Redeeming the day

Posted on Tuesday, September 23, 2014 by Rebecca

Yesterday, I ended my post with these words:

There was a time when I insisted to my therapist that my rape was so terrible, so dark and ugly, that there was nothing about it that God could possibly redeem. He proved me wrong…but that’s best left for future posts.

Almost immediately, the following came to mind. It’s something I wrote in 2009, after I’d been in therapy a few months. I’ve only done a few minor tweaks for readability, leaving the rest alone. It’s kinda raw. But it’s the raw and broken things that need redeeming, not the clean and pretty ones.

*****

During my therapy session today, Donny asked about the anniversary of the rape, and I told him I knew it was in August, but didn’t know the date. For some reason, after I got home, this started really bothering me. I went online to find an August 1981 calendar, and I started plugging different events into different days and finally, by process of elimination, I figured out that August 23 had to be the date.

And then I sat there, thinking, “Damn. I figured it out. But I don’t quite know what to think about it, or how to feel.” Then I realized that I was still being raped on August 24…the day that later became my wedding date. I regretted my figuring out the date, because I felt as if my wedding anniversary was now forever ruined for me. My imagination went into overdrive. I became convinced that, instead of celebrating our upcoming 25th anniversary, I’d be hiding in bed, having flashbacks, reliving that horrible day and the next day in awful, nightmarish detail.

So I posted to my online support group and Matt responded, “Well, think of this: for many years you did not know it was an anniversary. Which proves the date is not forever ruined, because you have had many August 23rd’s since your rape. And that endows you with a whole lot of post-rape August 23rd memories to recall, which are clean of any such traumatic triggers.”

That made sense.

I decided to quite whining to God, “How could you let me pick August 24 as my wedding date? And why didn’t the church let us have our first choice? Why? Why? Why?”

Then I thought, “What a coincidence…what are the chances that I would get married on that day?” But then it dawned on me — how cool, how redemptive, how absolutely victorious is it that, on the 3rd anniversary of my rape, I was having a rehearsal dinner with most of my favorite people in the world? The ugliness of the rape was the furthest thing from my mind that night. Three years after Lou and Carl finally stopped raping me, I was asleep in bed, dreaming happy dreams of marriage. Three years after that horrible shower, I was getting ready for my wedding day. Three years after sticking a gun in my mouth, feeling broken and ruined and filthy, I was walking down the aisle in a beautiful white dress that had been lovingly sewn for me. I remember that, during the wedding, I had kept thinking, “God is good”. I felt like I was basking in His love. And I actually felt beautiful.

God is good. I had no idea how good. He really did give me beauty for ashes, and the oil of joy for mourning. And He couldn’t have told me that in a more obvious way.

This August 24th will be my 25th wedding anniversary. It will also be the 28th anniversary of when they stopped raping me…the 28th anniversary of the day that I cleaned myself up and went to my first day at a new job, trying to pretend nothing had happened, the 28th anniversary of the day that I didn’t pull the trigger, the 28th anniversary of the day that I took my first steps towards being a survivor.

The “coincidence” of those dates, of forgetting the date of my rape until figuring it out all these years later — it all seems to me like a beautiful, redemptive story that God has made out of the ugliest days of my life. I feel as if He’s just given me the best 25th wedding anniversary I could think of getting.

*****

One of the things we, as survivors, often tell ourselves and each other is that the process of healing and recovery is not a smooth and constant one. There are setbacks along the way. That is the nature of healing in general, but I think that there can also be something else going on when it comes to recovery from sexual trauma. Based on what I have read, and my discussions with people experienced in the field of psychological trauma, I have come to believe that sexual trauma is unique in the damage it does to the human soul. Because of this, I also believe that the process of recovery is a sort of spiritual turf war being waged over one’s soul.

In retrospect, this seems obvious to me. 2009 was one of the most difficult years of my life. A tragedy brought me into therapy. At the same time, my husband almost died. Our entire family walked through some very deep waters. I experienced anguishing dark nights of the soul. All of that almost destroyed me.

