On the Threshold of Hope: Opening the Door to Healing for Survivors of Sexual Abuse (AACC Counseling Library)

by Diane Langberg

we need to care for our body, protecting it from evil and maintaining its integrity.

To abuse people sexually is to attack their person, not just their body.

you cannot damage the body without impact on the mind, the emotions, and every other aspect of who we are.

fear is the core response to trauma.

you need to articulate the fear. Trauma shuts us up. You need to put words to your fear.

Your voice is part of the image of God in you. It is intended to be a powerful force within you. Voice matters. Your voice matters.

The final and very important reason to learn to give voice to your experience and your response to it, is so you can learn to separate the truth from the lies.

you are not guilty for what someone else did to you.

So where you are not guilty, he knows. And where you are guilty, he has offered himself so you might be free.

Being angry in a right way requires a lot of work before God.

Jesus has carried all of the grief you have ever felt, all of the grief that every survivor has ever felt, all of the grief that every suffering human being has ever felt.

A groan is a deep

sound that expresses pain for which there are no words.

he who has redeemed you is able to work redemptively with your emotions.

They are not outside his power to heal and control.

No relationships are free from hurt. Not all hurt is abuse, and not all hurt leads to abuse. Learning to tell “normal” hurt

from “abnormal” hurt is a difficult process.

Having the courage to look at yourself and your own heart instead of exclusively focusing on what others are doling out and how you might need to guard against them will take hard work.

If you have been sexually abused, the basis of most of your relationships is fear.

Fear produces caution, wariness, careful observation.

God’s love will continually call me to do things

that do not come naturally to me. It will expose my heart. I will find that often when I appear most loving to the observer, I am, in fact, simply serving my own ends, protecting my reputation, soliciting points. I will also find that when an observer may judge my actions to be unloving, I may be doing something extremely difficult, something that was done out of sheer obedience to God.

Forgiveness has little to do with your abuser. Forgiveness is about freedom from destructive thoughts and emotions. Forgiveness is about fellowship with God.”

rejection, betrayal, ridicule, silent witness, and abandonment

“I will give you the treasures of darkness, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know that I am the Lord . . . who [calls] you by name” (Isa. 45:3).

If we mindlessly allow circumstances to tell us who God is, then we will believe abominable things about him.

Study Psalm 10, where David is struggling with abusers.

Psalm 22,

Psalm 86,

Psalm 88,

Isaiah 53

Isaiah 53,

The healing process takes a very, very long time.

I need to be prepared to stay with it, even when I am not ‘wanted.’ I must be inviting, available, affirming, but not pushy.

Behind abuse is an enemy of the soul, an enemy who spreads lies, tries to enslave,...

I learned not to expect the survivor to fight for herself. God called me to intercede on her behalf.

the most needed gift God gives us is faith, not in ourselves, but in what he can do.

learn how to enter into another’s pain without being drowned by it.

“Greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world.”