Soul Song For Survivors
Sexual Abuse Recovery
Title: An Awful Memory Reveals An Awesome God
by Diann Messer
An Awful Memory Reveals An Awesome God
A necessary part of recovery from childhood sexual abuse is
walking back through the awful memories of abuse. It seems like a cruel
pathway to recovery, but it is, nonetheless, a necessary evil.
I had
recovered many memories of abuse and thought perhaps I was reaching the
end of things, when yet another extremely traumatic event emerged from the
darkness. This group of memories caught me off-guard and really rocked
my world. It was hard to believe that these events really happened to me.
My mind wanted to shove them right back into the darkness from which they
sprang. Over a period of time, I allowed myself to believe the story that
these memories revealed, but at the same time, I held it all at arms length,
unable to fully embrace it as the truth of my life.
Sometimes it takes
months and months before an abusive event is completely processed, believed,
and accepted as truth. We don’t want to believe that something this bad
could have actually happened to us. We try desperately to tell ourselves
that we are making this up, our mind is simply playing tricks on us.
It has been my experience, since I rely completely upon the working of the
Holy Spirit, that God is always faithful to show me the truth of these events.
It may take time before I am able to completely grasp the truth within the
returning memories, but God is patient and understanding. He walks back
through each portion of memory with me, showing me events throughout my
life that in some way connect with the traumatic memory that has been revealed.
One of these memories I wrestled with recently involved a scene much like
a “set” used for recording television programs. There was a stage with
cameras pointed towards a central portion of the set. A doorway opened
off each side of this stage area. The memory was about myself as a young
child, being photographed in various costumes, and acting out various sexually
explicit scenes with a number of different men.
When this memory began
to unfold, I was aghast. It was totally incomprehensible that my parents
could have allowed such a thing to happen to me, their only daughter. My
mind wanted desperately to shove this memory into oblivion. It took some
time for me to understand that these things really did occur in my childhood.
God patiently began to bring to my remembrance several events from my past
that could be linked to this memory. One of those events pointed to a time
when I was in my early teens. I attended church regularly on Sunday morning.
On one of those Sunday mornings, the leader of our Sunday school department
gave an altar call. He had just poured out his heart to us, telling us
about the love of God and how much God wanted each of us to know Him personally.
He invited us to come forward and to accept Jesus as our Savior. My aching
heart wanted more than anything to accept Jesus, but I was unable to go
to the front of the auditorium along with so many other young adolescents
with the same desire. I felt guilty and defeated and began to cry. In
that moment, I could feel a warm Presence as it began to envelope me. God
had come to me. He knew that I could not go to the front and He knew why
I could not, even though I did not know the reason myself. He came to
me in my time of need. He knew the cry of my young heart and He came and
allowed me to accept Jesus as my Savior right where I stood. He did not
require me to move out of my seat and go forward in order to be saved.
There are many reasons why people are unable to come to God. Sometimes
our past prevents us from being able to do so. No matter. If there is
even a slight flicker of desire within us to know God, He will move Heaven
and earth to reach us!
Looking back over that time in my life, I could
see clearly why I was unable to go to the front that Sunday morning. The
stage at the front of the auditorium had a door on each side, just as the
memory of the abuse. Even though I had no conscious recall of those events
at that time in my life, God knew what had happened to me earlier in life
and He knew why I could not come to Him. This remembrance helped me to
connect a traumatic memory with an event from my adolescence. It all began
to make sense and it was more and more difficult for me to deny the abusive
memories. At the end of an awful memory, I found an awesome God!
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