Timothy Kline: Thoughts and Reflections

It's business as usual in America

Newspapers across America yesterday published the latest news on the financial world. Citigroup, another financial corporation deemed “too big to fail” by the federal government, was promised $20 billion of our tax dollars while at the same time guaranteeing access to hundreds of billions of our tax dollars in the event of potential (some say probable) losses that Citigroup may suffer.

Wall Street’s response to this latest move on the part of the U.S. Government was one of absolute elation as the stock market leapt with joy some 400 points. President George W. Bush used the opportunity to indicate that there may be other “rescues” made.

And once again, that ambiguous expression, “Too big to fail” played in the American conscience. AIG and Citigroup, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac are now household words, synonymous with $700 billion bailout. And that isn’t even to mention the other financial and banking institutions that have been or will be helped.

At the same time, there is a rising discontent in the American conscience as to bailing out industrial and manufacturing institutions. The Big Three automakers, Ford-General Motors-Chrysler recently campaigned in Washington D.C. to try to secure some $25 billion or so, in addition to the $25 billion that they had already had promised by Congress in September to help them towards developing and manufacturing hybrid and alternative energy vehicles. Apparently, Congress is not interested, instead choosing to interrogate, grill, and skewer the Big Three executives—while financial giants were simply written a check.

It seems that financial conglomerates’ welfare far outweighs the needs of those who work in industrial and manufacturing areas of American capitalism. In simpler terms, Congress seems more interested in protecting the U.S. dollar than they are the people who earn those dollars (overpaid execs and CEOs notwithstanding).

There is a definite, even staggering duplicity here. On the one hand, when the Big Three came to Washington D.C. to secure assistance, they were harangued and demanded to show what changes they would make to show the investment would be worthwhile. At the same time, not a single AIG, Citigroup, Fannie Mae, or Freddie Mac executive underwent the same interrogation before funds were given. Yet nobody seems to be asking why that is. Further, when the money was given to the financial institutions, they were also guaranteed against any and all losses that would subsequently result in their corporations.

As if that is not enough insult to Americans who are struggling with home foreclosures, rising health insurance costs, rising costs of fuel, food, and overall living, today’s headlines have President-Elect Obama and the democrats already planning a $500 billion program that they plan to enact as soon as possible in 2009.

That brings both the current Wall Street bailout and the intended “stimulus” package to a whopping $1.2 trillion dollars.

What thinking Americans should be asking is where all of this money is coming from. We already know that it will be coming from taxes. The tax-paying American will be footing the bill for this “generosity.” What nobody is discussing, however, is that it will have to be taxes above and beyond what already must be paid in to the governments in order to keep the U.S. political machine running. Even with program cuts, we’re now talking over a trillion additional dollars in funding.

That does not even take into consideration the guarantees that the federal government has now put into place, should the financial giants have further losses of untold millions and billions of dollars.

It does not take into consideration the millions of jobs that will continue to be lost, or the fact that lost jobs means lost revenue for the government. It does not take into consideration the 10.1 million unemployed Americans who cannot find a job that will earn money that can be subsequently taxed by the government, a number by the way that includes only those who are entitled to unemployment benefits (typically, six weeks)—the actual number of unemployed Americans is far higher.

It doesn’t take into consideration the 2.2 million men and women who are confined to prison and thus are not in a position to hold jobs and have their income taxed—not to mention those living in jails, mental institutions, and similar residences.

It does not take into consideration the 3,500,000 (estimated) homeless Americans who don’t even have a place to live or food to eat, and are jobless as well.

It does not take info consideration the 50,000,000 Americans currently supported by the Social Security system, a program itself supported by taxpayers’ dollars and exempt from taxation.

And, last but not least, it does not take into consideration the 45,528,000 Americans who live at or below the so-called line of poverty (an income of $19,157 or less, annually) in the United States (according to studies, a family of four requires a minimum of $35,000 just to have their basic needs met!). That means that some 45,500,000 Americans can’t even meet their basic needs currently, much less have their minimal income taxed to pay for the plush lifestyles of the rich and famous on Wall Street.

