Since many MKs (missionary kids) have attended boarding school and the reports of abuse are coming in at an epidemic rate I wish to discuss how we can deal with the results of abuse.
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I was finally taken out of the situation at age 7 and allowed to live with my grandmother, but she died 3 years later and I had to return home. I lasted there a year before being removed again. This time I was placed with an alcoholic senile grandfather. I lasted there a year before running away and refusing to return. The next five years, I was in foster care.
I used to think that when I became a Christian that all of those wounds would somehow disappear, but they haven't. I believe that the healing process is like peeling layers of an onions. You do a little bit at a time and you cry a bit in between.
My own healing journey has been far from easy or straight. I have struggled with forgiveness, identity issues, post-traumatic stress reactions, depression, etc.
Some of my wounds were from well-meaning Christians who simply did not believe what happened or who thought that I should just be able to forgive and forget and move forward. I believe that I needed to acknowledge what happened before I could forgive. I needed to grieve the losses associated with my story, so that I would have greater appreciation for the ways that God could redeem my story.
It is important to me to be able to find "safe" people to share my story with. Some are quick to judge the necessity or value of re-telling something painful but it's part of our life and in the process of telling the story, we learn to accept validation, comfort, and the help that we need to heal.
Throughout my life, God has placed wonderful godly people around me to encourage, comfort, disciple, and support me. During the worst part of my life, I met a man who shared with me how God was a father to the fatherless. He let me tell my story, he wept with me, and he made himself available to help me heal. He helped me see that God could take the broken pieces of my life and use them for kingdom purposes.
I am a mental health therapist and a pastor's wife, but I am still working on healing everyday. God has allowed me to use my story to help other children who were abused, neglected, and in foster care. He has given me opportunities to "Comfort others with the comfort that I have received" in ways that I never would have been able to without having gone through the trauma that I went through. That doesn't mean I'm happy about what I went through, it just means that God can use turn it into something useful. Someone once said to me that one of the biggest challenges we have is to stop asking God why things happened and start asking how they can be used for good.
Jenni Biegler said:
Shary,
I'm new here but have suffered quite a lot of abuse - some in my family of origin and a couple of times now from men in relationships.
Healing is hard. I liked what you said about it being like the peeling off of layers of an onion, with some crying in between.
I am on my own journey of healing - one of my incidents of abuse was recent and long term. I just found out today I made a serious mistake in which I misjudged somebody who had the best of intentions - but it was just my "old stuff" reacting to something he said - and he never meant any harm.
I was very humbled when I realized I had made this misinterpretation. And I know its from my abuse and some PTSD issues I have.
So I know God can and does heal - I know with abuse, it just takes time. How complete the healing will be I guess depends on how complete God wants it - I guess.
But anyway, its a tough, tough road! It happens though and I think I am learning to keep myself in the Word, commit to prayer and including intercessory prayer for others - and take my faith in Christ very seriously. God will do the rest.
Brenda