The Welcome Home

Let’s Pretend is a children’s game.  And children are good at playing it.  Adults like to play this game, too — only it’s not always for entertainment or proper development.

Nearly thirty years ago my husband encouraged me to talk to someone about CSA — or, my story.  It was invaluable to me — but for reasons much different than the counselor’s intent.

I was so nervous.  ‘More nervous than I am to go to the dentist to have a root canal.  ‘More nervous than anticipating labour and childbirth.  I can’t, I said.  I just can’t do that.  Well… what I didn’t know at the time was that if I really felt as though I could *not* go through with it, he would *not* have taken me there that day.  But he did and I did go into that Christian counseling office in Seattle.

She was very gracious to me — grandmotherly, warm and kind.  I felt at ease with her as I answered her guiding questions — willingly, as I so longed to be free from the feelings that plagued me.  Though my actions and demeanor might have betrayed this, I’m sure she knew that’s why I was there.  I’d very rarely ever even mentioned that there was trouble in my life to anyone.

I knew the game, Let’s Pretend, very well.   I’d played Let’s Pretend for many years by this time.

After she listened to my recollections — asking me to picture past scenes.  She then asked me to picture the same scenes again — only this time she asked me to picture them how they should have been.  I found it nearly impossible to do this — but, being a good girl, I agreed that I could picture the situations the way they should have been.  She told me this was the way Jesus would have had those situations occur.  I agreed with her — probably like glazed eyed people giving perfunctory nods of agreement to enthusiastic salesmen when the salesmen promise the moon with the use of their product.

I tried very hard to keep the “better picture” in my mind.  But I couldn’t.  I knew, though she was trying to help me, that sort of help wouldn’t change what happened.  It was the “positive mental attitude” sort of counsel.  And while it is great to keep a positive attitude — looking on the bright side of things, pretending something happened differently than it did doesn’t change what happened.  What happened happened.  Imagining it differently wouldn’t change that.

I left the office that day with a follow-up appointment card in hand.  And I did return for that appointment, as well.  This time our conversation centered around my family relationships and current activities.   At the time, I’d just given birth to our second child, we were in transition after a business venture failure and the loss of all our financial assets.  And as I look back on those appointments now, I see that they were some of the most instructive and divine appointments of my life.

Through my sharing of our financial situation, she directed me to a place ( at that time: Natural Foods Warehouse in Mountlake Terrace)  where I could buy grains for my family, giving me the address for the store and suggestions for what to purchase once I got there.  I didn’t know it at the time, but that one suggestion for making nutritious breads would be used of the Lord significantly and would pave the way for me to learn to make breads of all kinds, use different grains and cereals for our meals and to buy foods in bulk.  Actually, I learned MANY invaluable things from those two sessions:

1. Picturing the past the way it should have been is just another chapter in the “our little secret” book of tricks.  Memory Replacement therapy was not only not helpful, it furthered my anguish that I’d never move past the fear, guilt and shame of CSA.  It was a game of Let’s Pretend… Let’s pretend this did not happen.  Which, by the way, was exactly what was said to me by my ‘father’ when I would tell him I was afraid… he would say, this did not happen.  Memory replacement therapy is a game of Let’s Pretend: Let’s pretend it happened another way. It’s another lie.  I pray no girl — no woman ever succumbs to that form of “counseling.”  It’s a lie and it steals from the great goodness and purposes of the Lord when He has allowed hard things to have occurred.

2. Natural Foods Warehouse became one of my favourite stores and would open doors of food purchasing and preparation that I would find invaluable from that time to this.  I  don’t often shop there anymore after discovering Azure Standard many years ago.  But, from there, a whole new world opened up to this once city-girl from SanFrancisco and Southern California.

3. It’s proven to me over and over and over that all God’s ways are good.  That what the devil intended for evil, God meant for good — for my good and His great glory.  And, I do give God glory in all this.  For I know that I know that I know: He was there… He saw it all… He allowed it all.  Praise His Name.

4. God used those events of my life, in part,  to shape me into who I am today — and IS using them to work His perfect work in me to conform me to the image of Him who saved me.   And though I and others do not/cannot see His finished work yet — or even a lot of progress sometimes, God is still using the tool of those experiences to work His beautiful work in me.

5. I press on toward the mark…

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.

I so longed for freedom – freedom from shame, freedom from fear, freedom from having to do things for him in that way.  I so wanted to be free from all that — I wanted it to all go away.  No more secrets. But I didn’t want to make any problems for anyone.  And I think that’s probably the case with most women who endured child sexualabuse and remained afraid to tell – the fear of retribution is just gripping.

It’s interesting how twisted things become for love.
I so wanted to be loved… my mother wanted to be loved and in a really creepy way, my legal father wanted to be loved.  Creepy, but I can see that now.