Out of the remaining 107,600,000 Americans not mentioned above that do NOT earn or have access to $100,000 or more of annual income—who are facing foreclosures, dwindling savings and mounting expenses, decreased hours at work and increased insurance and health premiums, we are the expected source of revenue to fund these bailouts.

But if the financial institutions of Wall Street and America are considered “too big to fail”…  what about us?

Although I have been working my way chronologically through my life with this series, I thought I might digress momentarily, to address an issue that will provide a necessary basis for what I will be relating in Part 6.

Molestation takes away everything you might have ever become.

If a child is confronted with and immersed in what can only be termed as evil (and I would certainly call multiple acts of child sexual molestation, physical abuse, and emotional abuse to be forms of evil) on a scale that most other children never experience, what happens to that child’s psyche? Experts concur that the child’s mind can become fragmented as a result of the mind trying to process what is happening. As a matter of survival, the inner child recedes further inside the mind while the outer child adopts whatever façade is necessary to minimize the threat to its survival.

It is a natural response to unnatural circumstances.

Unfortunately, the consequences of that form of psyche defense is, for one, the child’s inability to later move into relationships apart from the parental relationship. The inner child that would’ve developed under nurturing circumstances into a fully functioning mature individual in the adult world instead becomes locked behind the walls of defense that were mounted out of necessity, making it unbelievably difficult to have and participate in a relationship that requires anything beyond a modicum of cordial intimacy. The child will not even realize it because the defense mechanism is so primal, so core to us as human beings. That is the very reason why child abuse is evil enough in itself, but child molestation is utterly evil.

It is, not to put too fine a point on it, a murder in which the victim lives.

For their own sexual greed and satisfaction, the molestor is willing to sacrifice their victim’s life but just cowardly enough not to physically murder them. It is a travesty of nature, and nearly every culture that has ever existed has for that very reason struck laws to prevent it from happening. But the molestor does not care, or they justify it somehow in order to show that Nature has it wrong, that there are exceptions.

And while it may be true that the molestor may themselves have been a victim of abuse, neglect, or molestation, it still holds true that they are not willing to prevent someone else from becoming a victim in turn. Their own inner child psyche is still in regression, even into adulthood—and like the schoolyard bully, they take what they want. As a result, another child’s psyche is torn by an act of violence against Nature, and must live with the consequences of that violence imposed upon them against their will.

If, then, the molestor is acting in response to their own damaged psyche, which has the behavior of a child at the age that they themselves were violated, should they be held accountable as an adult, or within the confines of that inner child’s capacity?

It is a known fact that when a molestor tries in any way to hide their act of molesting by justification (“you should’ve seen how they were coming on to me”), by threats (“if you tell mommy, I’ll kill you”), or lurid promises of love (“It’ll be our little secret”; “You’re daddy’s little girl”), they unmistakably are aware that their actions are wrong. Their act of hiding their evil is enough to establish that they know it’s evil and yet are willing to go ahead in spite of that.

Unfortunately, if they are convicted in a court of law, they typically are sent to prison where they will likely be raped themselves (prisons have within their culture their own form of justice, and child molestors are likely to discover that early on), further metastasizing their own damaged psyche. Clearly, they need to be removed from society at-large until their issues are addressed, but it is equally certain that there is no such thing as a cure. In other words, they will never cease to be a child molestor, even if those urges are somehow diminished through chemical means, therapy, or a miracle. And it is outside the scope of this blog entry to go into further detail where the molestor is concerned.

