Real Grace

Well, here we are at the end of September already.  What a busy month this has been!  Started homeschooling again as well as a new REAL Grace group here in Maryland.  I’m very excited to be facilitating grace groups again.  It’s been a little over a year because of relocating.  I missed it so much!  I can’t tell you any details about the group but I can tell you it’s a group of wonderful ladies who are ready to do the hard work!  I feel very honored to be a part of this group.

This month started off with a last minute trip to visit my family in NH.  I decided to take the long holiday weekend and drive up.  I had just been through some very emotional situations leading up to that weekend with training for REAL Grace groups and the passing of my mother in law.  Surprisingly, I felt that I really needed to spend time with my family.  To be more specific, I felt like I really needed my family.  This feeling was entirely new to me.  The dysfunction I experienced in my family growing up taught me to be very self sufficient. I began taking care of myself from a very young age; not so much physically but definitely emotionally.  Taking things into my own hands at a very young age certainly came with it’s down side because realistically, how much capability does a 7 year old have?  I have never felt like I truly “needed” anyone in my family.  I’ve wanted healthy relationships with each of my family members but even in that saw only what I could offer them.  The driving force for this visit was that I needed my family.  I needed to hang out with them, to laugh with them, and to cry with them.  I had no idea if this was actually possible.  This has never been the normal function of my family.  I had never looked to them for emotional support.  Somewhere, somehow, I felt it was time to do that.  I was scared to death.  I was afraid of being let down…again.  It’s what I feel I have experienced all my life with my family; deep disappointment and that I am a deep disappointment.  Something was definitely “pushing” me to move forward though and take this trip.

So, the kids and I ventured off together.  My husband was on a business trip and couldn’t join us.  We arrived in NH and I experienced many things over the next few days but there is one thing in particular that I absolutely have to share.  I knew and was even looking forward to seeing my parents on this trip.  I believe I have written in previous posts that I have been having some good conversations with them about the abuse and the damage that occurred growing up and was receiving some healthy responses from them.  While I knew I really wanted to see them I was not sure that I would want to give my father a hug.  That was still a major issue for me.  In the days leading up to the trip I went back and forth as to whether or not I would be able to.  I left it up in the air.  I’ve been learning to give myself a break and to stop holding myself to such high and unrealistic expectations.

The day came and the plan was to meet my sister and then go over to my parents house to pick up her daughters.  We arrived and my kids and her kids immediately were off playing and chatting together.  My mom came over and gave my sister and I a hug.  Dad hugged my sister and then stepped back and casually joined the conversation with my mother and I.  He never motioned for me to give me a hug.  He did nothing.  It was wonderful!  He finally respected my boundaries and gave me the choice.  I did notice it right away and processed whether or not I wanted to give him a hug.  At that moment, I did not feel the need to so I didn’t.  It was wonderful to be able to make the choice for myself.

The conversation continued with just the four of us. After a few moments my father looked at me and asked, “Are you alright?”  That’s all he had to say, I completely broke down and started crying.  I still tend to “stuff” my emotions and I had been feeling so sad about my mother in law but I didn’t want to be the one to drag everyone down.  When he asked that question, it opened the flood gates.  I started sharing how I was feeling with them.  At one point my mom asked me, “What can we do to help you?”  Again, I was blown away.  I couldn’t believe how she and dad had reached out to me.  I said, “I just need hugs and laughter.”  She walked towards me and said, “I think we can do that.”  Then she gave me a big hug.  My father was standing to the right of me.  He put out his hand and I could tell he wasn’t sure what to do.  He wanted to touch me, to reach out and console me, but he wasn’t sure if he should.  Well, I grabbed his hand because, again, I saw how he was really trying to respect my boundaries and yet let me know that he cares.  When I was done hugging mom I turned to dad and we hugged and cried for the next several moments.  I couldn’t believe it.  All that anxiety I usually feel when I hug him or any other man was gone.  It was so amazingly healing for me.  I still get very emotional when I talk about it.  This was huge!  I can now hug my brother, my brothers in law and most other men without feeling the anxiety.  I feel so free!  I have to say that I don’t feel to hug every man I meet but it’s not because I feel that anxiety.  I just don’t feel like I have to hug them and that feels great!  I spent time with my parents again a couple of days later hanging out at my brothers house.  It was the most relaxed I have ever been around them.  I completely felt free to be me!

I’ve had some time to reflect and I know that it could only have been God prompting me to take that trip.  There is no way I would have had the courage to take the risk and make myself vulnerable to my family like that.  I’m too connected to the pain of the past now.  The fear of feeling that pain again would have normally paralyzed me and I would have chosen to not give my family the opportunity to reach out to me.  In the past, giving my family that opportunity would have seemed futile and ridiculous.   Today, I am so thankful I took the risk.  I had many conversations with God the days leading up to the trip and even while I was there.  I knew I had to let Him have control.  That was not easy for me.  I’m still learning to trust God as well as people.  This trip was a huge step forward in learning to trust.  There’s still more healing to come within my own heart and within my relationship with my parents but I do feel some much needed progress has been made.