In the midst of all that, God brought healing and moments of redemption. I wish I had trusted Him more and failed Him less. But despite my stumbling about, the fighting and wrestling I mentioned in my last post, and moments of absolute rebellion, He was faithful. He never gave up on me, his all-too-prone-to-wander prodigal daughter. No matter what, He always loves me back home again.

Why didn’t God stop them?

Posted on Monday, September 22, 2014 by Rebecca

I was overwhelmed with the love of God. It came completely out of the blue, with no explanation, no rhyme nor reason, just the awareness and certainty of God’s love filling me on that summer evening back in 1981 as never before. What I felt was not an impersonal love, or a love for all mankind: He loved me — me — after everything I had done, and everything I hadn’t done…despite my every sin and failing…He loved ME.

This amazing sense of His love overwhelmed me in a parking lot of all places. I leaned against my friend’s orange VW squareback, looked at her across the roof of her car, and tried to articulate this incredible epiphany I was having. And then we returned from our errand to have dinner at my neighbor’s apartment.

Only the dinner was a ruse.

After pre-dinner cocktails, my friend became suddenly and mysteriously so ill and light-headed that she went to my apartment to rest. I was urged to stay because, after all, the Italian meal had been fixed in my honor. My host seemed to think it tragic that someone who had been to Italy had never even eaten pasta fagiole, and he had supposedly been slaving over a hot stove for hours on my behalf.

So I stayed.

Later, when I asked them to let me leave, when I tried to convince them to let me go, when I begged and pleaded, they refused. Eventually I wanted to die. The next afternoon, I came as close to killing myself as I think it is possible to do and remain physically unscathed.

Almost 28 years later, I sat in a therapist’s office, finally telling the entire story of my rape for the first time, instead of the highly abbreviated one sentence version, or scattered bits and pieces. Before then, I had only shared on a “need to know” basis to very few people.

One of the things I told my therapist was that it was as if God ceased to exist during that whole nightmarish, seemingly endless ordeal. One moment I was being love-bombed by Him…the next I was utterly abandoned.

That’s what immediately came to mind when I saw this on Facebook this morning:

Yes, I was 23 years old when I was raped, but when my daughter was that age, do you think I would have walked away and left her at the mercy of a serial rapist and his accomplice/trainee? Was I more merciful than God? More moral?

There is no easy way to deal with these questions. Flinging platitudes and Bible verses at my pain did nothing to ease it. I had many dark nights of the soul, some so dark they almost consumed and destroyed me. I wrestled with God, to the point that I thought Jacob in the Bible had nothing on me.

Those who are satisfied only with an intellectual approach to God, based on chapter and verse of the Bible, won’t find much, if anything, of value in what I’m about to write…well, except perhaps for the first part. But I don’t believe God has chosen to confine Himself to the pages of His book. He is far too mysterious and wild and great and marvelous for that…and far too personal and immediate and, dare I say it, loving.

Here is how I came to make peace with the questions that plagued me…

1. Donny looked eager to tell me something at the beginning of one therapy session. “I almost called you,” he said, “but I thought it would be better to tell you in person.” During his devotions, he was reading systematically through the Bible, and he encountered a verse he had never noticed before:

“Woe to him who gives drink to his neighbors, pouring it from the wineskin till they are drunk, so that he can gaze on their naked bodies!” Habakkuk 2:15 NIV

Amazingly enough, there was no accompanying verse saying, “Woe to naive and overly trusting stupid idiots who don’t have sense enough to refuse drinks from their sleazy neighbors, who shouldn’t even be drinking with men in the first place, and who sin by drinking too much — you get what you deserve.” Apparently that was my victim-blaming opinion, but not God’s, so I was left to ponder the question my therapist posed: if God hated it when a neighbor got someone drunk In order to look at their naked body, how much more must He hate what my rapists did?

But if that was true, why did God abandon me?

2. I don’t have chapter and verse for this next one. All I can say is that, after much arguing and wrestling with God, there came a time when I just knew that He was there that night. Even though it felt to me, during that terrible night, as if He had ceased to exist, He was there all along.