But what about the child that was molested? I mentioned earlier that because the natural response to such an unnatural violence is to erect barriers in the psyche to protect the very core of the child’s being, this presents the child with significant challenge in the development of intimacy later on into teenage years and adulthood. How this is manifested will vary from child to child, and is truly unique to the individual, although psychologists have come to recognize patterns. But throughout those patterns, the one common factor that they all share is a hunger for love and affirmation, the very love and affirmation that a child would have received in a nurturing environment, thus allowing them to grow into fully functioning adults in the world at-large.

In my own case, because I grew up through years of abuse and was molested, I have had a tremendously difficult time developing relationships with any level of intimacy. By all appearances, I am a fully functioning adult. My outer child has managed to make the necessary adjustments so as to not “stick out” from society at-large. Even so, it has had to make certain concessions in the process. As a result, there is a sense of lost identity, because my life has always been defined by who is around me. I became what I needed to become in order to fit in or appear normal.

The exception is with children. I do not and apparently cannot relate to children below a certain age. I know this from experience especially through my own children, although there have been countless other occasions where I was around infants, toddlers, and young children, and felt lost and unable to relate on any level with them. It wasn’t until my own children reached 12 years or so that I could suddenly relate to them.

Because of that inability to achieve intimacy within a relationship, my being a father has been a road strewn with many bad memories due to my own inability to cope with the responsibilities associated with good parenting. I have both my mother and my molestors to thank for that. I can only hope that in doing what I could figure out to do, my sons will go on to do a better job than I did in raising them. If they are not able to, I must share in the responsibility for their failure to be able to do so.

I have often used the term “survivor of abuse and molestation” in describing myself, because I am. But it in no way is meant to imply that because I have survived such a life, that I overcame those things. That would not be true. I continue to carry the memories and live with the consequences of those things every day, even though it was by another’s choice that they be willfully imposed upon me when I should have been nurtured, protected, and loved. Who I could have become in this life was murdered all those years ago. I am all that remains now, for better or for worse.

It is an unimaginable thing to come to terms with the realization that the guilt that I have borne all these years really was never my guilt, but that of my abusers, those who murdered me in order that they might not have to face their own evil. I think this is the one most difficult realization that a survivor of abuse and molestation must make. We become somehow convinced that we are bad, that we have reason to feel guilty and worthless—even as we try to overcome those feelings of guilt and shame through whatever means we can avail ourselves of—whether it be drugs, alcohol, sex, our jobs. Others turn to the other end of the spectrum, devoting themselves wholly to their church, to religion, to their family, to a benevolent cause. Whatever the case, it is through those things that we try to find escape, peace, acceptance, love, and a sense of worth. And for a time, we do. But the gnawing doesn’t go away. The craving never really is satisfied, and we devote ourselves still more into our “addiction.” And the cycle repeats itself endlessly, always with the same results.

I think it’s safe to say that there have been countless times that I had wished my abusers dead. Because I wanted to believe that with them dead, I could be rid of this rage, guilt, and shame. Yet I know that this will be with me the rest of the days of my life, whether my victimizers are dead or not. In my particular case, the first man who molested me died in a drunk driving accident. The second man eventually contracted AIDS from one of his partners and died. My mother, of course, remains alive and devoted to her ego-centric lifestyle.

But even though my molestors are dead, nothing has changed for me. I did not find the resolution that I had hoped for in their death. That alone is enough to convince me that neither will anyone else find it in the death of their own abusers and molestors.

To others who, like me, have been forced to live a life in the wake of abuse and or molestation, I can offer little more than a compassion with the struggle. Nobody that has not themselves underwent what we have will ever be able to offer that because it is so unimaginably heinous. This is not to say that they won’t try to extend compassion, and we must never downplay their efforts to do so when done out of sympathy rather than pity.

Even so, as I work my way back through my life in this online journal, on this matter I have come to one realization. I can better see now why God allowed me to suffer through such traumatizing events in my childhood. I can now better understand why I was not protected as Christianity would have me believe I would be if I accepted Jesus as my Savior and had faith. If I had not, I would never have been able to give the testimony that I am giving now. If I had not, I would never have been able to feel utter compassion for someone that has lived with abuse and molestation. If I had not, I might never have come to know what it means to truly love, even when I do not feel loved or worthy of love.

