Why

I have been to a place of darkness which words alone could never even begin to express. I have felt an unimaginable suffering that you could never understand unless you have felt it yourself, and I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. All the life inside me was consumed. All the light was gone. I felt only death could save me from this pain. I had no desire to live any longer. A sense of hopelessness swept over me that left me feeling desperate and more alone then I ever thought possible. Nothing could reach me in this place and my own mind betrayed me. I felt insane. This sickness consumed my mind, body, and spirit and I could feel nothing but a twisted sense of pure negativity that blocked out anything positive. I stayed alive for one reason only… I had a baby growing inside of me. This gave me no comfort, instead it left me feeling trapped and suffocated. With every breath I took I felt complete agony. I had nothing left. I turned to God… I was full of pure rage. “HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME??? HAVEN’T I BEEN THROUGH ENOUGH??? WHAT COULD I POSSIBLY LEARN FROM FEELING THIS PAIN??? WHY? WHY? WHY? WHY DO YOU HATE ME SO MUCH???” I was so angry I would just sit alone in a room sobbing uncontrollably. Over and over again I would ask God Why? I would beg for the pain to go away. I wanted relief. I was so alone. Lost in the dark. I started to doubt that God even existed at all. If God existed where was He and how could he let this happen? I have had more then my share of pain in my life and all through it, all I hung on to was God. I felt He had betrayed me now, just like everyone else on earth. In my past I have been raped five different times, molested several other times starting from the age of 5 years old. I was let down by the justice system when I was held captive by one of my rapists because the police believed me to be just a young naïve girl looking for attention. Meanwhile I had suffered 3 days of torture and was told if I left I would watch as my 2 year old daughter was murdered in front of me. The police said this was not enough of a threat for me to stay and I should have run away. I have been beaten, abused, assaulted, betrayed, lied to, and taken advantage of, abandoned, and unloved... I was 18 years old when I held my first son, a beautiful tiny little baby named Jacob, in my arms as he breathed his last breath and God took him home to heaven. I had watched him struggle for life for 29 days feeling powerless and wanting nothing more then to take his pain away. I accepted every thing life dealt me with strength and courage. Many times I lost everything I had or it was stolen from me and I didn’t know how I would get by. I always turned to God because I believed God loved me and would never leave me. I never turned away from God and I trusted Him with all of my heart. On the day I found out that my youngest child, a baby boy who was conceived by rape, had suffered brain damage as a complication of his prematurity, I got down on my knees and prayed. Doctors didn’t know how severe the damage was or what effects it could have on him. They told me he may be severely mentally and physically handicapped and have a very poor quality of life. I said “if he can feel happy and I can make him laugh that’s all that counts, and I will love him no matter what.” I felt peace knowing God was with me and I trusted that everything would be ok. My little boy isn’t mentally handicapped at all and trust me I can make him laugh. He may spend the rest of his life in a wheel chair but I have accepted the challenge of taking care of him with my whole heart. He is beautiful and every single day I have thanked God for trusting me with his life. For 30 years I stood by my belief in God and nothing ever made me question that belief. But now here I was full of rage, wishing for death, and having extreme doubts. Was there really a God? If so then why had he turned his back on me? If anyone ever had a reason to stop believing trust me it would have been me. I laid in a bed in a psychiatric hospital at the lowest point a human being can ever reach and I stared at the ceiling, sobbing, feeling entirely hopeless and completely abandoned. I had a choice to make. Give up or fight. I didn’t want to be strong anymore. I didn’t want to care. All I wanted to do was die. I was exhausted and could see no point in life anymore. My mind was merciless and my thoughts tortured me relentlessly. I had already accepted so much pain in my past and I felt I had stood strong through it all and now I wondered what was the point? Was it EVER going to STOP??? It seemed hopeless and I didn’t think I could take any more. Where was God? Why fight anymore? I had NEVER before asked why because I always felt I knew the answer. I always believed there was a higher purpose. I had always thought maybe all this happened because it was preparing me for something. Maybe one day I could be an example for other people. I thought I could inspire other people and show them the way to God. I wanted to be the person to pick people up and bring them to a path of healing. I believed there was a reason behind everything I had suffered and that reason was that it prepared me to be able to help other people in need. But I thought after 30 years I was as prepared as a person could be and I naively believed I was on the right path. But I come to you today humbled and ashamed to tell you I had it all wrong and I paid a steep price for my own arrogance. My motives were in the right place but I was deceiving myself. I believed I was walking with God but I had a very distorted image of who God was and I formed this image for my own benefit, to suit my own desires. Sure I believed the part about God being love and that He wanted us to love our neighbors as ourselves. I believed in forgiveness. I gave everything I could to anyone who was in need. I would give the shirt off my back in a heart beat and I was more then willing to go without so that another person could have enough. I helped people even when they hurt me. I forgave my sons father even after he had raped me. He did terrible things to me and I had to take my children into hiding for 3 years to escape his violence. I ‘ran’ into him one day last summer and I saw he was a different person. He was trying to change his life and get off of street drugs. He wanted to better himself but didn’t have the means to do