I wanted to take some time today to write on a topic that I had the privilege to preach on, over a year ago. It’s the topic of abuse and how we navigate it as a believer. Most if not all of us have suffered abuse in some way, shape or form. Personally, I experienced abuse as I was growing up and then again by my ex-wife.
Psalms 147:3:
“ He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.”
When I was young, one day, my dog made a mess and I told my stepdad he needed to clean it. My reasoning being that he didn’t work and he only spent his time cleaning the house and watching us. However, he got upset with my comment and told me to clean the mess instead. I remember dragging the mop through the mess and dropped it behind me. “It’s clean” I said.
Immediately he grabbed me and took me to the bathroom. The bathroom we had was long and narrow. He threw me to the other side of it where the toilet was, causing me to almost hit the toilet and having to catch myself. When I turned to see where he was, I saw him holding the belt in his hand and had already begun swinging it towards me. By this point, I had decided not to allow him to break me or my spirit. So, I looked back as he was hitting me repeatedly on my butt with the belt. In my mind, I started to count the swings he was taking and when I got to 5, I saw him grab the belt with both hands and swing as hard as he could. I could feel him really trying to dig into his strength. I lost count after 10.
When he finished, I shed one tear down my cheek and thought “Man, I failed because he saw me shed that one tear.” I was then told I had to sit down on the steps as punishment. 30 minutes later, he called me into his room and rubbed lotion where he hit me. He told me he was going to tell my mom about him hitting me because he wasn’t allowed to hit us. He never did. Three weeks later, I still had a massive purple bruise on my legs. My mom ended up seeing it and when she asked what it was, I told her it was nothing. My sister finally told her that it was our stepdad who hit me with the belt. She got up and looked sad but did nothing.
Now, I was always experiencing different things from my step dad such as name-calling, cursing us out, being controlling and I witnessed him doing the same things to my siblings. At the time, I didn’t realize it was actually abuse. I went to a camp one year and they asked if we had ever been abused. I didn’t necessarily know what abuse was so I asked what abuse looked like. Once they told me, I realized that my life looked like that. I raised my hand. It was at that moment I knew I had experienced abuse.
Abuse comes in different forms and/or from different people in our lives. When it comes to abuse, I wanted to share 4 points that we should be working through to help us heal.
1. Evaluate your trauma
The definition of trauma:
Trauma can be caused by an overwhelmingly negative event that causes a lasting impact on the victim’s mental and emotional stability. While many sources of trauma are physically violent in nature, others are psychological. Some common causes of trauma include: Rape, neglect, abandonment – just to name a few.
There are many moments that we question: “What is happening in my life?” Whether the things that are happening are acceptable or not.
When we have taken the time to evaluate our experiences, only then can we identify them aa traumatic event or trauma. I want you to take a moment and bring something like that to your mind. Something that happened to you that you have pondered on whether it was abuse or not. Like an adult cursing you out when you did something wrong or being verbally assaulted as an adult.
Bring this memory to the forefront of your mind. Reflect on it.
Having given yourself time to reflect, are there similarly traumatic events that you thought of? Like – if what someone said hurt you and they did it over and over again; Or, if you were in a relationship and your partner hit you or used you for sex or forced sex on you when you were in a vulnerable state which only left you confused. If anything like this has happened to you, then you’ve probably experienced abuse and it has had an impact on you.
Now I won’t lie to you and say the Bible says a lot about evaluating abuse. It does however say this:
Psalms 34:18:
“The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.”
In moments of abuse or hurt the Lord is near
When we are facing those difficult moments that are literally altering us, the Lord is there and present in our lives, and He does not allow these burdens to crush us completely. When we have been abused, we carry this burden on our shoulders and it feels like a heaviness is resting over us. But in the midst of that despair, we are searching for something and that something is hope.
2. Hold on to the hope
As humans, we are wired to hope for something. So in the midst of our abuse, we hold on to hope.
Let’s go back to my step-father for a moment. One day, we were all sitting in the living room which was unusual for us. Normally, we all had to be crammed into one room, and weren’t allowed to be anywhere else.
My sister said something (I can’t remember now) and my stepdad took a water bottle that was almost full of water and flung it as hard as he could at my sister. It hit her in the chest. She bent forward on her knees in pain, crying and wheezing for air. I was in disbelief that he would do it in front of my mom because that was the hope that we all held on to. That he would never do anything in front of my mom. So as someone who had this hope in my mom, I looked at my mom hoping she would intervene. I will never forget the moment she looked at me and said “What do you want me to do? She deserved it.” At that moment, I was broken. The one hope I held on to had let me down and told me she wasn’t going to rescue us.
For someone, it could look like waiting for your boyfriend to change. You hold on to that hope, thinking “Maybe he won’t hit me if I do this or if I’m obedient.” Or maybe you think to yourself, “My friends might stop saying those things about me if I change them.” These small hopes that we are holding on to, will all eventually be snatched up by the reality of life. Leaving us in despair. Placing our hope on the things of this world will only leave you in disbelief and despair. There is only one faithful hope.
The Lord is the hope we hold on to.
1 Peter 5:10:
“And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.”
The Lord promises that after we have suffered (regardless of the reason), He is going to restore you. The only hope we can have is Jesus. If the only hope I had was my mom, then what? If the only hope you had let you down then what?
