Chapter Five - Hidden Issues
Becoming My Own Victimizer
In order for victimizing to continue, I had to become my own victimizer by holding onto the reality that I was indeed a victim. No longer a free person with a dream to bring to past, I knew there was something familiar about the way I handled this experience. Childhood memories of being molested had surfaced within me. The child in me did not judge because she was not fully developed in her mental faculties to determine right or wrong, normal or abnormal, flee or fight, etc. I made no decisions to what was best for me then. Now as an adult, I did not choose best because I made no constructive and logical evaluation. Instead, I split myself mentally, emotionally and heartedly into a victim and victimizer.
Accepting the choices and activities of others had become normal to me. You don’t judge or attack them, but instead you unconsciously make yourself available so they could do it again. I remember lying in the dark while being molested took place and not having to do anything but receive. And once it satisfied my victimizer I blacked out. I blacked out on this rape of my dream and let the victim take the blows. Each day of reality of seeing my losses, I would just take it like it was normal. There was no fighting or trying to stop her because I was in too deep. I wasn’t waking up totally from the blackouts. The psychological programming was embedded in my mind like a memory board that could not be erased. It seemed I was on autopilot when it came to receiving abuse and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
It was easy to take from me because I had lacked the ability to identify my adversary. Early in life, my first adversary was my father, someone who loved me and I loved so this was the foundation my soul had been developed upon.
There were times when the agony would begin to subside but I would inflict a thought reminding me of how big of a fool I was to let someone do this to me. Instead of being angry with my victimizer, I began to be angry with myself as people began to reveal to me the red flags that should have been noticed. Soon it became a vicious cycle as I worked at keeping recovery away.
Time had gone by and my natural tendency of searching knowledge and understanding began to surface. The first thing that came to my mind was the reality of the quiet victimizer within our minds. It drives us to speed to work, appointments and home. At times it causes heart attacks, high blood pressure and all other forms of health problems. Our society calls it stress. I call it unnecessary abuse just to survive. Indeed stressed out was me. The more I focused on my devastations the more hair fell out of my head. No one could have told me I was stressing. I had managed to find a way to begin to build and find an attorney to help me fight the battle of recovery. I was even writing again and appreciating my new life. I recall the pain that was pushing me from my back to my chest was gone. Stress for sure can kill you.
My shameful stress revealed I had left my own path of believing God was my provider and I shouldn’t worry.
Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Matthew 6:25
It was becoming obvious I was not the only decision maker in my life. My soul was made up of knowledge about God so there was no way I could self-destruct. There was a presence in my life allowing me to choose to be a victim and there was a part of me dealing with the victimizer. I quickly became fascinated as I saw what made me who I was. Though my childhood foundation was unstable, over the years my search for God and understanding of life reestablished my foundation of hope. This presence in my life surfaces always on time for me especially when I am weary.
Finally, I accepted my spiritual self again. The God I came to know used my entire archive of emotional, mental and spiritual memory to teach, cleanse and restore my identity. That was amazing to me. My soulful foundation had been reconstructed.
Bottom line, although I had accepted the lesser over the greater, I began to see victimizing to be much like locust devouring my life. God had something better for me and I was able to free myself from the residues of past victimizations.
And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpillar, and the palmerworm, my great army which I sent among you. And ye shall eat in plenty, and be satisfied, and praise the name of the LORD your God, which hath dealt wondrously with you: and my people shall never be ashamed. Joel 2:25-26
Time to Choose
Attempting to rise above this dark phase of my life, I began to see the worse thing to do is to remain silent. The more silent I was the less power I had to rationalize and see the whole picture of my life. It only promised me fixation and vexation.
I shared the horrors of my experience with my son, Marcus and told him it happened again. I really trusted this person to do the right thing. His response was that I shouldn’t beat myself down because a person presents herself to be one way and acts another. He told me there was no way of knowing she would flip the script. I was totally taken back by his sincerity and respect towards me.
In sharing my experiences with others, I was amazed that everybody wasn’t portraying me as a victim again. In fact, they encouraged me to continue pursuing my dreams. To my delight, every single person who responded to my press release was a Christian and they were all in agreement about me getting to victory. My phone began to ring constantly from people everywhere believing God had a work for me to do and the devil was not going to stop it. Overwhelming streams of encouragement flowed in forcing me to choose to pull out of my dark abyss of abuse. Their concerns could not be in vain. The time was nearing for picking up my bed and walking in the light of truth.
At this point of my journey, memories of why I wanted to write books returned. It was because I had a message to give the world from God that lets abused people know we didn’t have to remain imprisoned by the clutches of abuse that seek to destroy our lives.
My dream began to return to me especially after someone told me: Your dreams always belong to you. Your heart, voice and mind are full of very Powerful Dreams so ready, Set, and GO because GOD is on your side, Its Already All right!!
Word s of healing continued to pour in and I began to feel as though God had sent angels to assist in healing me from my own sorrow. Up until this point, I had not realized how untrusting I had become towards mankind, even Christians, because my predator claimed to be a woman of God.
If you believe in a God who controls the big things, you have to believe in a God who controls the little things. It is we, of course, to whom things look “little” or “big.” --
Elizabeth Elliot
Christian Dilemma
It was amazing to experience love and compassion from my Christian brothers and sisters because some time back I questioned the validity of our presence in the world.
My past experience with preachers weren’t so great. As a church secretary, I was told by the pastor of the church to join him in his office. Once there, he offered to help me. Confused by his offer, I asked him to explain what he meant. That’s when this man of the cloth proceeded to tell me to use it or loose it and that he could clear the acne up from my face. At that point, I turned and walked out the office.
