The Fellowship of Fear
BECAUSE OF THE sexual and emotional abuse I received at home, my entire childhood was filled with fear. My father controlled me with his anger and intimidation. He never physically forced me to submit to him, but I was so afraid of his anger that I did whatever he told me to do. He did force me to pretend that I liked what he was doing to me, and that I wanted him to do it.
The few times I timidly attempted to speak out in honesty about my situation were devastating. My father’s violent reaction—his ranting and raving—was so frightening to me that I soon learned just to do whatever he said without objection. I believe that my inability to express my true feelings about what was happening to me, and my being forced to act as though I enjoyed the perverse things he did to me, left me with many deep-seated emotional wounds.
My father worked evenings and would come home around eleven or twelve at night. I can remember how my entire body would fill with fear as soon as I heard his key turning the lock. I would get stiff all over, because I never knew if he was going to come in my room and try to put his hands on me, or if he would come in mad about something he did not like.
One of the hardest things for me was the lack of stability of ever knowing what to expect; I lived with the fear of never knowing what I could and could not do. I could do one thing one day, and my father would be fine with it, but I could do the exact same thing a few days later and get slapped across the room for it.
Fear was my constant companion: fear of my father, fear of his anger, fear of being exposed, fear of my mother finding out what was happening, and fear of having friends.
My fear of having friends stemmed from two factors: If they were female, I was afraid that my father would attempt to draw them into his trap also. If they were male, I was afraid that my father would harm them, or me. He violently accused me of being sexually active with male acquaintances from school. He would not permit anyone to come near me because I “belonged” to him.
While in high school, I was never allowed to go to a football game, a baseball game, a basketball game. I tried to develop acquaintances at school, but I never allowed the relationships to ripen to the extent that I would be expected to invite my new friends to my house. I did not let anyone feel free to contact me at home. If the phone rang, and the call was for me, I would panic thinking, What if it is someone from school?
All the time I was dealing with a fear of having friends and of being lonely, I was still unwilling to involve anyone else in what was potentially a disaster for them, and one that would certainly cause me more embarrassment and shame.
FEAR! FEAR! FEAR!
My father drank heavily every weekend, often taking me with him on his drinking bouts and physically using me at his will. Many times, he would come home angry and beat up my mother. One time he beat her because he said her nose was big. He did not hit me very often, but I believe that watching him senselessly beating my mother was just as damaging as if he had been hitting me.
My father controlled everything that went on around him. He decided what time we got up and when we went to bed; what we ate, wore, and spent; with whom we associated; what we watched on television—in short, everything in our lives. He was verbally abusive both to my mother and to me, and eventually to my only brother, who was born when I was nine years old. I remember wanting so desperately for the new baby to be a girl. I thought that maybe if there was another female child in the family I might be left alone, at least part of the time.
My father cursed almost constantly, using extremely vulgar and filthy language. He was critical of everything and everybody. It was his opinion that none of us ever did anything right, or that we would ever amount to anything worthwhile. Most of the time, we were reminded that we were “just no good.”
At times my father would be just the opposite. He would give us money and tell us to go shopping; sometimes he even bought us presents. He was manipulative and coercive. He did whatever he needed to do in order to get what he wanted. Other people had no value to him at all except to use for his own selfish purposes.
There was no peace in our home. I actually did not know what real peace was until I was grown and had been immersed in the Word of God for many years.
I was born-again at the age of nine while visiting relatives out of town. One night I went with them to attend a church service, intent on finding salvation. I do not even know how I knew I needed to be saved, except that God must have placed that desire within my heart. I did receive Jesus Christ as my Savior that evening and experienced a glorious cleansing. Before that moment I had always felt dirty because of the incest. Now, for the first time, I felt clean, as though I had received an inner bath. However, since the problem did not go away, once I returned home my old feelings returned. I thought that I had lost Jesus, so I never knew any real inner peace and joy.
THE BETRAYAL
What about my mother? Where did she fit into all this? Why didn’t she help me? I was about eight or nine years old when I told my mother what was going on between my father and me. She examined me and confronted my dad, but he claimed that I was lying—and she chose to believe him rather than me. What woman would not want to believe her husband in such a situation? I think that way down deep inside, my mother knew the truth. She just hoped against hope that she was wrong.
When I was fourteen years old, she walked into the house one day, having returned earlier than expected from grocery shopping, and actually caught my father in the act of sexually abusing me. She looked, walked out, and came back two hours later, acting as if she had never been there.
My mother betrayed me.
She did not help me, and she should have.
Many, many years later (actually thirty years later), she confessed to me that she just could not bring herself to face the scandal. She had never mentioned it for thirty years! During that time period she had suffered a nervous breakdown. Everyone who knew her blamed it on “the change of life.”
For two years she underwent shock treatments, which temporarily erased portions of her memory. None of the doctors knew what they were helping her forget, but they all agreed that she needed to forget something. It was obvious there was something on her mind that was eating away at her mental health.
