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The Lord . . . has shown his favor
and taken away my disgrace.
—LUKE 1:25 NIV
One night, Mark and I were casually talking about past relationships and situations in our lives when I found myself describing sexual abuse that had occurred in my past as if I were explaining how I did the laundry yesterday—no emotion, seemingly no pain, no pause for tears or reflection on my words. Mark was crying as I finished the story, and when I asked what was wrong, he informed me that I had just explained abuse. What? I had so much shame and had stuffed it for so long that I didn’t even know it was abuse until Mark told me it more than fit the definition.
To me, it was just something that happened, and I moved on. It was history, and it didn’t affect me in any way. By God’s grace to me, that night I realized that couldn’t be farther from the truth. The reality was that it had been very destructive in my relationship with God, Mark, and friends. I didn’t really trust anyone or let anyone see who I was underneath the Christian girl wearing a smile. Now, many years after the abuse had taken place, God was asking me to look it straight in the eye and let Mark be part of the healing process. I honestly wanted to take back my words and forget the conversation. It couldn’t possibly be helpful to talk about it more, I thought. Was it really necessary to reexamine that part of my life? Was Mark really safe to talk to about it, or would his response cause more pain?
Tragically, abuse is far too common for women today. Sexual assault happens to one in four women and one in six men at some point in their lifetimes.1 Because it is one of the most underreported crimes, those numbers are likely very low and only 5 to 40 percent of the actual total.2 Emotional and psychological abuse are also destructive and painful to face. If any of these are part of your past, I encourage you to read on and seek God’s grace for you in the healing process.
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I had described to Mark a relationship I was in before he and I ever met, with a guy who was a little older than me and who came from a rough family life. I met the guy in church, and I was an emotionally needy, naive girl who didn’t have brothers and wasn’t informed about boys or protected from the bad ones—admittedly not a good combination. We voluntarily slept together, and I lost my virginity to him. Over time, the guy became controlling, telling me what clothes I couldn’t wear in public, because he was very jealous. He controlled when I went out with my friends and who I could hang out with (which basically was rarely and few). He determined my schedule and free time, having me stay with him at his work much of the time. He even organized his life to follow me around and keep an eye on me. It was like having an invisible fence around me, getting stung when going outside the boundaries, and I was ruled by my fears.
Sadly, I thought all this was him taking care of me and saw myself as increasingly unable to make my own decisions. At one point his jealousy turned to rage, and he ran after me, caught me, and threw me up against a wall. I grew more and more afraid of him, too afraid to tell him to leave me alone. Like many other girls, I didn’t see this as abuse and thought he would change, but it continued far too long. I was filled with my own guilt from fornicating and told myself if I married him it would cover my sin somehow. So that was my plan until he confessed he had been sleeping with another girl. Somehow that was the one thing that took my fear away long enough to end the relationship, which I now see as my “way of escape” given by God. If in that moment I had chosen to continue being abused, my life would look completely different today.
Because of God’s protection as a Father, today I can pray for that guy, not be bitter, and trust that God is changing him too. On this, theologian Miroslav Volf said, “We must name the troubling past truthfully—we must come to clarity about what happened, how we reacted, and how we are reacting to it now—to be freed from its destructive hold on our lives. Granted, truthful naming will not by itself heal memories or wrong suffered; but without truthful naming, all measures we might undertake to heal such memories will remain incomplete.”3
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When someone other than the Holy Spirit controls where you go, whom you see, what you wear, and what you do, it’s emotional abuse, and it affects your life deeply. When someone stalks you, is obsessed with you, and threatens you, it’s psychological abuse, and it changes you drastically. When someone makes you have sex, and you continually say no verbally or through body language (nonparticipation, pushing away, clenching your body), it’s sexual abuse and it affects you spiritually. All this had been a part of my past, but it was bringing death to my present and future life. For Mark it answered more of the questions as to why intimacy in our marriage was stuck and had been so hard to experience together. I couldn’t even explain why I would often tell him no to sex, or offer any variety of excuses. I would later realize I was letting fear from my past abuse, instead of conviction of enjoying my husband, rule me. The God-intended beauty of oneness had passed us by, and the lie I had concealed and abuse I had experienced were both at the root.