Looking back, when my mother married this man,  I remember being  so happy that we were now going to be a real family — that we would get to call this man, daddy.   And for a time that did happen.  On the surface, things seemed okay — to me and probably to most everyone else — I didn’t know about some problems going on — the reality that his life was fraught with deception.

An underlying issue was that I was slowly losing contact with my own father.   Why didn’t we see him very much anymore?  Things didn’t make sense sometimes.  When we moved to a new city, my name was changed and I felt sort of worried that someone would tell my ‘real’ father about it.   I was told to keep it a secret, not to tell anyone.  I can understand now that it was really for my protection or comfort as he was planning on filing for adoption and a move to a new city made that transition easy.   I see that now.  In the next year or so, there would be many legal dealings, letters, court dates.  In time, I would be adopted and my name legally changed – and voilà, I was now his daughter.   Even my birth-certificate was changed.  Just like that: no more secrets.  Everybody’s happy. Right?

Well, a couple of years passed and my little world — our little family — would be forever changed by what would become known as “our little secret.”

I still longed to be loved — even in the midst of, or in spite of, all that was going on.  But now, love was all weird.  It was all mixed up.  I just had to be happy! I so desperately wanted to be a family like all our friends.  They all had great families.  I didn’t know then that they really didn’t all have great families.  But, Junior High’s a pretty tough age and everything seems better somewhere else to most Junior Higher’s.   The desire/need/compulsion to fit in is terrific.  But I couldn’t have both — a genuinely close, warm, loving, true relationship and one that was frightening, overpowering and deceptive.

I now know that part of what I longed for could only be fulfilled by my Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.  For I was separated by sin from the only One who could set me free from the law of sin and death and the grip of fear.    That’s the part I longed for:  to be free from fear and free from shame.

It would be several years before I would come to faith in the Lord – before I would come to a place of rest in faith in Him.  I am still coming to grips with what it means to be NOT entangled again with the yoke of bondage (I know I am exercising great liberty here with the context of the verse).  I am still working to grasp the vastness of the Love of God and the great mercy wherewith He loves us!!  His marvelous ways are past finding out — but He has made a way that we can know Him and His great gift of salvation in Jesus.  This is love.

Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.” Galatians 5.1

Probably the greatest blessing for me the day I finally mustered the courage to tell my mother,  was that she believed me.  The lie: “no one will believe you” had haunted me.  But she did believe me and there was great peace in that.  I’m sure things would have been very different had she not believed me.  As I type this I’m flooded with emotion at the goodness of the Lord in my life.

No more secrets.  She told me, among other things: No more secrets.  All  I remember thinking at that time was: no more.  No more.

When I was eleven years old I was a young eleven.  Certainly by today’s standards, I was a very young eleven.   I was a compliant eleven — just the kind of girl who wanted to please everyone.   I was just the kind of girl who wanted everything to work out well — to be happy — to be a family.   Just the kind of girl one could trust to keep a secret.

Initially (and I believe this is most often the case with sexuallyabused girls) I didn’t grasp or understand what was really happening, nor that it was completely and absolutely inappropriate behaviour.

So, when I was praised for being Daddy’s good little girl and then was told that these things would be our little secret. I obeyed.  Because that’s what I did — that’s the kind of girl I was: obedient.  Daddy’s good little girl.  [This Daddy was not my dear birth-father, nor the man who is my dear step father today.  Just to be clear.]

It would be another year or so until I began to feel afraid, awkward and guilty about those “little secrets.”   And I think this was part of the death of innocence , death of trust, death of freely loving others — and the beginning of fear, doubt, shame and deception in my life.  Still earnestly desiring to please, to be a good girl and to be loved, I continued carrying “our little secret.”   But in time I would avoid situations that would isolate me with him and I would feign sleep when he would come into my bedroom at night — then stirring just enough to frighten him off.   Daddy’s good little girl was beginning to grasp that this behaviour or these activities were wrong in this context.

I recall the day I stumbled into the sickening reality that this “little secret”  really was wrong — not normal — not okay.  During homemaking class at school one day, there was a group of girls huddled together over a paperback book.   And as they were reading excerpts from the book, they attempted to muffle their gasps and laughter.  A large area of that homemaking classroom was divided into several “kitchens” for cooking assignments.  I could hear them in the adjacent “kitchen” and I remember being assaulted by the reality of sexualbehaviour and having mixed emotions — youthful curiosity mixed with the desire to be in their group.

What was my revelation?  I was suddenly deeply sobered by guilt and gripped with shame over knowing what they were talking about.  As I listened to their talk, it dawned on me that they didn’t have their “facts” straight.  I wanted to say: “no, it doesn’t happen like that.”  And then I knew.  I knew at that moment that I knew what I shouldn’t know.  It sank in.  And another part of me died.