In my lifetime, I have known rage, bitterness, resentment, even hatred. I have known what it is like to be emotionally emasculated by an abusive mother even as she physically assaulted me, day after day, year after year. I have known what it feels like to be overpowered by someone and forced to satisfy their perverse sexual lust at the expense of my own childish body. I know these things because I have experienced them, and whether or not I admit it, these have made me who I am today, as well as forever stolen from me whatever I could have become.

But in the midst of it all blossomed this power within me that could not be stifled and can only be described as Love. It has enabled me to be more sensitive the needs of others, to sense what they are feeling even when they are not saying it. It has enabled me to care and to sympathize in the absence of these things from my own life. And so much more.

If I had not gone through what I did, I might never have learned how to be sensitive, caring, and compassionate with others—not in any real sense of those words.

Even so, it does not make things better for me. It does not take away the things that I carry inside me nor the things that I find myself saying or doing when I am not paying close attention to myself. But it does make all those things more bearable. And that, at least for now, must suffice.

There can be only one...

The campaign signs decorate yards and roadways. Daily and hourly polls are recounted continuously and published instantly across the world. Television ads populate the airwaves of radio and television. Devoted supporters make their rounds, dropping of flyers and encouraging people to get out and vote. The hands of every clock drives inexorably the American people relentlessly forward–even the recent falling back of an hour did little more than momentarily stall the inevitable.

On Tuesday, November 4, 2008, sometime after the polls close at 8:00 p.m., barring unforeseen circumstances, the United States of America and the world at-large will have discovered who it is that will become their leader during the tenure as the next President of the United States of America. For better or for worse, America will be wedded anew to that President.

Both candidates proclaim themselves to be the proverbial Best Man, best suited to restore America to its former days of glory and prestige on the world scene. Both have spent massive amounts of money in order to ensure that their campaign promises are heard near and far. Both have raised sometimes audacious claims about one another in an attempt to elevate their own suitability. Indeed, both men have a distinct vision on how they want to save the United States.

But in the end, there can be only one. One will win the 2008 Presidential Election, the other will concede defeat. It’s possible, of course, that the results of the election will be contested, much as has happened in the previous two elections. The stakes are so high that such a possibility may even be inevitable. This will serve to delay a final determination, of course, as to who won the election.

But, someone will win and someone will lose. For the supporters of the losing campaign there will doubtless be feelings of being disenfranchised and cheated. For the supporters of the winning campaign there will be elation and hope and a renewed conviction that Democracy has once again won the day.

It’s impossible to say at this point how long the healing will take, when both sides are able to look at one another from across their respective sides and speak with a united goal and purpose. In fact, it may not happen at all. Many lines of decency were crossed during the course of this election, and it will be a seriously difficult task to somehow then act as though such things were only said in the heat of a passionate campaign run for the highest office of this country.

There is an unsettled air in this country that has been fertilized by the unceasing rhetoric and often acrimonious speeches, complete with a cacophonus backdrop of epithets and shouts from the attending masses that has gone unchecked by the one delivering the speech. Even if the losing presidential candidate somehow manages to portray themselves as accepting of the other’s victory, there is a moral obligation to continue in their role as a former presidential candidate to act as a leader to hopefully assuage the high, heated emotions that have been stirred up during the course of this presidential race. To fail to exhibit leadership at this delicate stage would be tantamount to moral irresponsibility. Again: the losing candidate must make the time to continue in their role as the leader of their campaign, and work hard to wind down the emotions of their ardent supporters. To do any less than that is to invite potential conflict–possibly even tragedy. Loyal supporters that are stirred up will undoubtedly be willing to go to extensive lengths to show their support for their candidate–and for the “cause” that has been promoted by that candidate’s campaign.

