First let's define what sexual abuse is. "Sexual abuse is any contact or interaction (visual, verbal or psychological) between a child/adolescent and an adult when the child/adolescent is being used for the sexual stimulation of the perpetrator or any other person."
You can ask yourself if anything that happened to you fits that description or you can also ask yourself, "Have I ever been in a situation where I felt sexually uncomfortable, awkward or debased?" It does not have to be from an adult, it could have been from a peer or someone you were even in a relationship with.
I am reading a book on the topic of sexual abuse. This is probably the BEST book out there regarding sexual abuse. It is called The Wounded Heart: Hope for Adult Victims of Childhood Sexual Abuse by Dr. Dan Allender. I will share quotes from the book and my insights in hopes of helping others who have suffered abuse. Statistically they say one in three women and one in five men by the age of 18 are sexually abused in some way. So if you or someone you know has been sexually abused, I hope the information in this blog will help you. :)
The Wounded Heart:
The author, Dr. Allender himself, was sexually abused. He states, "I recalled forced masturbation at a camp I had attended as an adolescent, a homosexual invitation I turned down in Boy Scouts, and a sexual assault that occurred at a football camp."
Sexual abuse can happen anywhere. Mine happened while taking a nap with my dad. My brother's happened while taking a shower with my dad. Many women have been date rapped, by a guy they were dating and trusted. My late husband was sexually abused in high school, in the school hallways! And the teachers said nothing and did nothing. He also was kind of raped by some co-workers when he went to a party at their house. They literally slipped a drug into his alcohol and essentially raped him. That poor guy had probably been severely sexually abused 20 times in his life. It really is by the grace of God that he was allowed to go home to heaven 3 months ago, because to live with that much pain and shame.....I cannot imagine how hard it must have been for him to be him. I know he had night mares just about every single night. He never seemed to be fully at peace. He had gone through so, so much. In many ways I really praise God that he is safe finally in heaven! And that he can finally be happy and at peace!
There is also a verse in the Old Testament that refers to a generational curse. It says, "The sins of the father...visited up to the 6th and 7th generations." It essentially says that the consequences for one man's sin might continue up to 7 generations after him. That has somewhat been a fear for me in having children of my own. What if the cycle of abuse continues with them somehow by someone? However, it is possible that the chain of abuse was broken with me.
I don't know what happened to the women in my family before my grandma, but my grandma was raped by her dad when she was 18, my mom by her cousin when she was 8, and the incident with my own dad, I believe he was about to rape me, but I jumped out of the bed and told my mom what happened when she came home. My dad admitted to her later that he would have gone all the way eventually if I hadn't told. So what happened to me was quite crazy, but I really have a lot to be thankful for; that God saved me from actually being raped. And that God created me gutsy enough to jump away, as many young girls do not or feel they cannot. It's possible that I had the courage to do so because I was already saved at that young of an age also. I did grow up in the church. So it could have been that God was leading me in all that. HE gave me the boldness to tell my mom the TRUTH. I told my mom, because I knew in my soul that what my dad was doing, or was about to do, was wrong. I can only imagine it was God who would give a 6 year old the boldness to turn her own dad in like that. I think even then I knew, I had faith, that God would protect me and provide for me. Even at the age of 6, I RECOGNIZED THAT IT WAS GOD WHO WAS MY REAL FATHER, my true daddy.
Here is a great song on this topic: "Ask Me" by Amy Grant. I grew up listening to this song a lot, ironically. That was probably a very good thing as it helped form my theology and perspective about God regarding the whole situation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2bOMpZa7mQ
Please realize from these stories that sexual abuse happens everywhere, all the time. If you are reading this and know of any possibility of sexual abuse or any kind of abuse, REPORT IT. Do not allow abuse to go on. It enrages God when it is not stopped. If we have the power to stop it, WE NEED TO.
The author's 8 year old daughter asked, "Daddy, do abused people have walls in their hearts that keep them from being happy, and will they have less bricks in their walls after reading your book?" lol so cute! :)
When we are abused, we do tend to put walls up. The reason for this is that we do not want to be hurt again. Joyce Meyer once said she heard God telling her, "When you wall them out, you wall yourself in." Very true. Abuse makes trusting anyone very difficult, which leads to one being very lonely.
The cure is to be around good Christian people who will help the abused person to believe that people can be good again. We are hurt by people and we also must be healed by people.
Another classic way to heal is to face your fears. Anyone who is abused is very afraid of opening up to someone else and being vulnerable. And that is exactly what you must do to be healed. Whatever you are most afraid of, GO DO THAT. Until you do, you will not get better.
Dr. Allender states, "When people....are subjected to terrible crimes against God and against their soul, like sexual abuse, powerful forces are set in motion within them that make it especially frightening to give themselves to others."
Because we were abused by a person, it is very hard to trust another person, because what if they hurt us too? The fact is, we live in a fallen world, and it is inevitable that other people WILL hurt us again. No one is perfect. Everyone we are surrounded by in life is fallen and broken just as much as we are. But God can heal us when they hurt us. That is why God gives us the gift of forgiveness, so that we will not hold onto hurt inflicted by other people. God has promised to comfort us.
Psalm 34 says, "The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit."
It was not God's will that you were abused. He does, however, ALLOW bad things to happen to us for reasons we cannot fully understand in this life. God allowed many, many terrible things to happen to Job. But despite what we have gone through, we still need to trust Him, even when we are confused by how the world works sometimes.
Allender says, "We sometimes manage to persuade ourselves that God is as pleased as we are with our developing maturity, while in fact His Spirit is gently pushing open doors into the darker regions of our hearts that we pretend don't exist."
