Timothy Kline: Thoughts and Reflections

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.

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.

I am a survivor of child abuse and molestation

I could never have imagined that within a year or two of my declaring that I had accepted Jesus as my savior in the warm, gently lilting waters of Jordan Lake at the tender age of 7, that I would have forever taken from me my childhood. I would never have imagined that it would only be a year or so after I had publicly and proudly declared that I loved God and wanted to live for Him that I would have my innocence stripped away, replaced by a mantle of shame, self-loathing, and deep-seated pain.

Now, some 33 years hence, I can talk about it. But it wasn’t always that way. It was a long, difficult, often errant path to this point, actually. I kept the incident my shameful secret, and at times I was convinced that I had deserved it; that I was a wicked, wayward child and therefore had no reason to complain or question the matter.

It cast a pall on my life and a dark shadow across my intimate relationships as I grew into maturity. It skewed my perception of love and normalcy, although there would be additional factors that would exasperate the situation still more.

I am, as you may have surmised, a survivor of child molestation.

Because of a child’s limited vocabulary (thus their lack of a means by which to express the heinous act) and their lack of capacity to process such a brutal, insidious crime against them, only another survivor can possibly relate to the level of shame, self-loathing, and disgust that results from molestation. However, the very nature of sexual abuse is such that it becomes a very private secret. A violation of cataclysmic proportions has occurred, against nature itself, and yet the child is left with the conviction that they either deserved it, or they are flawed to such an extent that there is little to no redeeming quality to be found, no matter how hard one looks.

For example, much of my younger life was filled with responses to my express hunger to grow in knowledge and learn all that I could. I applied myself vigorously to school and to reading from a very early age. In some ways you might say that I was precocious–although I don’t think I would go that far in describing myself. The response from the adults that surrounded me, however, were, “You’re the one that’s going to make something of himself some day,” and other similar commendations. I never believed it for a minute. For me, it always came back to “If you knew this about me, you wouldn’t be saying that. You’d be disgusted and never look at me the same again.”

And Oh how I wanted people to like me, to approve of me. Because I sure didn’t like me.

For survivors of child sexual abuse and molestation, it’s an incomprehensible feeling of one’s own filthiness and abhorrence. We feel it within ourselves and are absolutely convinced that everyone else can see it when they look at us. We sense that they’re patronizing us with their commendations and appraisals and pats on the head and back in some pathetic attempt to help us to cover over the pervasive sense of filth that oozes from our very core.

Some become so scarred and damaged by the experience that they become victims of sexual abuse and molestation. Others manage to somehow muddle their way through the trauma and go on to have functional lives. They are the survivors.

But although they are survivors, they are no less traumatized than the ones who become victims of such an insidious violation. Lasting happiness may forever elude them. Relationships become difficult. Trust becomes near impossible. They manage to find a way to function in the real world, nonetheless and in spite of the perpetual turmoil that goes on within them. But an inner sense of peace, while constantly sought, always remains painstakingly elusive.

I can recount the details, even to this day. I remember the threats made as I protested. I remember experiencing the onset of terror in a very real and tangible way, and then subsequently sodomized on several occasions. It became, or so I was told by my rapist, the price I had to pay if I wanted to continue to be able to visit with my grownup friend Bill. Because if anyone found out, they’d never let me come over there again. And I cherished that friendship too much. I cared for that father-figure of a man too much. On some of the occasions, Randy threatened to even kill Bill, and if that happened, it would be my fault. Of course, I still felt a tremendous sense of guilt for what had happened to the neighborhood bully that terrible night, and so I bought into the threat.

It’s ironic, though. I say this, because my mother was so suspicious of Bill and worried over my being around him too much. It wasn’t until many years later that I found out that word had gotten around that Bill was a homosexual. She had been worried that he might or did try something with me, she finally confided when I was an adult. My response was simple and concise: “No, mom. Bill never did anything to me. Never even intimated such a thing. Randy, on the other hand, raped me over the course of several months.” She was aghast.

Much later, I learned that Bill had died as lonely as he had been when I knew him during my early years. Randy, on the other hand, had been arrested several times for selling narcotics and drunk driving. Some part of me for a very long time wished that he had died like that neighborhood bully had died. Violently and with finality. I never felt guilty about that wishful thinking.

I was molested again years later, by another male who had succeeded in winning his way to my heart and managing to become a father figure to me at a time when I so sorely needed a father. But it would be the last time that someone would ever get away with imposing their perverted lust on me. I was older and more hardened by the ongoing duresses in my home life, and thus better equipped to put up a fight and get away with at least some of my dignity intact.

But it convinced me more than ever that I could not trust anyone. To allow myself to become a friend to someone was to leave myself exposed to hurt and potential exploitation. In an attempt to make sense of the futility of my existence, I turned to drugs and alcohol.