Defining what constitutes sexual assault is very important. It is a broad term that includes several sexual behaviors against an individual, whether physical, psychological, or verbal. Sexual assault, the current term that has replaced rape legally, is different from state to state in the United States and nation to nation around the world, making it confusing for people who have been harmed by it. In their book Rid of My Disgrace, Dr. Justin Holcomb and his wife, Lindsey, who are leaders at our church, have created a thorough and helpful definition:
There are three parts to our definition of sexual assault: 1) any type of sexual behavior or contact 2) where consent is not freely given or obtained and 3) is accomplished through force, intimidation, violence, coercion, manipulation, threat, deception, or abuse of authority. . . .
When defining sexual assault as any sexual act that is nonconsensual— forced against someone’s will—it is important to understand that the “acts” can be physical, verbal, or psychological. . . . Sexual assault occurs along a continuum of power and control ranging from noncontact sexual assault to forced sexual intercourse. Sexual assault includes acts such as nonconsensual sexual intercourse (rape), nonconsensual sodomy (oral or anal sexual acts), child molestation, incest, fondling, exposure, voyeurism, or attempts to commit these acts.4
For me, sexual assault caused disgrace. In Rid of My Disgrace, the Holcombs wrote,
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Disgrace destroys, causes pain, deforms, and wounds. It alienates and isolates. Disgrace makes you feel worthless, rejected, unwanted, and repulsive, like a persona non grata (a “person without grace”). Disgrace silences and shuns. . . . To your sense of disgrace, God restores, heals, and re-creates through grace. A good short definition of grace is “one-way love.” This is the opposite of your experience of assault, which was “one-way violence.” To your experience of one-way violence, God brings one-way love. The contrast between the two is staggering.5
Martin Luther said, “God receives none but those who are forsaken, restores health to none but those who are sick, gives sight to none but the blind, and life to none but the dead. . . . He has mercy on none but the wretched and gives grace to none but those who are in disgrace.”6 Refuting the lie that we are permanently disgraced and have to earn God’s grace in order to be accepted is part of the healing process from experiencing abuse. If we are sick, blind, and have been sinned against, we can’t fix ourselves! Only God’s free gift of grace gives us emotional health, clear vision of our heavenly Father, and the ability to forgive as He did for us through Jesus.
Making a Choice
We have a choice to make, whether we are faced with our own sin or the sin of others against us. When we become Christians, we make the choice to love and obey God, so we need to ask Him what wisdom looks like for us in each circumstance.
God was giving Mark and me a way of escape and a path to true healing by grace, so what were we going to choose? Again, our marriage covenant was right in front of us. It’s not enough to just stay together and not glorify God in our marriage. He requests more because He loves us and has more for us! Were we going to run from Jesus or grow in our faith and run to Him? The pain seemed too much for both of us, and we wondered if it was really possible to trust each other again after all this. First, we had to trust God—we were still going to sin and fail, but He wouldn’t.
I had been more concerned about what people would think of me if they really knew about my sins and the sins against me than I was about acting sinfully against God and others. I had lived a double life, a pastor’s daughter and wife filled with deception and fear. I wanted to crawl into a hole and never come out. I already questioned that I had any value in God’s eyes much of my life; now this seeming flaw was added to the pile. How would I ever get through such a trial? The Psalms promise, “The lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit”a and 2 Corinthians 12:9 says, “For my power is made perfect in weakness” (NIV). Were those verses really true? I had asked Jesus into my life when I was three years old, but in my thirties I was about to experience how much God truly loves me as a Father and how powerful He is.
