Healing Hurts

I used to be fit as a fiddle. I was adventurous before I realized I was. I enjoyed the journey, especially with friends along for the ride and just as well without. I liked my alone time as much as my time with others. I like adventure, though more so after the fact, and I am an introvert. That is what I have realized over the last twenty years.

It does not take everyone so long to know what they like or dislike. I went through decades of uncertainty followed by years of ongoing adjustment to what I have discovered. I, like everyone else, am still evolving and learning. I still like to reflect from the beginning and see where I have been.

I would sum up my early years as unfair. I was unfairly in trouble for things I did not do (as well as for wrong things I did). I was bullied by my brother and cousin and occasionally others with them. I still could not understand why I was the one to get into trouble when I fought back. I also recall what I would later realize was insecurity. I had recurring nightmares, and I remember sometimes sitting with my mom to suck my thumb and play with her ear.

Near age 10, things started to change drastically. Before I fully understood what was going on, I had fallen prey to the sexual exploits of four different men ranging anywhere from one to thirty-five years older than me. I did not fight back at all. In fact, for many years, I instinctively just gave in. I gave in to full-blown molestation by an adult relative by the time was 13 years old. The experience rocked my life in ways that I would not fully realize until I was much older.

Everyone who faces trauma finds ways to cope. One of my ways was to control as much as I could around me to compensate for the loss of control I experienced at the hand of my predator. For the next three decades, I had a negatively skewed self-image. During the first fifteen of those years, I had did not know how to appropriately interact with others and did not know that the normalcy that I longed for was a relative myth rather than an established list of characteristics that would evade me for the remainder of my life on earth.

There were times of trial and error regarding relationships with people. How much can I share? How much intimacy is normal? How do I respond with my new altered perspective? Things that I should have had no knowledge of in my adolescence made more sense to me than I believed it did for many of my counterparts. I did not really know because I did not speak of it or expect that my experiences were normal for my age group. I lived in a place of fear and uncertainty. I lived in paranoia.

Over these last 30 years, I have learned balance in many things. I have learned to go and share as the spirit leads. I have learned to discern a person’s character. I realize that everyone in public places is not out to harm me even though still respond as such at times. I learned that everyone who laughs near me is not laughing at me even though sometimes I wonder and sometimes they definitely are.

I learned to embrace the truths that I was learning in my formative years while rejecting some of the lies that I believed to be true. In bracing those truths, I have found hope. Hope has been a formidable ally for me against the spiraling negativity that once consumed me. When something bad that happened spiraled into “why I am alive?” on a regular basis to the point that I feared for my life, I sought help from my doctor and my spiritual family.

From the time I decided to deal with my past, the façade of stability and strength crumbled. I had to come undone so that I could be built back up in true strength. The vulnerability of begin exposed has caused me great anxiety, but I am still on the path to healing. One of the truths I am holding one to is that I am one of the called according to God’s purposes. Because of that, all these things in my life will work together for good for His glory. Without trying to force the good, I waited for Him to direct my path. He put it on my heart to write a brief book, “What a Father Could Be.” This book is not an account of my story, but a few thoughts in a poem. The focus is on fathers because when the family is broken other things frequently break. The focus of the book is to address healing for those who feel incomplete or hurt. It gives hope in seemingly hopeless situations. It is a reminder of the strength and beauty that can arise from turmoil and the Help that can get a person there.