My mother claimed that her problem was caused by her physical condition. She had an exceptionally hard time during that period of her life due to severe female problems at an earlier age. Following a complete hysterectomy at age thirty-six, she was thrown into premature menopause. At the time, most doctors did not believe in giving hormones to women, so this was a very difficult time for her. It seems that everything in her life was more than she was able to handle.
Personally, I will always believe that my mother’s emotional collapse was the result of the years of abuse she had endured, and the truth that she refused to face and deal with. Remember, in John 8:32 our Lord told us: “You will know the Truth, and the Truth will set you free.”
God’s Word is truth, and, if applied, has inherent power to set a captive free. God’s Word also brings us face to face with the issues of our lives. If we choose to turn and run away when the Lord says to stand and confront, we will stay in bondage.
LEAVING HOME
At age eighteen, I moved away from home while my father was at work. Shortly thereafter, I married the first young man who showed an interest in me.
Like me, my new husband had lots of problems. He was a manipulator, a thief, and a con man. Most of the time, he did not even work. We moved around a lot, and once he abandoned me in California with nothing but one dime and a carton of soda pop bottles. I was afraid, but since I was accustomed to fear and trauma, I was probably not as affected as someone with less “experience” would have been.
My husband also abandoned me several times simply by leaving during the day while I was at work. Each time he left, he would be gone anywhere from a few weeks to several months. Then he would suddenly reappear, and I would listen to his sweet talk and apologies and take him back—only to have the same thing happen all over again. When he was with me, he drank constantly and had relationships with other women regularly.
For five years we played at what we called a marriage. We were both so young, only eighteen, and neither of us had had proper parenting. We were completely ill-equipped to help one another. My problems were only complicated more following a miscarriage at the age of twenty-one and the birth of my oldest son when I was twenty-two. This event took place during the final year of our marriage. My husband left me and moved in with another woman who lived two blocks from our place, telling anyone who would listen that the child I was carrying was not his.
I remember coming dangerously close to losing my mind during that summer of 1965. Throughout my pregnancy, I lost weight because I could not eat. Without friends, money, or insurance, I went through a hospital clinic, seeing a different doctor each time I had a checkup. Actually, the doctors I saw were interns in training. I was unable to sleep, so I began taking over-the-counter sleeping pills. Thank God, they did not harm my unborn child or me.
The temperature that summer rose to more than a hundred degrees, and there was no fan or air-conditioning in my third-floor, attic apartment. My only material possession was an old Studebaker automobile that got vapor locked on a regular basis. Since my father had always insisted that some day I would need his help and come crawling back to him, I was determined to do anything but that—even though I did not know what it would be.
I can remember being under such mental strain that I would sit and stare at the walls or out the window for hours, not even realizing what I was doing. I worked until my baby was due. When I had to quit my job, my hairdresser and her mother took me in.
My baby was four and a half weeks late. I had no idea what to expect, and no notion of how to care for him when he was born. When the baby did come, my husband showed up at the hospital. Since the baby looked so much like him, there was no way he could deny that it was his. Once again he said he was sorry and that he was going to change.
When it was time for me to be discharged from the hospital, we had no place to live, so my husband contacted his brother’s ex-wife, who was a wonderful Christian woman, and she let us live with her for a while until I was able to go back to work.
I think you can imagine from these few details what my life was like. Actually, it was ridiculous! There was nothing stable in my entire existence, and stability was something that I needed and craved desperately.
Finally, in the summer of 1966, I reached the point of not caring what happened to me. I could not stand the thought of staying with my husband any longer. I did not have one ounce of respect for the man, especially since, to top it all off, by this time he was in trouble with the law. I took my son and what I could carry and walked out. I went to a corner phone booth where I called my dad and asked him if I could come home. Of course, he was delighted!
After I had lived at home for a couple of months, I learned that my divorce had been granted. That was in September of 1966. By that time my mother’s mental health was growing worse by the day. She had begun to have violent fits, accusing store clerks of robbing her, threatening the people she worked with over meaningless details. She even started carrying a knife in her purse. She ranted and raved about anything and everything. I distinctly remember one night when she beat me with a broom because I had failed to mop the bathroom floor! While all this was going on, I made an occupation of steering clear of my father. As much as possible, I avoided being left alone with him.
In short, my life was a living hell.
For “entertainment,” I began to go to bars on weekends. I suppose I was looking for someone to love me. I would have a few drinks, but rarely ever enough to get drunk. I really had never cared much for drinking. I also refused to sleep with the various men I met. Even though my life was a mess, there was a deep desire in me to be good and pure.
Confused, afraid, lonely, discouraged, and depressed, I often prayed, “Dear God, please let me be happy . . . some day. Give me someone who will really love me—and make it someone who will take me to church.”
