Like A Lightbulb Came On

Some people grew up in dysfunctional families. I grew up in a great family. I was the dysfunctional one. I thought I was flawed somehow. I never told anyone about the abuse and it sent me into a downward spiral of self-destructive behavior.

I was almost 50 years old when I read a book of my daughter's about a young woman who had been sexually abused at 5 years old by neighborhood boys. It was like a lightbulb came on in my head and I thought "How old was I?". I figured out I would have been 6 years old. For the first time in my life I thought "maybe it wasn't my fault."

I bought a book about csa, "The Right to Innocence" by Beverly Engel. I read through the symptoms of childhood sexual abuse and realized it had defined my life. I wasn't a bad person. I had been a small child that something bad had happened to. Other helpful books I read were "The Wounded Heart" by Dr. Dan Allender and "The Courage to Heal" by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis. I went to a counselor that helped me look at myself in a positive way.

But my real healing came from Jesus. He gave me the strength to feel the pain and the courage to talk about it to safe people. He peeled the layers off my frozen heart one by one until the got down to the hardened core. What He showed me there was that I didn't really believe He loved me. I believed He died on the cross for everyone but me because I was too bad for Him to love.

Jesus has spent the years since then showing me that His love for me is so great that He would have died on the cross for me if I had been the only one. He is still faithfully teaching me. I'm a slow learner. I still have bad days, but I used to have bad years.

I owe my life to Jesus Christ because He has set me free from the bondage of my past. "So if the Son sets you free you are truly free", John 8:36. NLT