Tedder's Blog, page 39

Mirror Mirror ~ Introspection

Introspection — what better way to start a week.

Question – Did a demon rape you?

For the purpose of demonstration, I put forth this question. Don’t panic — hear me out.

Incest is pure evil. Born to disguise, destroy, and manipulate its victims. The bible tells us in Ephesians 6:12, “For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.”

The battle of good and evil.

When a person is given over to the act of incest time and time again, I believe they become a resident place for evil. So, my father raped me but it was the enemy that is not “flesh-and-blood” that pursued him and — obviously won.

If you came through incest, you probably relate to what I am saying. As a child of God, “the battle is not yours, but God’s (2 Chronicles 20:15). Let Him do the fighting for you now.

You can rest, find peace, and moving fully into a place of healing.

Jewels, Gems & Gunpowder

I would love to hear from you! Sharing Saturday with you.

A Jewel: Discouragement – what a strong emotion. Dispiritedness. Downheartedness. This was a guiding force in my life for years and years. I had a belief – and I still struggle with it, that the abusers are by far the more powerful in the incest equation. That could not be farther from the truth, but I have struggled.

Abusers tell their stories with a religious bend to piety and people believe them. Victims tell their treacherous stories of abuse (or don’t!) and we are shunned.

Who is showing more power?

It appears that the abusers win BUT they do not. I’ve watched it. Time and time again I see these once powerful people, now cowardly and afraid. Do you know what they fear? They fear words of truth!

Do you know where I find my strength? In the very truth that they cower from!

A Gem: I cannot lose the gift that God has given me. I don’t have to be perfect. I don’t have to be small. I just have to receive it.

Metaphorical Gunpowder: I am loveable. Nothing will move me from that belief again.

Please comment below by leaving your jewel, a gem or something you keep yourself free from with metaphorical gunpowder.

All love!

Disillusionment

Avoidance based on fear will not protect you from experiencing pain but it will prevent you from growing and learning and evolving and deepening connections with yourself, others and even God.

Getting hurt by people is hard. Getting hurt by what God allows can feel unbearable. While I might phrase my disillusionment as a question of why or how, when I lay my head on my tear-soaked pillow, questions can turn into bitter feelings (and have).

Since trust in relationships is built in part with good communication, then more effectively praying has to play a role in my trust with God – that has been a new one for me. Up until now, with prayer, I’ve expected too little of God and too much of myself. I’ve expected an infinite God to reduce His vast ways of doing things down to only what I can think up and pray for.

Yes, people may create chaos that’s not from God. And yes, the brokenness of this world may bring brokenness to my reality. But in the midst of this, there is good provision from God! That’s what I must look for and make the choice to see.

B

F N’ F (Fear Not Friday)

Question — Do you fear turmoil? Chaos?

I did for many, many years. I was taught to avoid conflict. The very thought of fighting back would have caused me more pain in my upbringing and in the abusive marriage of 17 years that I found myself in.

I was a great student. Abusers taught me silence. God taught me to speak. Wherever you find yourself today, if you are bowing down to abuse to avoid conflict, stand up, find the courage, and walk away. God does not want you in abuse. Never!

If you believe you are being a good person by allowing the “abuser” to have their way, you couldn’t be more wrong. God does not desire you to be a door mat. Never!

Avoiding conflict, chaos and turmoil most often costs us more abuse.

You are a child of God. As His child, you are free. Believe that he wants the best for you. Believe that sometimes standing up and telling someone to F*#k off is a God thing. Trust me on that. Sometimes that is the only voice we can find — use it!

Are you hiding by avoiding conflict?

How do you rest?

I am tired…
anyone else?

Sometimes it’s hard to differentiate between who I am as a human, who I am as a parent, who I am as a partner, and who the heck I an from moment to moment. Feeling exhausted doesn’t help with this.

I’ve been trying to prioritize more rest in my life … and I often think about what rest really means. I love this quote from Dr. Asp, who attempts to pin down a unified vision of rest, and offers up this lovely definition: “The essence of rest is an experience of harmony concerning one’s feelings, actions, and motivation. This implies that there is a capacity for actions, which is carried out in accordance with a sensation of pleasure. Rest appears when one’s needs and longing correspond to the shape and character of the environment. Rest takes many different states, from calm, demand-free, and peaceful conditions to conditions where one is open and perceptive to pleasurable impressions. The essence of rest is characterized by a sense of confidence and trust in one’s own inviolable human dignity and in being loved.” (Am I crying reading a scientific paper? Maybe!!!)

I’ve learned you in order to figure out what rest means for you, you have to check in with yourself a lot.

How do you rest?

B

Cotton Candy & Whimsical Things

A continuum with healing for me was finding moments of fun — full of pleasure. That isn’t an easy task for me.

Much like sex had to feel dirty to be pleasurable, fun had to feel “bad” to be good. Oxymorons abound in the complicated life of a survivor.

Sometimes when I chat with Jesus, I metaphorically have seen him with me in a field of tall grass — flowers swaying in the breeze. I am a child. He takes my small hands and dances ’round with me – laughing. His face is full of love and smiles. It is the most beautiful scene. Sometimes, I find myself looking for that scene in my mind’s eye because it soothes me, comforts me, and teaches me joy.

Life is supposed to be enjoyed, too.

The white knuckling that delving into the past brings, must have relief in it. I believe wholeheartedly in returning to past memories to heal. It is a must. During the process, however, when you can find moments to steal away, do! Bring pockets of happiness to your being.

If cooking makes you smile — cook! If going skating makes you happy — go skating. Put on a dinner party surrounded by those you love. Do something during the process of healing that puts your being at ease.

Life is meant to be more than pain.