That was hugely comforting and an amazing breakthrough for me, but it left unanswered the question: why didn’t He stop my rapists?

3. Eventually I came to realize that God places a high value on our free will. (Yeah, I know — Calvinists, you might as well shoot me now.) He didn’t stop Adam and Eve from sinning — and their sin opened the door to all the evil, suffering, and death we must now endure. I don’t pretend to understand this. I don’t pretend to like it. But a God who would overrule free will to stop all child rape would have to do the same for all rape…and all abuse…and all violence…and all betrayal…and all selfish use of another person…and all unloving acts…and where would that stop until we were rendered robots, without free will, forced to love God and all people?

4. I have had to make peace — as much as one can make peace with such tragedy — with the terrible fact that we live in a fallen world, one filled with sin and suffering and death. Part of making peace with that is my belief that this world is not all there is. I cling to a future hope, when all will eventually be made right.

5. I have come to believe in redemption. One day, all will be redeemed. In the meantime, God keeps showing me glimpses of redemption. There was a time when I insisted to my therapist that my rape was so terrible, so dark and ugly, that there was nothing about it that God could possibly redeem. He proved me wrong…but that’s best left for future posts.

Happy birthday, little brother!

Posted on Friday, August 15, 2014 by Rebecca

This is an updated version of a post I wrote on my former blog a few years back.

I was 11 years old when he was born, and our family was changed forever. He was the cutest baby I’d ever encountered — until my own were born years later — and he grew into a hilarious, wonderful toddler and young child. His mission in life seemed to be making sure that things never got boring in our household. Stories about his various escapades are legendary in our extended family. (One cousin, when she and my younger brother were children, ended almost every Steph story with, “And we were so embarrassed!” Well, everyone but Steph, apparently!)

Steph seemed so different from our older brother and me. We were shy, awkward and nerdy, while our younger brother charmed the little old ladies in the church, traded kisses for dimes and quarters, purposefully got lost in stores just for the drama of having us all paged, and turned the kindergarten portion of the school Christmas program into “Stephan and his back-up choir”.

We were too shy to ask for directions and information, while Stephan thrived on talking to everyone everywhere.

I’ve never met a child like my younger brother. He was, in some ways, a bundle of contradictions as a little guy. He could be an annoying pest and prankster at times, and yet he could also be a classy little charmer. Most three year old boys, for example, make a mess of eating an ice cream cone and couldn’t be trusted drinking out of expensive, fragile stem-wear. Not Steph — his table manners were extraordinary, and he could be such a delightful little gentleman.

Stephan brought an exciting new vitality to our family when he was born. I’ll never forget “kidnapping” him out of his crib and trying to hide him in my bed. (His giggles always gave him away when my mother would come searching for him.) He taught me not to take myself so dreadfully seriously during my teenage years. He put up with my awful experimental cooking and pretended that he actually enjoyed the meals I forced upon him. (That, of course, prompted my theory that children don’t have taste buds.) He was deluded enough to think that I was beautiful, even during my most awkward adolescent moments. Steph loved my silliest stories, inspired me to create ridiculous games, made me laugh, and alternated between amusing and horrifying me with his creative ability to turn mundane events into fascinating tall tales that he would then spread far and wide. (No, I never threw up on the Thanksgiving turkey, contrary to what Steph told his entire school.)

As Steph grew older, I discovered how much he added to the adventures I had been enjoying for years. Ah, what I wouldn’t give to turn back the clock, just for a day or two, and relive some of the weekends spent together…

But it wasn’t just in his childhood and teens that Steph proved himself to be the best little brother in the world. His crowning achievement is that he has given me some of the most adorable, wonderful, beautiful, delightful nieces and nephews in the world — and he has made sure there are lots of them!