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We all get to a point where we need to stop running from God in shame and start running to Him for protection and the healing of our souls! Do you find yourself struggling to spend time with Jesus regularly because you feel unlovable and undeserving of His comfort and forgiveness? Does your pride tell you that you need to fix things on your own (not even possible) or pretend they didn’t happen to earn His approval? We find it so easy at times to believe the greatest lie—that Jesus’ death wasn’t enough for us and what we did. I had reached a critical point where I knew it was time to discover the story of Jesus all over again and let it seep into my life.
I had to start by repenting of trying to hide the abuse from God and Mark. That meant asking the Holy Spirit to restore any memories that needed to be brought into the light so I could be cleansed and remade as a child of God. And it meant Jesus’ righteousness alone had to replace all my old identity of abused, neglected, dirty, and worthless. I had nothing to give and everything to receive from the Lord. This process was painful and didn’t happen overnight. It went in phases of hard, really hard, and extremely hard as God faithfully and patiently became my trustworthy Father and Mark learned how to love his “new” wife.
Admittedly the timing seemed extra difficult with another new baby and four other children to care for; I had the best excuse to wait. But once again God wouldn’t let me wait anymore. I joined a group of women in our church who had all experienced abuse in different ways, and in the group walked through a twelve-week process of talking through the years of sin against me and sin I committed against others in response. When I joined the group, it was a bit disheartening to start out with one of the women putting our family on a pedestal as she said, “Oh, you are that Grace, Mark’s wife, I just love his preaching . . .” How can I possibly be honest and real now? I thought. What will happen to our church and our life if they know about my abuse?
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My leader thankfully addressed the issue with the woman, and every week it was helpful to hear others’ stories and have the women respond to mine. I wasn’t alone! But I also needed to realize no other “friend” was going to fix this for me. Although I was blessed to have people in my life who loved me very much, our church lacked resources in helping abuse victims. We quickly realized there were large numbers of abuse victims attending our church and began the process of gathering resources to help.7 Mutual, honest accountability had always felt too vulnerable, but it was part of the process I needed to prayerfully participate in. I needed discernment as the pastor’s wife so that I didn’t put my husband wrongly in the middle of fire from critics. Along the way, I ran into several obstacles and was tempted to stop and not continue going through the pain, but I wanted to experience freedom and not pretend anymore, so I wasn’t going to let anything keep me from it. I finally wanted to put my own sin and shame to death, through Jesus’ death on the cross, and experience real joy!
I got on my knees, and God told me to trust Him with everything. He reminded me of Philippians 4:4–9, which had been a life Scripture:
Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice! . . . The Lord is at hand. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things. The things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do, and the God of peace will be with you. (Emphasis [small caps and italics] added)
I couldn’t walk this path of healing unless I realized the Lord was right there with me, that His peace would guard my heart, and that I needed to rejoice in even the smallest thing when it seemed as if there wasn’t anything to celebrate. I was blown away by His specific love for me. He took some of the few memory verses I knew and shined a light on them to give me hope in Him for the hard journey ahead! Again I knew more of my loving Father and experienced His forgiveness and cleansing. Another layer of junk was being removed from my soul.
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Over a couple of years, and continuing today, I learned to pray and cry out to God, I studied God’s character,8 and I was more honest with Mark than I had ever been. God gave me a few trustworthy women to encourage and exhort me and love me, despite knowing the truth about me. I read recommended books9 and listened to biblical counselors online.10 Although I had always thought all anger was a sin until I studied righteous anger, I finally experienced righteous anger and prayed against bitterness. I grieved the sin against me and the sin I committed against others and created healthy temporary boundaries with people who weren’t able to help me for a season as I processed my own sin and the abuse.
Many tears, many hard conversations, many eye-opening times with the Lord, many idols of my heart were revealed—all for God’s glory and my healing. I never thought it was possible, but that is what repentance and redemption feel like. Now I not only know what they mean but have experienced them through Jesus—and will continue to for the rest of my life.