I wish I could say here that I immediately rushed home and told my mother.  But I can’t, because   I didn’t.  I didn’t tell her then for some of the very same reasons girls grow up to become women who still carry the deep secret… and that reason is: fear.

[correction in this paragraph] I’m sure people wonder why girls and women don’t tell.  It’s no different from any other “forbidden” or “naughty” thing.  No one wants others to know they have had “bad” things going on… whether that bad thing is/was pornaddiction, drugs, theft, bulimia, anger, abortion — and the list goes on.   I don’t know why we all fall into that bondage, but I’m going to guess it’s the oldest reason in the Book.  Fear.  They’re afraid.   So it is for little girls who are being abused.  They’re too afraid of the consequences of telling. I was afraid.  I knew I needed to tell my mother.  But I was afraid of what would happen to her if I told.  I was afraid of what would happen to me if I told.  Because, part of the “our little secret” was: “we don’t want to hurt mother.”   A child doesn’t grasp the subtle nuance of what “hurt mother” means.  They, like all of us, only know what they know — and to a child, hurt means: hitting, burning, falling, cutting, killing… stuff that causes hurt.

More months would pass…  I knew I needed to TELL.   I was beginning to be afraid of what would happen to me if I didn’t.   Soon I would muster up the courage to tell “our little secret.”

It’s a tough topic – a tough thing to deal with, a tough thing to talk about.  And that’s why it isn’t. talked. about.  It’s also not talked about because of fear — a deep seated fear of reprisal.  It is deep and it is real.

I don’t talk about a lot of things specifically here on the blog… you know — it’s risky to share stuff.  Once you publicly share stuff, you run the risk of being pegged as something.  You know how you say to someone: I love teddybears and suddenly, every gift you receive from then on is a teddybear something.   Or, you share, you were once addicted to meth and you’re forever a meth-head.   Or, you share you battle depression… and, well,  you get the picture.

Well, it’s like that with sexualabuse.   You talk about it and suddenly that’s all you’re about — one note sally.  And none of us are a song of one note.  We’re all songs of many notes.  CSA is just a heavy note.

Women (and men) don’t talk much about CSA (childsexualabuse) because of the reaction of others.  Talking about past abuse always generates some reaction.  Some react with sympathy, some react with indifference and some react with smug rejection.  CSA survivors quickly find out the painful truth that for most people, unless something’s been personally experienced, it’s “not that big a deal.”  Or, worse, CSA survivors often deal with comparisons  or qualifiers.  They hear things like, O, yes, so-n-so was sexuallyabused by her father only it was much worse.  They hear things like, O, that’s not that bad, let me tell you what happened to me! The survivor is then left holding the bag of shame or guilt or a mixture of the two.  And she makes another personal pact with herself to never bring this up again.

But it does come up again.  It comes up again and again.  Sexualabuse is like that — because it so deeply scars the soul of a woman (or man) it never really goes away — it’s never really very far from the surface.

Just like with most every topic or experience — the advent of technology is making it much easier to get things out in the open.  The more something is talked about, the easier it is to talk about it.  There are up-sides and down-sides to this, of course.

The up-side to talking about current or past sexualabuse is that, among many things, the reality can be dealt with — and that’s the first part of healing: the revelation of the truth.  The down-side of talking about sexualabuse is that the “victim,” in choosing  to be vulnerable, risks questions of doubt or denial by others and/or retaliation by the abuser.

Knowing my own story, my mom’s friend sent her an article she’d clipped from the Orange County Register last week.  The article’s about a young girl and mom’s fight to end CSA.   Their message is the same as mine:  Tell Someone.  The name of their site is: I am gonna tell.

I have two pages on A Christian Home website that deal with CSA.  Here and here.

This, from one of my pages:
Why do so many sites and organizations have a similar message or name?  Why do you read over and over “slogans” like: Stop the Silence, Silent No More!, Just Tell, I am gonna tell and my own site and story: I’m Telling On You.

Because, it’s like this:  We all were told virtually the same thing by our abuser:  Don’t tell. Don’t tell anyone… This will be our little secret.  We don’t want to hurt anyone. We don’t want to tell anyone else about this, okay, sweetie?  You’d better not tell anyone about this little incident.  Nothing really happened.  We’re not going to make a big deal about this, okay?  Don’t tell…

And we grew up with the lie.  We lived with the lie: “Don’t tell.”
And most of us wanted to die with, or because of, the  bondage of the “Don’t tell” lie.

We all have the same story and because somewhere along the way we mustered up the courage to tell someone… Our message, collectively, is: Don’t remain silent ANY longer.

SILENT NO MORE.
Tell SOMEONE !
TELL someone!!