Steph has so many traits that I admire (and lack). He is generously hospitable; I’m convinced that I could drop in unannounced with my entire family in tow, and Steph would joyously feed us all and put us up, without the slightest hint that we might be inconveniencing him. I am so proud of his people skills, and of how he uses his talents and abilities to work diligently in providing for his family. But what touches my heart the most, and fills it with a mixture of joy and sisterly pride, is that Stephan has become a student of my father and of the Word, and that he and my father are now sharing the pulpit at the church my father pastors. I enjoy his unique, fresh perspective and his commitment to remain true to the Biblical text. Impossible as it would have been for me to believe when we were younger, not once has anything he has preached made me want to cringe, hide my face, or throw something at him. Proof that even little brothers eventually grow up!

My baby brother has grown into a loving husband, a devoted father, a wonderful man. But, as a big sister, I’ll never forget the excitement I felt 45 years ago today, when he made his way into our lives and hearts, and how cute he looked when I first got to see him. I was full of dreams then for what we would all do together, but I had no idea how wonderful that little baby would turn out to be.

Struggling with Church | Faith Friday

Posted on Friday, August 8, 2014 by Rebecca

We are supposed to be the Body of Christ, His hands, His feet…why is church such an ongoing struggle for me? Sometimes I feel as if I’m going around in circles.

It’s been over seven years since I wrote the post on my old blog, pouring out my grief-filled thoughts about church:

Sunday, January 14, 2007
Changes

We’re less than halfway through January, and 2007 is already promising to be a year that is rather…well, interesting.

After much prayer, study, soul-searching, discussion with friends and advisers, sleepless hours, and uncountable hours of analyzing things from every angle we could, my husband and I have made the painful decision to leave our church. Today was our first Sunday to go elsewhere. The church we visited was friendly and warm, and we knew several people there. The worship seemed fresh and real. The man who filled in for the pastor had a powerful testimony, and his message seemed to speak to an issue that I’m currently living out in my life.

But it wasn’t home.

I have often wondered if church is forever ruined for me. Part of it is, of course, being raised as a P.K. (Guys, that meant “Preacher’s Kid” long before it meant Promise Keeper.) No pastor can fill my father’s shoes. Besides, I’ve seen the dark underbelly of the church, and it has wounded me forever.

But there is more…I’ve also seen, as Michael Spencer writes so eloquently, “When I discovered the voice and practices of the ancient church, and the language of the ecumenical church, I resonated deeply. All of the church was my home, but no single room within it made me so comfortable I wanted to stay there and there only.”

No church is ever enough for me. It seems that I always long for more, for something different, for some part of my heart and mind to be touched in a way that no one church has ever been able to touch. I want expository preaching and deeply heartfelt worship and beautiful architecture and pipe organs and liturgy and spontaneity and unadorned simplicity and lay pastors and ordained clergy and formality and informality and ancientness and newness — and there is no church crazy enough and contradictory enough to give me all of that, to feed all those parts of my soul.

I want a church that follows a glorious historical tradition…and a church that also offers, at times, a worship experience that is the spiritual equivalent of “partying down at the frat house.” (The last time we were looking for a church, a pastor friend of mine told me that I would never be happy in a church that didn’t encourage me to be a serious student of the Word. But he also told me that I would probably need to go elsewhere on occasion for a more exuberant expression of worship. “After all,” he said, “there is nothing wrong with partying down at the frat house.”)

Most of all, I want a church that is, as another friend of mine said, a safe place to land. I want a church that will not, yet again, add to my woundedness. I want a church that will instead minister healing.

The truth is that I’m not always sure what I want. I’ve found bits and pieces of my “church home” here and there but, in every church since I was a teenager, I’ve felt like a sojourner or, at best, a member of the extended family. I am already weary at the idea of searching for a new church, because I doubt that I will ever, this side of Heaven, find what I’m longing to find.

I want to see Jesus. Just show me Jesus.

What has happened since then?

In a nutshell, after re-examining and questioning everything I believed about “church”, after much reading and discussion, my husband and I have spent the last 5 or so years in a small home fellowship. It has been mostly wonderful. Unlike some “house church” people, especially those who use the term “organic church”, I have not become opposed to the institutional church. Yes, there is much within the American church that I consider problematic and disturbing. Yes, I have found it wonderfully restorative and freeing to “do church” without all the unnecessary trappings, the programs, fads, committee meetings, infighting, jockeying for influence and control, majoring on minors, etc., etc.