MY KNIGHT IN SHINING ARMOR
My parents owned and resided in a two-family apartment. One of their renters worked with a man named Dave Meyer. One evening Dave came by to pick up his friend to go bowling. I was washing my mother’s car. He saw me and tried to flirt with me, but I was my usual sarcastic self. He asked me if I wanted to wash his car when I was finished with mine, and I replied, “If you want your car washed, wash it yourself!” Because of my experience with my father and my former husband, I did not trust men at all, and that is an understatement!
Dave, however, was being led by the Spirit of God. Born-again and baptized in the Holy Spirit, he loved God with all his heart. At twenty-six years of age, he was also ready to get married and had been praying for six months that God would lead him to the right woman. He had even asked the Lord for her to be someone who needed help!
Since Dave was being led by the Lord, my sarcasm only served to encourage him, instead of insulting him. Later he told his friend from work that he would like to have a date with me. At first I refused, but later I changed my mind. We had been out on five dates when Dave asked me to marry him. He told me that he had known the first night we went out together that he wanted me to be his wife, but that he had decided to wait a few weeks before proposing marriage, lest he frighten me.
For my part, I certainly did not know what love was, and was not eager to get involved with another man. However, since things were getting even worse at home, and since I was living in total panic all the time, I decided that anything would be better than what I was going through at the moment.
Dave asked me if I would go to church with him, which I was willing to do. Remember, one of my prayer requests had been that when the Lord gave me someone to love me, he would be a person who would take me to church. I strongly desired to live a Christian life, but I knew that I needed someone strong to lead the way. Dave also promised to be good to my little boy, who was ten months old when we met. I had named him David, which was what my brother was called and was my favorite name for a boy. I am still amazed at the way the Lord was working out a plan for my good, right in the midst of my darkest despair.
Dave and I were married on January 7, 1967, but we did not live “happily ever after”! Marriage did not solve my problems, and neither did going to church. My problems were not in my home life or my marriage, but in me, in my wounded, crippled emotions.
Abuse leaves a person emotionally handicapped, unable to maintain healthy, lasting relationships without some kind of intervention. I wanted to give and receive love, but I could not. Like my father, I was controlling, manipulative, angry, critical, negative, overbearing, and judgmental. All that I had grown up with, I had become. Filled with self-pity, I was verbally abusive, depressed, and bitter. I could go on and on describing my personality, but I am sure you get the picture.
I functioned in society. I worked; Dave worked. We went to church together. We got along part of the time, only then because Dave was extremely easygoing. He usually let me have my way, but when he didn’t it made me mad. As far as I was concerned, I was right about everything. To me, I did not have a problem; everyone else did.
Now remember, I was born-again. I loved Jesus. I believed that my sins were forgiven and that I would go to heaven when I died. But I knew no victory, no peace, no joy in my everyday life. Although I believed that Christians were supposed to be happy, I certainly was not! I did not even know what righteousness, imputed through the blood of Jesus, was. I felt condemned all the time. I was out of control. The only time I did not hate myself was when I was working toward some personal goal which I thought would provide me a sense of self-worth.
I kept thinking that if things would change, if other people would change, then I would be all right. If my husband, my kids, my finances, my health, were different; if I could go on vacation, get a new car, buy a new dress; if I could get out of the house, find a job, earn more money, then I would be happy and fulfilled. I was always doing what is described in Jeremiah 2:13—I was digging wells that had no water in them.
I was making the frustrating, tragic mistake of trying to find the kingdom of God, which is righteousness, peace, and joy (see Romans 14:17), in things and other people. What I did not realize is that the kingdom of God is within us, as the apostle Paul explained: “which is Christ within and among you, the Hope of [realizing the] glory” (Colossians 1:27). Jesus said, “For behold, the kingdom of God is within you [in your hearts] and among you [surrounding you]” (Luke 17:21, emphasis mine). My joy had to be found in Christ, but it took me years and years to find that out.
I tried to earn righteousness by being good, through works of the flesh. I was on the evangelism committee and the church board. My husband was an elder in the church. Our children went to parochial school. I tried to do all the right things. I tried and tried and tried, and yet it seemed that I just could not keep myself from making mistakes. I was worn out, burned out, frustrated, and miserable!
I WAS SINCERELY IGNORANT OF THE PROBLEM
It never occurred to me that I was suffering from the years of abuse and rejection I had gone through. I thought that all that was behind me. It was true that it was no longer happening to me physically, but it was all recorded in my emotions and in my mind. I still felt the effects of it, and I still acted them out.
I needed emotional healing!
Legally, I was a new creature in Christ. The Word says, “Therefore if any person is [ingrafted] in Christ (the Messiah) he is a new creation (a new creature altogether); the old [previous moral and spiritual condition] has passed away. Behold, the fresh and new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17). But experientially, I had not yet taken hold of the new creation reality. I lived out of my own mind, will, and emotions, which were all damaged. Jesus had paid the price for my total deliverance, but I had no idea how to receive His gracious gift.