The fact that Americans are, for the very first time, looking at their first potential African-American president has surely reawakened deep-seated fears and resentments that typically only find their way into the open through regional cultures and subsequent dialogue. But nobody should think for a moment that such bitterness and resentments can remain buried and guarded forever. The conflicts and social unrest that were borne from the late Martin Luther King Jr.’s appeal for real equality has only been subsided. But only insofar as it is just beneath the veneer that we all socially operate behind. Privately, longheld views make their way to the fore, making it clear that there remain a great many issues that have yet to be resolved when it comes to differences in skin color and culture.

It is equally certain that this election could very well be the spark that reignites the conflict, opening up old wounds and deep-seated prejudices to such an extent that we will see an enormous social upheaval on the heels of this election. Indeed, there are indications that this may be more of a reality than even I suspect.

Regardless, the times are changing for us. We find ourselves standing in a momentous time in history. Cataclysmic events are rocking the financial and corporate world, people are turning to their governments for a way out, and the majority are clinging to a way of life and status that no longer can work in this ever-changing world. We are being dragged kicking and screaming into that change. We may have to make great sacrifices in order to ensure that our children have a future. We may finally realize that national boundaries are no longer a sufficient division between Men, that we must act as a cohesive whole and stop holding onto outdated and outmoded philosophies. Rather than defining our prosperity by the amassing of goods and products, we should define our prosperity by a determined intent and focus to stamp out the very causes of poverty, disease, and yes, even war.

That’s a pretty lofty goal, some may say. A pie-in-the-sky dream that does not match reality. And they would be correct. But should that stop us from at least trying? I mean really trying.

The candidates talked a pretty good game. But once it’s time to make good on those campaign promises and hours of rhetoric, will they have the wherewithal to truly induct change into the world?

A part of me hopes that they will, but another part of me is convinced that it will be business as usual once the ballots are counted and the winner is declared.

What, then, will this election mean? It will mean the potential for true change, but the lack of true, cohesive  determination to actually try to make it happen. Humankind’s history is replete with what starts off as “good intentions,” but then fails utterly and miserably. My heart goes out to those who really are placing their hopes in what they have been promised by their respective candidates. I say so because every time we are disappointed, it becomes a little hard to believe the next time that it will be any different. And, if you are disappointed enough times, you begin to just settle for what meager portions you can get. After all, we console ourselves, something is better than nothing.

Jesus loves me, or so the song says...

As a child, I used to sing the song Jesus Loves Me. The words went, “Jesus loves me, this I know; for the Bible tells me so. Little ones to him belong; they are weak, but He is strong. Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me; for the Bible tells me so.”

But that innocent joy had left me there in Lake Odessa. I gradually left off from desiring to go to Sunday School, although I was forced to go from time to time, when my mother needed a break from three rambunctious boys on the weekends. I no longer looked forward to it like I used to. That feeling of emptiness did not diminish even after we moved to Hastings, Michigan, shortly after I had started the fourth grade (my mother always seemed to choose to move AFTER I had started a new school year).

It was a difficult transition to Hastings. I had suddenly been torn away from my friends there in Lake Odessa without so much as a goodbye. I had to figure out how to “fit in” to the new school, although it did not go well. My fourth grade teacher seemed to single me out for cruelty. It was the year that I also got eyeglasses and had to deal with the teasing of classmates. To adults, such teasings seem trivial and benign, but any child that experiences it can tell you without a doubt that it is definitely NOT trivial. It is haunting, devastating, and downright scarring.

The move to Hastings also saw the greatest escalation up until then in my mother’s depression and dark moods. The slightest thing would set her off and there were countless times when she inflicted whatever pent-up rage and frustration she was burdened with on one or all of us boys. We learned to spend a great deal of our time out-of-doors to avoid her, which helped to minimize the abuse.