I was the perfect candidate for drug and alcohol abuse, actually. As I mentioned earlier, my mother had taken a turn for the worse following the initial separation from my father and subsequent divorce. She was a single mother trying to raise three rambunctious boys who were very much lacking the direction and discipline of a father. Following her attempted suicide, she took to bouts of anger and frustration. Much of it was exhausted on us boys as she resorted to physical abuse and oral berations. It continued to intensify for years, reaching extraordinary yet horrific levels by the time I had reached my teen years. It was always so unexpected, yet expected. She’d be having what she termed a “bad day” and one of us would be the “last straw” at which point the beatings would begin, along with a string of hatefilled epithets about our worthlessness and being just like our father, etc.

Even that, like the attempt to rape me by another molestor, came to an abrupt end, when I was sixteen years old.

We were living in Ionia at the time. It was the beginning of my rebellious period, which was set into motion by the sudden, unexpected surprise one day as I was coming home from the bus stop. We were living in Hastings at the time. We’d moved there from Lake Odessa, and we had a small yellow cabin up on a hill overlooking Algonquin Lake. We’d lived there since my 4th grade in school, and I had made one good friend and also established quite the reputation for both my absolute rage (unleashed one day on the playground upon a fellow classmate named Troy, whom I to this day am absolutely convinced that I was on the verge of killing in response to boyish teasing or bullying or some other forgotten motivation). I had a few other fights after that, usually instigated by a bully named Tony, but over time the fights diminished, henceforth committed to the annals of childhood I imagine.

In any event, and before I digress further, I was convinced that I would graduate with my friend Mark, and we’d go on to college and live happily ever after with our other school pals, etc etc etc. Such are the dreams and aspirations of a child in denial, I suppose.

It was my ninth grade year of school. I was a freshman in Hastings High School, daunted by the enormity of the school and the lofty expectations of the faculty and curriculum.

It was only a few weeks into the start of that school year when I got home that afternoon and was told that we were moving. Where, I asked? Why?

To Ionia, I was told by my mother. And the why was not for me to worry about. Just get in the car because we had to go.

She had managed to have everything packed up and moved out while we were gone to school that day. There had been no warning, no hint, that it had been in the works. I was, to say the least, absolutely floored by the sudden revelation. I never even had the opportunity to say goodbye to my friend Mark, or anyone for that matter. It was as if, in the minds of everyone who had ever known me, I had vanished from the face of the world.

I didn’t take the upheaval of my life very well, either. I became despondent and rebellious. I hated everything about Ionia. It had been a huge source of misery for me, and here I was right back there again. Well, I decided, I’m going to make her regret it.

I started skipping school, for one. I would, instead, go down to the city library and essentially hang out in the upper floor pretending to research papers. I did that the majority of the time, actually. The rest of the time, I’d sneak home and hide out in my room.

My resistance was not met with well by my mother, of course. Her frustration escalated and the abuse became more and more volatile in nature until one day the following summer she had managed to corner me in my room with a board flailing in the air and landing on me a few times as I wailed and tried to run away from her in terror.

It was then that something welled up within me, and I turned on her like a frightened, cornered beast. I shoved her down hard on my bed, climbed atop her, pinning her down fiercely, and roared at her: “Don’t. Ever. Try. To. Hit. Me. Again.” I felt the rage pouring from my very core, and I’m sure I looked like a wild beast, but I didn’t care. I wanted to make it suddenly and unequivocally clear that IF she ever tried to hurt me again, she would be sorry. Very sorry.

Miraculously, she never did try to hit me again. Not with her hand, not with a belt or a paddle, not with a steel flyswatter, not with a switch or a board. She never laid a hand on me after that day–even though to this day she swears up and down that I tried to kill her. I know that I didn’t, although I’m sure I could have–if I had been so inclined. I just wanted to make it clear that I would not be her target any longer, and I did not want there to be any mistake about my determination to ensure that it never happen again.

It was like something went off inside me. I snapped, I admit. And who wouldn’t, after enduring years of parental physical, emotional and mental abuse–not to mention the molestations I had endured. Human beings have their limit. I had reached mine.

Somewhere amidst it all, I drew away from God as well. My initial joy and love for spirituality and God and Jesus and worship was stolen from me through the events following my baptism. The abuse, the rapes, the upheavals and uncertainties had all managed to erode me. My soul. That part of ourselves that can’t normally be hindered or meddled with. I had my childhood stolen from me by the time I was 8 years old, and I spent the next 8 years after that trying to make sense of my perception of a twisted, dangerous world.

I had thought that I wanted to serve God because He was loving, gracious and kind. Yet He didn’t do anything to protect me, either. What sort of God allows that? I didn’t know and I wasn’t so sure that I cared any more. What mattered was survival, and the only person that I could depend on for that was me.

[End of Part 3]