn to be loved (God's love) I can learn to be the creation God intended from the beginning.
Sooner or later we come to a point in our lives, where we have to decide whether to continue living a lie of the enemy, or learn to live in the Love of a God whose wonders even surpass our guilt, our mistakes, the evil shown to us and demonstrated to us. It is an evil that strips us of our worth, a worth that Love replaces, but that love is so amazing, so vast that we can't even hold it all. God's love for you, for me, for each of us, is so vast, it is eternal, from the beginning of time to the end of eternity. His love is so pure that it's purpose is to restore us to the beauty He created us to hold. A Love so wonderful that it sees no guilt, only the heart of forgiveness. A Love that transforms us, heals us, consumes us, compels us, and a love that desires to return to us, all of us broken people, the vision of a King who see not our guilt, not our abuse, but rather the wonderful, magnificient, beautiful daughter of the King.
I still have a hard time seeing that daughter in me, but I see it in you, I see this incredible, gorgeous, magnificient princess who is loved beyond words, a daughter I enjoy talking to, and hearing wisdom from. A daughter who has blessed me, and challenged me, and I barely know you. If I could give you eyes to see you as others do, I would, but seeing who we are, through the eyes of others is a very difficult thing. You are not the sum of your abuse, you are the daughter of a King who loved you, dispite the defilement you have known. A King who Loved you beyond your role whatever it might have been, a King who desires to restore you to the original creation, whole, complete, undefiled.
If I could ask you one thing, one favor...don't believe the lies you are told are truth, refuse the lies, you are amazing, and the defilement you know did nothing to take that away from you, you just need to be able to see what that defilement is hiding. You need corrective glasses to see beyond what sin took away from you.
May you have vision to see yourself with the eyes of Christ, may you have the grace to accept the Love that He gives to you.