I don’t quite remember how, but at some point, I had made the acquaintance of the Buehller family down the street. They were an older couple who attended the Hastings Baptist Church, and invited us to go, which we did–probably at the behest of my mother. We went Sunday mornings to attend Sunday School, and on Wednesday nights to participate in AWANA.

A part of me enjoyed going, but it was a small part and I still could not regain that love that I had back when I was still an innocent child. I did enjoy the AWANA program, however. It was an outlet of energy for me. We had races and other contests to start off the evening, before going off to our assigned groups where we would work our way through handbooks, learning scriptures and principles and earning merit badges–similar to Boy Scouts, yet spiritual pursuits rather than nationalistic ones.

As I said, I enjoyed the activities immensely. However, the studying portion of the AWANA meeting was tedious and boring for me. I couldn’t see the point in learning all of these things, even though many of the other kids seemed to enjoy the challenge.

In looking back, I think a part of me felt that way because none of it seemed to apply to my reality. It was all too neat and tidy and warm and fuzzy. It didn’t reflect what I knew.

I mentioned earlier the song Jesus Loves Me. It is a simple, succinct song meant to inculcate in children an initial love and appreciation for God and for Jesus. But the words had come to mean nothing to me. Somewhere inside me, I couldn’t seem to shake the anger. If Jesus loved me, why did he let such terrible things happen to me? Why was I raped by a molestor on numerous occasions? Why was my mother always angry at everything I did, and always hurting me? Why, if Jesus loved me, did he not protect me when I was weak?

I didn’t dare ask anyone for the answers. Part of the reason was my shame. I felt dirty. Violated. I felt like a wicked child who, as my mother would often tell me, “Had it coming” to me because I was “worthless” and “good-for-nothing.”

But even though I didn’t ask, the fact was that even then I was wrangling with the things I was being told that I needed to believe. I wanted to believe them. Of course I did! But I couldn’t seem to bring myself to. It just didn’t match what I was having going on in my life. If Jesus loved me, why wasn’t he protecting me–first from that molestor, and now from my mother who, it seemed, wanted so many times to outright kill me for some reason beyond my comprehension.

The fact is that domestic abuse and child abuse has as one of its “rewards” a sheltered life. What I mean is that it becomes the family secret. As a consequence of that perverted “honor system,” my perception was that all families were like mine. That left me even more confused, because I’d see other kids and they always seemed so happy and carefree. They were obviously hiding the misery of their lives far better than I was managing. And that made me prone to quick tempers and schoolyard fights.

That’s not to say that I don’t have any fond memories of those years, times when I was happy. I loved my sixth-grade math class, for example. The teacher introduced me to “whiffleball” where we would all–at the end of class–get to sit on our desktops and throw a plastic ball to one another, while trying to do so in a way that got the receiver to drop it. It was sort of like a conservative dodgeball contest, without the whipping of the ball at one another. Dodgeball, too, became a favorite activity of mine. I’m sure I was especially drawn to it because it was a release of pent-up frustration and a way for me to face up to others in a constructive way–even the teachers. At the risk of boasting, I will go so far as to say that I was one of a handful of players who could take out pretty much anyone–even the teachers. There was Andy R., Doug C., Lyle G., and a couple others. We threw hard and everyone knew it. On the girls’ side there was Kim G., Amy A., and Sue K. who were the consistent champs. Dodgeball was really good fun, but always too brief.

It was in Hastings that I also learned that I had a gift for writing. That wasn’t discovered until I met Mark Anton, who wrote these short story mysteries that were somewhat modeled after The Hardy Boys mysteries. Mark had become my best friend during my time in Hastings, although we didn’t get to spend much time with one another outside of school itself, due to my mother’s controlling nature and need to not have us boys more than a house or two away from home.

That was my start in the world of writing. I decided to try my hand at writing these short mysteries, but with Mark and me as the stars. I kiddingly referred to them later as a cross between Scooby Doo mysteries and a very lame version of the Hardy Boys. Mark’s stories were far more based in reality than mine, and more interesting, whereas mine tended towards the fantastical usually. But they did serve to awaken in me a hunger to hone that gift.