Now this is the million dollar question.  So many of us battle with this question especially after we have realized just how evil abuse is.  My answer to this question is,”Because He wants a deep and intimate relationship with me”.  Ok, I hope I didn’t just lose anyone here.   Hang with me for a minute and I’ll try to explain.

Over the last 5 years I have been doing some intense soul searching as well as God searching.  I never stopped believing in God but I was having a hard time trusting Him and understanding who He really is.  I began to pray specifically about this and let me tell you not once did I feel God’s “wrath” or anger come down on me like I half expected it would.  I discovered He is not surprised by my emotions and my humanness.  He loves me and wants to bring me understanding.  I found that it is ok for me to ask questions, even questions like, “Who are you God?”  I also began talking with others and reading, along with the Bible, some really good books.  One of those books was “The Shack”.  I know there is a lot of controversy surrounding this book but I have to tell you, I grew up understanding God to be nothing more then a judge ready to pour out His anger on me whenever I messed up.  The Shack helped me to really identify with the grace of God.

So, today, after I think back over everything I have learned about who God is, His character, I feel that it would go against His character to stop abuse or any other kind of evil in this world today.  Why?  Because of the very reason He created us in the first place.   God wanted to love someone and someone to love Him simply because of relationship not because of rules and laws.  So, He created us with a free will.  If He begins to interfere with free will, it will change our relationship with Him.  How, you might ask?  Well, I relate it to my relationship with my children.  I believe my relationship with my children is one relationship that is a mirror of my relationship with God.  I could easily demand my kids to love me and do things for me and in return keep all evil from them.  Of course, I’m not God so the only way I could keep evil from them is to keep them in the house all the time with no TV, no computer, don’t let them walk around especially up and down stairs because they might fall and experience pain, etc., etc.  All of that does not sound like freedom to me; freedom for me or for my children.  That’s the absolute beauty of my relationship with God…FREEDOM!

So, again, I need to answer this question putting the proper perspective on abuse.  Abuse is evil and God has nothing to do with it.  He has everything to do with my healing from it!

This topic comes up quite frequently.  It came up again last week as we were training women to become facilitators for our REAL Grace for Women small groups.  We had some discussion on it but I feel like I need to write about it and hope I gain more clarification.

Many have said to me that they feel God has allowed their abuse to happen and each and every time I heard it I would get this knot in my stomach.  I have to say I do not feel like that is truth.  How can God have anything to do with something He absolutely hates. I’d like to quote a few paragraphs from “The Journey” guide.  This is the book we use in our small groups.  It reads, “When you were a child, you thought and understood as a child, but now you are an adult and need to look at the offense as Jesus does.  (I Corinthians 13:11)  You must come to the place where you agree with God.  The one who harmed you has committed an offense worthy of hell. This is clear from Leviticus (in the Bible), chapters 18 though 20 where every kind of abuse was mentioned.”  Did you know abuse was mentioned in the Bible?  I’ve been raised in the church and didn’t realize until 5 years ago that God speaks specifically about abuse.  The book goes on to say, “Moreover, in Leviticus 20:4, He (God) speaks of the abomination of sacrificing a child to Satan and says He will set His face against any man, and his family, who turn their face and won’t look at it and won’t put the offender to death.  So not only the offender, but those who excuse the offense are guilty.”  Some pretty harsh words for the sin of abuse and those who perpetrate it.

I’d like to quote one more paragraph from the book because I feel it is very powerful.  “Is it all right, even godly, to be angry about the harm done to you?  Yes, you must agree with God.  Until anger is acknowledged, you will be lukewarm over this sin.  Perhaps you have never allowed yourself to feel the rage over your harm.  Certain abuses are criminal acts and are punishable by law.  Few abusers go to jail because the deed is held in silence by the one who was harmed and others who minimize its damaging effect.”

So now I’m starting to feel like I want to proclaim, “Death to all perpetrators!”  However,  what I think I’m realizing is that God’s justice will prevail over perpetrators and I have to trust Him so that I don’t take justice into my own hands.  II Peter 3:7-9 says that God is withholding judgment because He longs for all to come to repentance.  So I have to trust in His timing, not my own, for justice to play out for my abuse.  I do feel it is absolutely necessary for me to get angry over the abuse.  If I do not, then I become tolerant of abuse and I am no better then those who perpetrate it.

So, if He didn’t allow the abuse why didn’t He stop it? I will write more on that tomorrow.