so and he felt he could never change his life the way he wanted. He told me he was sorry for the things he had done to me. I found it in my heart to forgive him and I helped him get his drivers license back and then I had a friend of mine give him a job. I am proud to say he is off the streets now and he has been for over a year. He kept the job and was even promoted. He met someone and fell in love and now he is engaged. I even let him come and visit my son sometimes although I still feel very protective and will never let myself or my son be left alone with him. I was forgiving of everyone no matter what and I was full of love which I shared generously. But that was the only important thing I thought there was. Didn’t this make me a ‘good Christian’? My definition of a sin was anything that hurt another person. As long as my actions didn’t appear to hurt anyone I figured it was ok. But I was blind to the fact that my actions were hurting someone… they were hurting me. While in the hospital, I found out that a lot of what was happening to me was due to some very serious medical issues, I was transferred from the psychiatric hospital to a medical hospital. When I received treatment for my illness it helped me to get out of the thickest part of that darkness, but because of what happened I had lost so much and my heart ached. I was angry that this had happened, it was so unfair, and I had no control over it, now I was powerless to change it. What I had lost was gone and I felt that loss deeply every minute of every day. I feel it even now. One day I looked up and I prayed “God please just tell me why? I need to know and you are the only one who can tell me. I am having trouble believing in You, I feel you have turned Your back on me, and I need help.” The next morning I woke up from a dream and in my dream I was sitting alone at a table and from inside me I was pulling out these strange black spheres and setting each one of them on the table and seeing for the first time how black and ugly each one was. They were all different sizes and each one contained a slimy black mucousy substance that stuck to my hands and made a sick mess of everything it touched. I didn’t even want to look at it, but I knew I had to open each and every one of them to see what was inside. When I woke up I picked up my journal and just started to write. That’s when I discovered the truth. I was carrying a lot of sin inside me without even being aware of it. I had become neglectful and full of arrogance and pride. I had lied to and betrayed people who cared about me. I had done some very ugly and terrible things which I didn’t want to admit. I carried this distorted image of God and shaped his image to serve me. How could I ever be an example to other people and inspire other people when I didn’t even know God at all? I was a fake. I am disgusted with the person I had become, it wasn’t who I really was inside and it wasn’t the person God had intended me to be. I was betraying myself. I was letting down all the people who loved me and I let God down too. After discovering this about myself something else happened that really changed things for me. The other day my 9 year old daughter was very disrespectful to me and as a result I took away all of her privileges and sent her to her room. She sat in her room and sobbed “Please Mommy, please I am sorry, please let me come out.” All of a sudden I saw an image of myself praying to God crying and begging “Please God, Please Help me. Please take this pain away. I’m so sorry. I am just so sorry!” It hit me like a tonne of bricks. When I heard my daughter cry it hurt me a lot and my first instinct was to open the door and let her come out. I didn’t want to see her suffer. But this wasn’t the first time she had acted this way and I had let her off before only to have her continue to repeat the same behaviour over and over again. I wanted to let her off but then what would she learn? I knew she felt abandoned by me, like I wasn’t listening. It broke my heart to hear her say, “You don’t love me or you wouldn’t be so mean.” It gave me such an eerie feeling of familiarity. I wondered is this how God feels? Could it really be the same? I thought God had turned his back on me. I thought maybe he didn’t exist at all. He surely hated me to let this happen and to leave me to feel this pain. But seeing my daughter that way opened my eyes. God does love me, and he doesn’t want to see me suffer any more then I want to see my daughter suffer. But there was a lesson he has probably been trying to teach me for a very long time and it took drastic measures to finally open my eyes. Please understand I am not writing this to you as a person who is all better now and can look back and say “yeah God exists, I know it because now I am so happy.” No. This story does NOT end with… and she lived happily ever after. It would be easier for someone to tell you all about how awesome God is and how you should believe in Him when their life is good. You might think of course you can say that everything is great for you now. However this message is coming from a person who is hurting. A person who struggles to find hope and joy in their life, to have a life, and to make sense of what has happened. I still feel very lost. I still feel a lot of anger. I wake up in tears every morning… and I pray. I go to bed crying every night… and I pray. I am grieving deeply for the love I lost. Sometimes I think I am not strong enough for this and I can’t bear it for even one more minute… but then I turn to God. There are still so many questions I have. But one question I don’t struggle with anymore is why? I know in my heart why this happened just as I know in my heart that God does exist and His love is great. With that knowledge I am starting to feel a sense of hope again and once again I am reaching out for God… If anyone can get me through this it is Him. I wish everyone who is hurting or struggling could find comfort in that. With God’s help I have decided to fight!!! Trust me it is a battle every single minute of every single day to walk through my pain and find myself again. I feel utterly worthless sometimes and have trouble dealing with all that I have done. I have many regrets. If I could take it all back I would in a moment. But at least I finally know without a doubt that I am not doing it alone. God is with me!!!
May you always feel His presence in your life too.