When his fellow ministers would visit the church, they would make comments like: “Before you were a child, now Rev has made you a woman.” They all assumed I had sexual relations with their fellow pastor and that was a turn off to me. Deep down, I always expected more from my Christian community than they delivered. In my crawl, I felt we had known Christ long enough to be the salt of the earth. This made me feel we were responsible for the condition the world was in. I seriously felt we were given power to not to be at the mercy of the world that we should have our own jobs, schools, banks, stores, land, etc. Instead, we have to face the world embarrassed by the corruption within our structure and yes, this angered me. However, it didn’t keep me from believing in God and Christ. This reality made me face the world like a lonely Christian who gave up on doctrine and finding a church home.
In reading the bible one day, it mentioned a remnant of God’s people. I felt to be one of the few that genuinely loved God and Christ. This made me realize I had to go it alone. But when Christians reached out to me, there was a strong and encompassing feeling of unity in my spirit that was just as certain as what was felt from the victimizing forces that took over my being. Someone took the time to send me a live recording of a prayer of strength and encouragement to rise above my circumstances. The spirit bearing witness of the spirit continued to multiply as each person prayed and advised me. It was like a vast reservoir of love flooded my mind, heart, spirit and body. I had no ideal this experience was coming into my life. The reality that I was not alone meant more to me than I ever imagined.
The encouragement hasn’t stopped; even today blessings of love are shared and witnessed in my life. This message came from a sister in Christ: I was listening to a Sermon this morning and the subject was about each person's life journey and that when our lives seem like its Shipwrecked; GOD will bring us ALL Together on the pieces of the shipwreck and each piece represents the trials we go through in life and those trials make us strong and capable of serving GOD more each and everyday because he brings us through it ALL and we shine through it ALL and remind ourselves and others to rely on GOD and be Strong and serve him wholeheartedly!
Chapter Six -Waking Up
We Are Here For One Another
As my resurrection continued to be apparent, I found bonding with my fellow Christians turned out to be something I needed my entire life. Not to say I did not have friends and family members who loved me, it was just so awesome to bond with my brothers and sisters in Christ. Something about knowing I was part of such a wonderful family and network touched my soul placing me in a state of accountability. Our presence in the world has been seriously challenged especially after corruption reached our foundation. Those corrupting the foundation will be dealt with by God but in the meantime we are to represent Christ in this world.
The remnant of God’s people exists and walks the earth daily needing one another more than ever due to misleading of some pastors.
Woe be unto the pastors that destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! saith the LORD. Therefore thus saith the LORD God of Israel against the pastors that feed my people; Ye have scattered my flock, and driven them away, and have not visited them: behold, I will visit upon you the evil of your doings, saith the LORD. And I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all countries whither I have driven them, and will bring them again to their folds; and they shall be fruitful and increase. And I will set up shepherds over them which shall feed them: and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed, neither shall they be lacking, saith the LORD. Jeremiah 23:1-4
The word remnant stayed in my mind until I searched the Bible for understanding. What it revealed to me was encouraging because it promises re-establishing of the Christian foundation that we may be fruitful and manifest our growing power here. It was wonderful to finally understand my Christian dilemma.
The reason Christians are strongly connecting in my spirit is because in my understanding of God at this time it is to be known Christianity was founded on the foundation of victimization. We are the souls along with the souls of others in the world that victimizers seek to devour. Christians have been on both ends of the experiences of victim and victimizers due to ignorance, hatred and most of all being in a deep sleep as we were beginning to grow in understanding of God. Our re-establishing of our foundation has been gradual but not defeated.
I have a Word: You can’t be taken once you’re awakened.
Calls and e-mails came from victims all over the world. They thanked me for sharing my experience. Many of them were alone in their private abyss just as I was in mine. We established a bond because spirit bears witness of the spirit. Our bond consisted of a weariness that only victimization can conjure up. For sure, I have learned it is so important to share your victimizing story with others. Being alone is not a good ideal. The repercussions are like when a doctor tells a victim of cancer if only we could have seen you sooner there may have been something we could have done. Holding onto abuse inside of us begins a death process of mind and body. Like cancer it eats away at us leaving us with less than ourselves.
If I had not talked about what happened to me, I would still be a victim of my past experiences. I would not have known my good willed brothers and sisters were out there and more importantly that they had always been there.
Don’t just let the balloon go; let the air out of it. Because victimizing takes on so many different ways and forms, we should never be alone in our experience. No matter what has happened to us be it harsh words or any catastrophes, we must talk about it until we don’t want to talk about it anymore. When the desire to not talk about it ends, so does the need to identify it as who we are ends as well.
I have a strong respect for organizations such as AA and NA because they established a foundation for liked victims of alcohol abuse to come together to share their struggle. They also made it known to heal or release the hold it had on its victims, they had to acknowledge a higher power. God had to enter their conscious for hope.
When people can relate to our suffering, it creates a bond and connects us to hope and we are given permission to thrive off the strengths of others who are emphatic to our realities. No matter who we talk to about it, everybody’s reaction is different. Sometimes people can make you wish you hadn’t said a word; while others will make you feel like you’re glad you did. We owe it to ourselves to find the right people to share it with because there is someone who can really relate to us and help us pull ourselves out of the growing abyss brought on by silence.
Wherefore comfort yourselves together, and edify one another, even as also ye do.
1Thessalonians 5:11
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