It would be my 7th Grade English teacher who would prove to be my greatest motivation to explore writing as a gift. Her name was Mrs. Hund, and the impression that she had on me has lasted down to this day. I admired her and I marvelled at this teacher who was able to bring words to life. I can’t say that I always enjoyed having to write themes and essays or book reports (few kids do!) but she always encouraged me to pursue my avid love for writing, all the same. It was during her time as my teacher that I came to love words, too. Here, at long last, I had found a way to say what did not know how to say. I could put together words and express myself that way.

Too, I had discovered fantasy as a genre. J.R.R. Tolkien was my first exposure to the fantasy novel and I was enthralled almost immediately by the possibilities. In fact, I left off from writing mysteries and turned to fantasy instead. It became an escape for me as I wrote about imaginary people in impossible situations. Too, it gave me a way to let out some of the emotions that would often swell within me, by having my characters have them. Mostly, such emotions were uncontrolled of course. And, my characters were linear; each would be representative of a specific emotion and their identity would be derived from that emotion.

It was very basic stuff really; but all the same, writing came to me at a period in my life that I most needed it, I think. And in spite of my mother’s every attempt to humiliate me about it and take it away from me, I think it made me ever more determined to continue. I had found the voice within me, and nobody was going to take it away from me. Not ever.

My propensity towards dreams returned while living in Hastings, as well. The more disturbing ones were those that actually happened later, just as I had dreamed them. Others were event-based, accompanied by a sense of terror and dread. These were of an apocalyptic nature, and even though I was no longer a child, per se, these were no less frightening. As before, I kept them to myself, afraid that if I spoke of them aloud, I would be thought of as crazy or, worse still, they would happen.

It’s hard to relate how we rationalize things while we are young. Our life’s experiences are so limited, and therefore what we experience must be contextualized by our mind’s limited prior experience. It’s like the way we recognize that an apple is an apple when we look at one–because we’ve seen one before and our brain has stored that visual and the accompanying facts so that the next time, we know it’s an apple.

But how does a young child’s mind explain otherwise illogical, irrational dreams that then actually occur. Especially given the fact that adults respond with “It was just a dream. It wasn’t real.”

Again, it goes back to what I was talking about earlier with the song that sings about how Jesus loves little children, and how that declared fact is incompatible with the reality experienced by the child undergoing molestation and abuse. The two do not synchronize, and therefore the mind is left fumbling for context. The two facts are incompatible with one another, yet our mind tells us that one of them must be true, even if they are not mutually true. And, of course, the experienced reality takes front stage. The molestation and accompanying pain, guilt, and shame are tangibly and verifiably real. If Jesus really loved me, if Jesus really was strong while I was weak, then he would protect me from harm until I no longer was weak and could protect myself from bad things. Again, this is how I as a child fought my way through the dilemma.

It was the same way with the dreams. To be told by people that they were just dreams, that they weren’t real, did not match with the reality when I, as a child, saw those dreams become reality. It brought into question the dreams which had not yet happened, had not become real. Would they? And how could I, as a child, know which was which?

I’m not referring to the dreams of a typical child as the sleeping body gives way to the powerful mind that files and stores information through that marvel-inspiring means that we call dreams. My dreams went far beyond the normal, sometimes to disturbing degrees. Especially the apocalyptic ones. I won’t relate them here, but suffice it to say that if they are to come true, the world as we know it will become a much different one than we know today. At the same time, there is nothing to say that those dreams cannot yet come true. While they were very specific in detail, there was no indication as to time of occurrence.

Still, in spite of the return of the dreams, as well as my resumption of Sunday School attendance, my spiritual side remained far off from myself. And it would be several more years before it would be reawakened in a whole new manner that would take me onto a new path in my spiritual journey.

The dreams, however, would continue, darker and more terrifying than ever before.