Click here to read Part 2
Click here to read Part 3
Evil is such a heavy burden to those
who have experienced it. If you doubt this, just ask anyone who has survived
abuse, war crimes, torture, rape, or any other evil act that is out there. To a
victim and a survivor it's like suddenly becoming intimately aware about what
evil truly is, and no matter how hard you try to erase this knowledge from your
mind it will always be there.
I'm going to use sexual abuse as my
example here, since this is the experience that I have had. Once you've been
violated like that, it's like a whole new world has been opened up to you…one that
is harsh and unforgiving; a world where the innocent is suddenly the guilty. Those
who prey on others are crafty and sly in all their ways; just as the serpent
was with Eve in the garden (Genesis 3:1 “Now
the serpent was more subtil [cunning/crafty] than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made”). Sexual
abuse is not just a crime against the body, but against the soul as well. The
survivor is left feeling like they have caused this evil to come upon themselves
somehow. Always wondering what it was that they did to bring about and to
deserve such evil; that they must be the guilty one somehow. After all we must
have done something to deserve it, or it wouldn't have happened...that's what
our mind tells us anyways. We feel dirty and unworthy of love. How can we
expect a Holy God or anyone else to want to have anything to do with such trash
and filth? Oh, the lies...the lies we tell ourselves...the lies the devil
whispers into our spirit. We can end up with such a disconnect between our
hurting soul and a Holy and Loving God who cares for us. We find ourselves both
searching for God and hiding from him. We search him out because we long to
feel whole again, but hide because of the shame that we feel. For far too long
I walked around feeling like a leper in hiding…normal looking on the outside,
but disease ridden on the inside. It’s so hard to feel normal. Well, maybe I’m
not, and will never be totally normal; and that’s ok because I know that God
has a plan for my life. In Jeremiah 29:11 God tells me, “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you…thoughts of peace, and
not of evil, to give you an expected end”. He has plans to bless me and the
struggles that I’ve been through. For God usesIt will
be the path that takes us from who we are to who we will become.
There are far too many victims of abuse whose family members would rather
deny the abuse than have to deal with it. The very ones who were supposed to
rally around the victim to help them fight; instead turn a blind eye, let it
continue, or just deny the fact it even happened. I am thankful that my family
believed me when I spoke up, but there are far too many victims who are not
believed when they speak out. The victim can become the outcast of the family,
and in some cases the victim gets disowned. Some victims find themselves on
their own because they had to move out for simply speaking the truth of what
happened to them. So many people wonder where God could be, but here is the
truth of it all...Jesus came to set us free from sin, our past, our hurt, our
sicknesses, from everything that keeps us from having a personal and intimate
relationship with God. In 2 Corinthians 1:3 we are told that God is the Father
of mercies, and the God of all comfort. If we come to the cross, and lay our
burdens down at the feet of Jesus he will be faithful to take our burdens upon
himself...he will heal us of our pain. I've been there, and it's the most
beautiful place to be; to lay it all out in front of God, and to feel peace
take over the hurt and the pain. If you are angry at God for all the pain in
your life please read this other post of mine by clicking [here]. In the post I
talk about mankind’s free will…you see God freely loves us, and wants us to
freely love him in return. That’s why he gave us free will. We can do all kinds
of things with our free will. We can choose to either harm others, or to do
good to others. We can choose to curse or to bless others. We can choose to
hate or to love. Our fee will empowers us to make choices. Which means that
others can use their free will to either choose to do good to us or to do evil
upon us. It is not God who makes the choice for us or for others as to what we
will do with our free will. Our actions are our responsibility; just as the
actions of others are their responsibility. I also share an experience I had
while my aunt and her friend were praying for me. A vision God gave me of where
he was and what he was doing while the abuse was going on. I hope you will read
my post entitled “Do You Blame God ForThe Hurt In Your Life”.
Let’s continue, and look at the
innocence of a child...they are innocent in every way; they trust those who are
in their lives to only do good to them, and not evil. They do not perceive that
others may not have their best interest at heart. A child does not have a concept of betrayal or
deceit. I may not have been a young child when my step-dad, Jon, started
abusing me, but I still trusted him. I trusted him to keep evil far from me.
That even though he lied to others, I thought surly he would never lie to me in
such a way as to bring harm and evil upon me. I was a teenager when the abuse
started, and yes, perhaps I should have known better than to believe all the
lies that Jon was telling me. It was so much easier to believe all the lies
than to face the truth of being betrayed like that. I was naive and
trusting...perhaps in the same way that Eve was naive and trusting of the
serpent. I had no personal, intimate knowledge of evil at the hands of someone
I knew and trusted. At a young age I had become aware that evil could be done
by a stranger...when one broke into the apartment that my mom and I were living
in when I was about 5 years old. I saw the two of them fighting, and when I
screamed for my mom he let go of her and left. That somehow seems so different
to me...we are taught to expect that a stranger might hurt us in such ways, but
not that someone whom we trust would do so. Both are devastating!! It's like
your eyes are opened to a personal knowledge of what evil truly is. It's an
experience that weighs heavy on your soul, and you wish that it all could be
taken away from you. I’m sure Adam and Eve felt the same way once they truly
grasped the reality of what they had done.
I will never be able to be totally
free from the memories of this intimate experience with evil. But praise be to
God! I can be free from the effects that were left behind. In God I can find
the freedom to feel safe again, to be free from the nightmares, to find out who
I truly am in the eyes of my creator, to feel loved and cared for, to see that
I have worth and am worthy, for all the hurt to be carried away and replaced
with healing. I have to allow the knowledge of the goodness of God to outweigh
the knowledge of evil that was forced upon me. I choose to dwell on the goodness
of a living God who is Holy, and whose express being is love.
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