The Masks of an Abused Person
A person who has been abused can become adept at hiding the pain behind a mask. It helps us cope with others and makes us feel safe, but in truth it’s really just something that prevents us from actually dealing with the abuse. Now that you know about my abuse and responses, do you understand more clearly whether you have experienced sexual assault or abuse of any kind? How have you tried to cope with it in the midst of your relationships? Do you act out a role or hide behind a mask? I would have never imagined that talking about pain from my past would help me heal, but that is exactly what happened. In talking about it, I was able, by God’s grace, to take off the masks I had been wearing, stop playing a role and pretending, and be known. Once I realized that my identity was not determined by what I had done or not done, or what had been done to me, but rather by what Jesus had done for me, I was set free.
To cope with the pain, I initially pretended to be a “good girl,” outwardly displaying kindness, patience, smiles, and quick apologies without true repentance. I never seemed to get angry and was constantly serving other people, making them happy, but sacrificing my own family and health. Though I seemed happy, I was emotionally shut down and disengaged at any deep levels. I had to work hard to be passionate about anything and envied women who seemed to be so naturally zealous. As a “good girl” I avoided conflict and wanted peace at all costs, even if it meant enabling a person’s sin or sinning myself so as not to offend. On the outside I was cool as a cucumber, while on the inside I was full of shame, devastation, and accusations of the Enemy.
In the first years of ministry, I also wore the mask of “religious girl” at times. After all, I had been a pastor’s kid and was expected to be a wise pastor’s wife, right? If people needed advice, I would give them a verse or a book to read, not considering how I should apply it first. If people needed help, I would serve them without question, even enabling or allowing people to use me. If people needed a meal, I would make whatever they liked, sometimes making my own kids wait longer for dinner. I steered clear of examining my own heart by staying busy with everyone else’s lives. I was moralistic and judgmental, not always verbally, building up my own pride and accomplishments. I felt better about myself when I was serving other people. I didn’t like recognition for my service, but if people didn’t seem grateful, I was bothered by it.
Another mask I had worn in high school was the “party girl.” I liked to have “fun” and numb the pain with alcohol. Some use drugs, food, or being funny all the time as party masks. They may be sarcastic or use jokes to change the subject if the mood gets too serious. Their names are associated with fun, so they are always invited to events and seem to love a crowd. Sadly, it’s the perfect place to hide and not be known as an individual.
A mask I didn’t wear, but that is common, is “tough girl.” She seems in control, confident, unaffected by the world’s pressures, and not at all needy. She often leads with making people fear her, and as a result isn’t liked by many. She pretends to embrace being alone, but inwardly wishes for relationship and closeness. Her hard exterior keeps people at arm’s length and avoids her getting hurt. She is critical and doesn’t trust people, and works hard to be the protector of others. Outside she is hard as a rock but inside is vulnerability and loneliness.
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Which mask I wore depended on whom I was with or how I was trying to protect myself. It was an identity crisis because I wasn’t rooted in Christ. I was shaped by what others had done to me and what I had done, rather than who God created me in His image to be and what His Son had done for me at the cross. Which mask(s) are you wearing to avoid dealing with the pain of life? I urge you to take off the mask by being honest and allow God to reveal His grace, mercy, and love. All these masks lead to continued hiding of our sin and the sin against us, which is equivalent to “suppress[ing] the truth in unrighteousness,” as Romans 1:18 says. He wants to clothe us in truth and His righteousness instead.
Ready to Respond
As I previously mentioned, our church was on a mission to equip people as best and as efficiently as possible to serve the people in our congregation who had suffered abuse. The number of abuse victims was in the hundreds or more, just with those we were aware of at that point. For most churches, this topic is taboo and not discussed, but for us it had to be. Several elders were researching and trying out different programs but to no avail. Most weren’t gospel centered or they focused wrongly on helping behavior rather than the person’s heart. God cares about our hearts, and we needed something Jesus and Bible focused, so the elders decided to write their own material and train our people.