But sometimes I need my “churchy fix”: beautiful architecture, a sense of awe and reverence, the exuberance of a large congregation rejoicing in singing…

At the same time, I have found “church” in unlikely places. It’s not so much what we do in a meeting. It’s who we are.

I wrote this three years ago:

Saturday, July 23, 2011
Remembering and reflecting: where I’ve been

It’s been quite a while since I blogged semi-regularly….

…A lot has happened in my life and in the life of my family since those days. Life and death stuff, or I should say, near-death stuff. Crises. Heartbreak the likes of which no one should ever have to suffer. Anguish. Dark nights of the soul. But also incredible joy in the midst of that sorrow.

In other words, real life. Real nitty, gritty life.

When life gets that in-your-face overwhelmingly real, despite all the chaos and confusion that might ensue for a season, some things become really clear. You re-examine a lot when you’re treading through deep waters. You begin to realize what and whom — and Whom — you can grab onto for safety and what and whom will only pull you down further. You realize who you can go to with your burdens…those who will weep with you and rejoice with you…those who will hold your darkest secret heartaches as sacred trusts…those who will walk with you through the darkest valleys.

There aren’t many of those sorts of people.

Years ago, back in the day, I remember an online discussion of homeschooling mothers during which one brave soul dared mention a minor issue she was having with her teenage daughter. This girl was no longer content to play “Little House on the Prairie” and read Elsie Dinsmore for the 20th time; she wanted more out of life; she longed to do something that made a difference and was exciting at the same time. A number of the other moms, who only had young children, tore into this mother and her daughter. You would have thought this girl had announced, “I want to be a harlot” and that the mother had answered, “Whatever you want, dear, is fine with me; let me buy you some harlot clothes” — that’s how these other moms carried on. They gave advice that this girl’s “rebellious spirit” needed to be rebuked and punished, that the mother shouldn’t listen to her nonsense, that both were in sin, etc., etc.

Needless to say, these are not the sort of people you turn to in a crisis.

A few years went by, but it was still back in the day, when the son of a homeschooling family died under unfortunate and disturbing circumstances. The parents decided to alert other families to what had happened, so that others might be spared their tragedy. I was horrified at the lack of empathy, at the other callousness, in which some in the online world responded. There was much holier-than-thou shooting of the wounded.

Needless to say, these are not the sort of people you turn to in a crisis.

More than one mother, way back in my days of writing about my concerns regarding the Ezzos’ teachings, insisted that they had the whole parenting thing down and would never have to deal with any problems because their one-year-old was already “characterized by first-time obedience”.

Needless to say, these are not the sort of people you turn to in a crisis.

Also, back in the day, there were certain online teachers, some of them leaders in their own churches, who thrived on controversy, who loved to declare their authority over anyone who commented on their blogs, who sounded convinced that they held a special corner on doctrinal correctness, and who loved to argue until they didn’t have the upper hand, in which case they banned people from their blogs.

Needless to say, these are not the sort of people you turn to in a crisis.

In May of this year, I went to a retreat. It was my second year going. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. When my mother heard of my plans, she asked with some trepidation, “Is this the same retreat you went to last year? the one with the…troubled people?”

It’s always after the fact that I think of what I should have said. In this case, I should have said, “Yes, that one…because I am one of those troubled people.”

Jesus said, “In this world, you will have trouble…” Some people are just more honest and open about their trouble than others. Some people know what it is like to be broken, wounded, and lost. Some people know what it means to find joy after sorrow. Some people aren’t afraid of messes. Some people will let you grieve in ways that wouldn’t look pretty in a movie, and they will sit with you in your pain, without condemnation. Some people know the joy of finding hope after despair, and they share it with you. Some people will walk with you as you try to find your way out of the darkness, out of the deep waters, and they will carry you when you are tired. Some people are like beacons in the night. Some people will give you permission to fall apart if need be. Some people will let you be real, as real as real can be, without any pretense, without any self-protection, and their complete and total loving acceptance of you will be like a healing balm to your soul. Some people will love you so much and so obviously that they earn the right to speak painful truth into your life, and they will do it with tears in their eyes. Some people will, with a hug and some whispered words, give you hope to sustain and encourage you for another year.