When God Doesn’t Prevent Childhood Sexual Trauma

I remember someone telling me that God is always there if I need him. To me, that felt like a lie. I was so little … too little to be so distrustful … but I couldn’t help it.

Many times, I felt like God must have turned his face away; that he was busy doing something else, or something more important must have been happening. He must not have seen me or surely, he would have done something.

I used to feel like I was walking around with a neon light behind me that flashed “Damaged Goods” or “Broken Beyond Repair” or some other sign that conveyed my shame. I know that’s a common feeling for those of us who have been sexually assaulted. It feels like the violation has left a visible mark for everyone to see—that I was now defined by this one thing.

Eventually, I learned that Jesus bore our shame and traded it for righteousness. Whether the shame was put there by our own sin or inflicted on us by the sins of someone else, Jesus bore our shame on the cross. He died so that we could live free of the shackles that shame tries to ensnare us in. He bore our shame so we no longer have to bear it. He took it all away so we know longer have to carry it.

Jesus has cleansed us and made us whole. No person or circumstance can change that reality. No person or circumstance can change your identity.

“Praise the LORD, my soul . . . who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion.”
Psalm 103:2, 4 NIV 

B

A Challenge of Courage

Incest and all childhood sexual assault is wicked and evil. Call it what you will, but no person with true faith could rape a child.

Why are we so dull? Why do we want to soften the blow of wickedness? Is it easier to not include evil with such acts?

What else on God’s green earth could do such atrocities to children?

Childhood sexual abuse and incest is pure, unadulterated darkness. Look at all the devastation it leaves in the lives of the victims.

Denial is the brace that holds it all together.

When I hear stories of childhood rape being told, where is the call out to the evil it represents? There just usually isn’t that reference. It sounds something like, “oh, I was molested by my brother. I’m mad about it, my family doesn’t believe me. And, well, I’ll get on with it.”

What? There is darkness in a brother who would rape a sister. Period.

Or how about the leach down the street – you know, the one you babysat for. Was he evil when he pushed himself on you when you were just a child? Or was that just flirtatious play? Do you hold no residual effects now in your life? You better look real close at that.

I have heard it all. What I haven’t heard is that all of these crimes come straight from the pit of hell. Period. Satan’s best weapon to wound people for the rest of their living years.

I am here to fight that with every last breath I have in me.

If you were raped by your father, that isn’t just bad – it is pure evil. Did your mom have a relationship of incest with you? IT IS EVIL!

But, Jesus sets us free!

Stoicism & Trauma

Having been born into a dysfunctional family, fate was less than kind to me.

In my youth, an ability to distinguish between good reasoning and the irrational had yet to develop. There was little strength within me to grasp anything that would help break my chains. There seemed no way of escaping this terrifying situation. All a child can do is endure, and perhaps seek an explanation, if not a way of coping with such a broken spirit.

I pleaded with God but my situation never seemed to change. As a kid, there was nothing in my power to change my circumstances. After a while, I stopped praying. I stopped trying. I stopped fighting and fell into a pattern of learned helplessness.

Anger consumed my heart and haunted my soul. 

A lot happened before I met God again, but there was something that helped shift my pattern of thinking in the interim: the stoics.

I read this passage when I was getting sober foe the last time:

Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions.

Epictetus, Enchiridion, chapter 1

Seems like such a simple and obvious solution, but one I had completely missed through my struggle: focus on what you can control, and don’t worry so much about what you cannot. This is a practice that is constant in life, and while it’s not easy, this does place things in perspective. This notion of tranquility through acknowledging limits of my control, and sustaining focus upon thought quality pulled me out of the nagging despair I felt the majority of my life.

It’s not easy to practice because it requires constant supervision and correction of thought. It requires vigilance, rigorous self-examination and unyielding honestly. Although I am no sage by any measure, after years of clinging to a negative and defeatist view of life, the tenants of stoicism have helped me let go of one toxic element of life at a time.

B

Teaser Tuesday

Denial is far easier for the day, but it is a slow death. It takes your breath, your life — your years away from from you. It keeps you enslaved to people who will not love you, who will leave you and you stay confused as to why.

From the book A Prisoner by No Crime of My Own,

Chapter 7 – Phantom Pain

“The problem is that we always look for the missing piece of the puzzle instead of finding a place for the one in our hand.”

– Alina Radoi

. . .

I’ve been asked through the years, as many abused women are, why did I stay seventeen years? That isn’t a difficult question to answer. We met as most teenagers do, out driving our local streets. He told me history about his own abusive upbringing, and I was thrown into the role I had known so well – fix it for him and he was going to fix me, too.

He also had a loving side to him. One night, before we married, we were lying on his bed, in each other’s arms, the radio played softly in the background — a song by Seafood Momma (who later changed their name to Quarter Flash) came on: “I’m Gonna’ Harden My Heart and Swallow My Tears.” He told me that every time he heard that song, he thought of me. Again, he saw my pain – or at least I believed he did. I had so little in life that any kind of acknowledgment felt momentous.

Not long after I married, unburdened from my father’s watchful control, odd things happened. When we’d make love, tears would stream down my face – tears I couldn’t stop. I would just turn my face to the side and wait for the act to be over. Richard accepted it. He may have used it against me, but I didn’t see it that way then.

In 1985, our first child was born. A beautiful, brown-skinned baby girl. We named her Brittany Lynne. She ignited in me a love I had never known. I cherished her and it gave me a reason to live. Brooke Ashley came along in 1988. She was a creature of beauty with a delightful disposition. My heart was full.

It was after Brooke’s birth that a first real memory of abuse came to me. Brittany would have been close to three years old. The time my abuse likely began.

. . .