Before I discovered the hope of Jesus, I wandered aimlessly; with nowhere to go and nothing to look forward to except the heaviness that I was carrying. The heaviness that came from how I was feeling emotionally.
3. Understand your emotions
Abuse in any form causes an emotion in you. In me it caused anger. An anger that felt like my blood was boiling over. For you, it could also be anger, or even feel like loneliness, sadness, or emptiness. These are all emotions we feel due to abuse of any kind; be it physical, sexual, verbal or emotional.
Now, you may not even begin to understand your emotions and that’s okay. That’s why we can seek out professional help like a therapist. Professional help is good because it helps us navigate these murky waters to understand what we’re feeling.
But why is it necessary to understand your feelings?
Without fully understanding your feelings you will never be able to move past them. Jesus experienced what we experienced in this world when it comes to abuse. He was betrayed, he was beaten, he was called names, he was spit on and stripped of his clothes. Yet, he still found the strength to utter what is seen in Luke 23.
Luke 23:34:
And Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
This was Jesus who had just been abused a couple of moments before. And yet, He has the strength to utter “Forgive them.” So, what should we do once we’ve understood our emotions?
Forgive like Jesus
We need to be able to forgive the other person. And I know what you are thinking. You’re probably thinking something like: “You don’t understand. They did this to me and it’s unforgivable.” “Over my dead body would I allow someone to do something like that to me and me not get even with them.” Maybe in this moment you are holding on to those feelings and you are waiting for an apology from that person.
I was waiting for the same thing when we moved away from my stepdad. I remember I would talk about what happened with my mom and try to explain what she allowed to happen for years. I wanted her to apologize, but my mom never actually gave me an apology. She would actually turn it around on me and try to make herself the victim.
But you know what? The other day someone told me they wish they had the same relationship that I do with my mom. The only reason my relationship with my mother is where it’s at, is because I forgave her. It isn’t because of her efforts; it’s because I just accepted where she was at emotionally and spiritually. I chose to forgive her and move forward with my life. Forgiveness isn’t for those that wronged you, forgiveness is for you. Holding onto those feelings will keep you in the same place unable to grow.
When we forgive others, the Lord will forgive us like it says in the book of Matthew. But we will also be able to actually move on from those feelings that we really shouldn’t hold on to. Holding on to those feelings is like holding on to a knife and continuously getting cut because you are constantly holding the blade. Unforgiveness will have you carrying a heavy burden preventing you from actually being able to live your life for you.
After we deal with these feelings, we have to deal with the effects.
4. Understand the effects
Abuse does one last thing to you. It changes you. You won’t be the same after going through abuse. I wasn’t the same after going through what I went through with my family and even romantic relationships. After my abuse, I had this wall up so I wouldn’t let anyone in because I didn’t want to be hurt again. Other people could see the wall, but I couldn’t notice that it was there. It was so evident, that one of my mentors actually wrote me a letter. In it, he spoke about letting my wall down sometimes because there are good people out there. I just have to be willing to let them in.
There’s so many other ways all the abuse changed me. I become much more alert and observant. I find myself wanting to know every detail of everything. I’ve developed this voice of someone who fights for himself. But these changes weren’t necessarily who I was before or who I am after. Glimpses of who we were still come through every now and then. I have been told that I am a big teddy bear at the end of the day.
So how does God want to redeem this side of us?
1 Peter 5:10
“And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.”
The Lord will restore you
Here, we see a letter written by Paul to the church about them being hurt and the enemy plotting against them. He lets them know the Lord will restore them, strengthen them and establish them. The Lord will restore us to our former selves that the abuse tried to steal from us. Those things that we feel like we lost. The person we were is still inside of us, the abuse has not taken that away. The Lord is telling you He will bring that person right out of you.
I know that we can trust in this promise because God has experienced abuse himself. When his son was crucified for us, Jesus endured betrayal, physical, verbal and emotional abuse. He truly understands the predicament that we are in when it comes to abuse and wants nothing more than to restore us. It would be remiss of me to not let you know that this isn’t a journey you simply start on your own. I would have never known about my wall and anything else that was present due to my abuse if I was on my own and isolated.
Hebrews 10:25:
25 not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.
Be in community
This simply states be in community, do not neglect being with your friends. With brothers and sisters in Christ.
When I lived on my own without really getting to know people, I lived with blinders on. We all do this. There are so many things we all do that we are unaware of. But when we take the chance of being in community, that’s when our true character has a chance to be revealed. Sometimes that includes therapy if you don’t know where to begin in this journey. You may not know how to evaluate trauma, hold on to the hope of Jesus, understand your emotions or overcome the negative effects. Therapy can help with all of that, I myself have gone to therapy after everything. So I would encourage you to do the same. But start in community with each other.
Psalms 147:3
“ He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.”
He is here to heal you and bind up the wounds that you have experienced. You just need to be able to tell him what wounds are the ones that need healing. But you can’t do that without doing everything else first. Don’t let your abuse be like your suitcase/bag that you don’t open or go through after traveling for a while.
If you are sitting here haven’t truly had an experience with God and you need His healing, He is drawing near to you. Take that leap of faith and invite Him into your life and let Him see you. He is waiting to truly heal you.