There aren’t very many of those people, but I’ve been blessed beyond words to have found some.

Needless to say, those are the sort of people you turn to in a crisis.

And they are also the sort of people you turn to during times of joy and laughter, because they will celebrate with you like no one else will. They totally get the “rejoice with those who rejoice” part because they already have the weeping part down.

When I grow up, I want to be that sort of person.

And that’s what the church should be. Yes, doctrine is important, but not as important as being the living, breathing body of Christ, His Hands, His feet, His shoulder to cry on. One would think those who claim to have the corner on theological correctness would try to outdo everyone else in love, but I’ve found that not to be the case. Sometimes, when I’ve needed Him most, the image-bearer He sent to demonstrate His love didn’t even believe in Him.

More hidden secrets

Posted on Tuesday, July 22, 2014 by Rebecca

Note: when I first tried to publish this post, half of it disappeared and I had to rewrite it. So if you read the first, abbreviated version, you may want to read it again, so it makes more sense.

As I mentioned in my “Journaling Confessions” post, I’ve been adopting a somewhat different approach — at least for me — to my practice of hopefully therapeutic journaling. I also mentioned the prompt, “What is my hidden secret?” and posted my first response to that.

My second was not quite so heavy or serious, but it was the first thing that I thought of when I sat down with my journal:

Today was my weekly therapy session, and I showed Donny both journal entries, feeling rather childish about them, especially the second one (which he commented on as if interpreting a child’s drawing). We spend more time discussing the first one, and discussing why/how I hide, and how this played out in particular this past weekend. (See “A Rough Day”.)

After the session, I started reading a book I recently got, Drawing from the Heart by Barbara Ganim. Inspired by what she wrote about creating images to express emotions, I decided to answer the “What is my hidden secret?” question again. I had been sitting at the park, trying to relax, doodling, and eating a brunch that I’d packed, and trying to ignore an unsettling feeling that had been growing in intensity.

What a great opportunity to put what I’ve been reading into practice! But then I quickly remembered that Drawing from the Heart emphasizes feeling, rather than thinking, so I stopped being analytical, got in touch with what I was feeling, and used that emotion and what felt like random impulse to choose chalk pastels as my medium, as well as to choose mostly black and a few other dark colors. This is the messy scribble I produced.

After I was finished, I wrote this.

In case, you can’t decipher my scrawls, it says:

I AM AFRAID.

OK, that’s hardly a hidden secret — pretty much everyone knows I’m a big huge chicken about almost everything.

This is how the worst of my fear feels. It’s all dark and cold and confusing and jumbled up. I can’t see anything, can’t make sense of anything, can’t find my way. Even the edges of the fear are like a dark fog. There are glimpses of color, even light, but at the very center, it’s pitch black — and it’s as if the darkness want to pull me in.

I just realized how much my fear and depression have in common.

This whole process still strikes me as odd. Drawing from the Heart makes the rather bold claim that the sort of scribbling I did can actually help someone heal from trauma. Obviously I was intrigued enough to buy the book, and to try to “draw” an emotion. But I was also skeptical. The funny thing is that, despite thinking the whole idea was a bit goofy, I couldn’t help notice that my sense of fear drifted away, as if by capturing its darkness on the piece of paper, I’d made it powerless to torment me. It seemed so insignificant, a messy scribble on a picnic table, out of place on such a beautiful and sunny day.

The other thing that surprised me is the realization of how similar my worst bouts of fear and my worst bouts of depression are. I think I would “draw” both pretty much the same way. When I was finished, that was my first thought: Wow, this looks just like depression!

Some time in the future I want to draw what it’s like to emerge from the darkness of fear and/or depression, but now I’m curious enough about Drawing from the Heart to want to try the seven week program. At any rate, I’m planning to do “Step One” tomorrow morning.