We often want to run from ourselves, and we hide in our busyness. I used to have, and sometimes still do, recurring nightmares that I was being chased by someone. It is possible that the dream represented that I was running from myself or my past. We like to cover our wounds as someone might put a band aid over a scrape. But it is not until we expose our wounds to the air that they will be healed. Sometimes our wounds have to be washed and cleaned out. This process can be painful but it is also necessary.
Allender says, "One of the central messages of most books on abuse, this one included, is freedom from the guilt of the past abuse. What occurred is not your fault!" Amen! Yet so many people, sadly, think that whatever happened to them was their fault.
I used to be angry at the little me, as if it was her fault for the abuse from my father. In one counseling session I was asked to bring in pictures of me when I was younger. After that session I was able to look at those pictures and see a cute little girl rather than a seductive or bad little girl.
When someone sexually abuses someone else they get the abused person to think it is their fault, that they, the abused, wanted what happened to them. The abuser actually can be so deceived by Satan that they believe that themselves. They actually think the child is coming onto them in certain cases.
This is why Jesus states that such a person should be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck, because they have become completely disillusioned to reality. The fact is, the child is not sexual at all. The child does not have a sexual drive. Human beings do not develop a sexual drive until about 12, contrary to what Freud may have said. Children have no concept of sex etc. The abuser is not able to see children as children. The abuser sees the child as an adult, for whatever reason.
Children are innocent, pure and free. Any sexual act on a child is NOT wanted by the child. The confusion comes because children do want general AFFECTION and to feel that they are loved. The abuser, in their sick mind, confuses that want for affection for wanting sexual affection. This is why they sexually abuse the child. They often times convince the child that they want it also.
This is why many people who were sexually abused as children grow up thinking it was their fault, because the abuser fed them those lies. The lies that the abuser himself believed from Satan himself, the father of all liars.
Realizing all this can help the abused person see the truth. The TRUTH is, you were only a child. YOU DID NOT WANT ANYTHING THAT HAPPENED TO YOU. So believe that. And STOP believing the lies that the abuser or Satan wants to tell you. You are innocent. You did nothing wrong. You were sinned against. As a child you were powerless to get out of the situation. Children do not have jobs or cars. They are stuck wherever they are. Therefore, there was nothing you could do about it. You could not have run away. Your reason most likely told you you would end up homeless and starving to death.
Another reason abused victims believe it was their fault is that for children it seems safer to believe that it is themselves who are bad rather than that their parent is bad. It is a very scary thought for a child to believe that their own parent or uncle or adult in their life can be that evil. So they take the responsibility for what happened on themselves.
Now that you are an adult, however, and are removed from the adult that abused you, hopefully you can see that they were capable of extreme evil. It was not 50/50, as in half their fault and half yours. It was 100% their fault and 0% yours. Remember that. Believe that.
"THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE."
Allender says, "The answer involves a strategy that seems to intensify the problem: peer DEEPLY into the wounded heart. The first great enemy to lasting change is the propensity to turn our eyes AWAY from the wound and pretend things are fine....the journey involves us bringing our wounded heart before God...the problem is that the path does involve His hurting us, but only in order to heal us."
Like a wound must be scrubbed out before it can heal, so our hearts need to be scrubbed out before they can fully heal. As a broken bone may need to be re broken in order to reset it so our hearts may need to be re broken so that they can heal correctly and in place.
I remember in counseling, even as young as when I was 6 or 7, the counselor would always say we needed to bring my issues out on the table. "Let's get everything out on the table." I would always say, "But why? I like things being under the table." lol, As so many of us do. We do not want to face the darkness within ourselves. We are afraid of the darkness. We are afraid of our own anger. We are afraid that if we let any of the pain out we might have a mental breakdown, so we hold it all inside.
But it is in holding everything inside that can lead to a mental breakdown or a psychotic break. Healing needs to be done by letting air slowly out of the balloon of our hearts, before it pops from the pressure. Life has a way of adding more and more pressure to our already filled balloons, until one day, they pop, and people commit suicide or turn to drugs or become an alcoholic. All of these things could be prevented if we would do the hard work of looking at the darkness in our own hearts BEFORE something like that happens. God wants to heal you. The question is; will you let Him?
In the healing process, ALWAYS remember that IT IS OK TO CRY.
Often times abused people become very good actors. We pretend that everything is ok, that we are strong; we can handle it. We do this because we do not want to be a burden on anyone else. But God is always there for you to cry out to. He is ALWAYS listening. He is ALWAYS willing to see your tears and look into your pain with you. Whatever it is, He can handle it. Crying may be the best thing you can do for your relationship with God.
When we cry, the walls come tumbling down. We cannot cry and be angry at the same time. Often times, crying releases the anger and the bitterness we were holding inside. It lets the sadness out that was hiding behind the mask of anger. It allows oneself to be vulnerable with oneself, and with God.
I read recently that there is actually a poisonous chemical that is literally released from the body when we cry. That is why some women say, "I needed a good cry." We literally do NEED TO CRY every once in awhile. God gave us the ability to cry for a reason. So if you have not cried in awhile, I recommend that you do so! :) It can be VERY, very healing to your mind, body and soul.
So have a good cry for Jesus! And you will most likely see the clouds part in your heart and the sun come out, as after a good hard rain. Release the weight in your heart, as the clouds release the weight they carry from the water in the clouds. Let your heart rain, as much as it needs to. :) And feel the freedom and the joy when you can see the sun again. :)
May God help all of us who have been abused to heal and become whole again! May he restore us to who we were meant to be before we were abused!
May God bless you and keep you! May he cause His face to shine upon you, and give you peace! :) Amen.
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