As human beings, we are built with a need for acceptance and love. Even those who say they don’t, at heart, still care and want others to care about them as well. We feel the lack of something important in our lives and try to look for the answer in the world around us.
It is a never-ending search because, no matter how much someone else professes to accept us or to love us, there is a part of them that is held back. That is because we are also born with the need to put ourselves first. It is that instinct for self-preservation that allows us to survive in a world that is often hostile and unloving.
There are some people who are born into families that are loving and giving. There are some of us who have families that have no love, no community, no sense of putting the family above themselves, even for a short time. There are some who are born into abusive families that cause pain and humiliation and a sense of failure for those who are part of it. I think most families are a little bit of all of these things.
When I was a child, my family was more balanced though there was definitely an element of physical abuse that went beyond the bounds of loving reprimands. Once my parents divorced and I lived with my mother and siblings, the dynamic of our family went from somewhat balanced to one of abuse and a lack of caring for each other.
I’ve talked previously about my abuse by my mother and how it led her to give permission to my older brother to abuse me as well. It wasn’t too far a step for him to attempt to sexually assault me as well. This started when I was when I returned from a short time I spent with my father. I recall the first time it happened. My mother went to sleep and left us up to watch television until our bedtime. My brother handed me a book and commanded me to read it out loud to him. It was a pornographic book about the incestuous relationships of a man with his mother, his sister, and even his own daughter.
I struggled to read a bit to him because I didn’t understand the physical acts that were described. I was pretty naive in those days and had not been taught about normal physical relations let alone perverted and abnormal ones.
All I knew was that I hated reading it and wanted to get away from him and so I did. Even at so young an age, I somehow understood I had to keep him at arms length. From that night forward, I placed a chair under my bedroom door. And, yes, he did attempt to enter many times. Perhaps he hoped that I would forget but I did not. I would not fall asleep until I knew that he had gone to bed.
My world turned upside down that night and from then on, I spent my waking hours trying to stay away from our apartment until I knew that my mother was home and I would be safe. It took its toll on me. I no longer cared what I looked like and started to gain weight. I didn’t care about going to school and so I didn’t. All I cared about was staying safe.
It got worse when he invited his friends over. They would get high and it was suddenly three against one. Or it would have been if I didn’t have the public library as my safe haven away from the abuse of my home. I spent many days and evenings there and the librarians were kind and accepting. I was able to continue to educate myself though the books that I read.
There came a time when my hate of my life led me to a more dire solution. I’ll talk about that at some point in the future.
This went on for almost two years. It finallyimproved when my brother moved out of the house for good. I would have been in my junior year of high school if I hadn’t stopped taking classes or even showing up for school at all.
With him gone, my desire to go to school resurfaced. I was able to work with a counselor to take classes at my own speed. I would finish many semester classes in one to two weeks. By the end of that junior year, I had caught back up and was able to attend my senior year in a regular classroom environment.
While my schooling was back on track, I was still feeling shame, self-hate and anger. You might think I would have talked to my mother during the years my brother was still at home. I actually did try but she blamed me and not him. She told me I was exaggerating and she then increased his ability to punish me, based merely by the look on my face and not my actions or words.
However, with him out of the house, I no longer felt trapped. I was afraid that he might return but I was getting older and knew that I would be able to move out at 18 if I graduated and could get a job.
In the end, that turned out to be unnecessary. My brother overdosed on heroin and passed away. His funeral was the day of my high school graduation. I remember getting the call from his friend at the emergency room. He told me that my brother was dead.
I was with my one close friend and she got her mother to take care of my little brother while I saw waiting for my family to come for me. They didn’t. As I sat for hours with my friend on the stairway, all I could think was that I was free. I never needed to fear him again. It was difficult to feign the sorrow my other family members felt when, deep down inside, I was feeling the first bit of joy I had had in many years.
A few years later, I was driving down the street and saw someone who I thought was my brother. I started shaking so bad I could barely pull over. I had to sit for about a half an hour telling myself that he was dead, he would never hurt me again and the fear that I felt was just in my mind.
I was lucky, I know. He was never successful at raping me. However, he did instill fear, shame, and hate that colored my relationships with men.
When I became a Christian, I had the mental knowledge that God loved me and that what had happened was not my fault. It took many years and many problems in my life for me to finally shed those horrible fears and hate. The self-hate was the hardest because somehow, in my mind, something about me had invited my previously loving brother to, in my mind, become what amounted to an animal.
While I am no longer in that place, I will admit that I always look askance at men and their motivations. I am always really careful about putting children in their care. I know that these days, one has to have the same concern about women. I don’t think it is wrong to feel the way I do. I never want to be an adult who looks the wrong way while a child is being abused.
I think this is something that God wants us to do. He does not want us to ignore the pleas and needs of children. He wants us to love them and care for them. He wants us to teach them what is wrong and what is right according to the Bible. We are responsible for raising godly children. We are held accountable for doing anything to harm them.
I’m glad that this is so important to God. He is now my Father and he provides all the love and care that my earthly family did not. He teaches me to live with love in my heart towards others which is something I had never learned before. Without him, I was mired in anger, shame, hate and self-loathing; with him, I am able to rise above the things of the past and soar with him to find new ways to live the way he wants me to do and to love others and myself as well.
Philippians 3:12-14
Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.
Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.