How does abuse make the victim feel? Abused people may experience many feelings, including anger, shame, fear, confusion, condemnation, despair, anxiety, decreased sex drive, panic attacks, sleep disturbance, denial, guilt, and embarrassment. So what do we do if we have been abused? I strongly agree with the Holcombs, who say, “The only way to move from denial, isolation, and self-protection is to look honestly at the assault that has been done to you. Healing begins when the secret is disclosed and the shackles of silence are broken.”11 I would never have agreed with this before having to do this with my own abuse. As I did, you may think it doesn’t seem possible that talking about it with trustworthy people who can help or “reliving” the horror could in any way be healing. Perhaps you don’t want to see how much it has affected your life in negative ways. But we each need a new identity so that we don’t feel condemned by our sin. Jesus loves us because He is love, not because of who we are or pretend to be. He created us, chose us, and has unfailing love for us. We did nothing to deserve His love and can’t do anything to lose it. This is an invitation to respond to His love. As you respond, the condemnation will begin to fade.
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When a Friend Shares Her History of Abuse
Over the years, I’ve had conversations with women who completely deny that sexual assault, including by their own fathers, has at all affected their marriages. Such women are prone to say it’s in the past and they have moved on. Similar to my own story, some wrongly believe it’s best not to tell their husbands about the assault because it will hurt their spouses more to reveal the truth. Had I not experienced the fruit of dealing with the past, I would have counseled them to continue concealing the truth to avoid the pain. In reality, the pain is worse when we live in denial of truth. By God’s grace, I get to hear stories of redemption and enjoy my own. We get to actually comfort others with the comfort we have received when we take what we have learned and share it with other women. When a friend tells you about her history of abuse, that is the important first step to walking on the road to redemption. Be a tender listener and safe confidante. Pray for and with her, and ask God for wisdom, truth, and healing in the journey.
Responding in Love
This was all new for Mark, and he was going through a hard time with the church as well. Again, the timing didn’t seem ideal, but God was working in him too. My poor husband had a wife who was “falling apart” and being put back together slowly. He tried his best to listen and respond lovingly. He asked good but hard questions to get me beyond scratching the surface. Sometimes his responses caused fear all over again, and I wanted to run, but I had to stop believing the lies of the Enemy and trust God to change me and bring Mark along in the process. As he started to see my complete brokenness, he didn’t use it to hurt me; he became more tender with me. He felt as if I finally needed him in our marriage, which he hadn’t felt before due to my lack of emotion toward him.
Mark had actually been the one to remove me from the abusive relationship when he stepped in as my boyfriend. He protected me from further harm during those years but had somehow become the “bad” guy in my mind after that. I enjoyed being cared for but became afraid of the outcome—intimacy. Now as my husband, he wanted to know the real me and kept praying for what to say and do. He asked me to go to a safe place to stay for a couple of days, where I could read, journal, pray, cry—whatever I needed to do. I initially felt rejection, as if he wanted to get rid of me and not deal with me, but submitted to his request and realized it could be a fruitful time with no distraction. I jour-naled everything God brought to memory about instances of verbal and sexual abuse, my sin, fears, and lies. I remembered many more situations that I had considered innocent or inconsequential. For example, my workplace in high school was full of men who enjoyed perverse jokes, sexual conversations and innuendos, and inappropriate talk about the nude photos they took of women. Also, because they were short on women’s housing at the first college I attended, I lived in the study room of a guys’ dorm. The guys invited me to play strip poker (which I always declined), talked disrespectfully about girls, and would try to manipulate me through compliments.
While still away from my husband and kids, even though I wasn’t at all a “crier,” I sobbed off and on for hours over the pain of abuse and the conviction of my own sin. I caught a glimpse of what the Bible means by being broken before the Lord, but still had a long way to go. In my darkest moment I wrote,
I feel dead, alone in everything right now (wife, mom, friend). I am numb and need you to meet with me and change me, but I’m scared to go forward. I’m stalled because I fear other things instead of you. Lord, please pull me out of the mire of my sin and stubbornness. Create in me a clean heart and renew a right spirit within me. Only make me alive if it is in you. I can’t and don’t want to pretend anymore. I don’t want to be dead to you, but dead to myself (sin) instead.
Another journal entry said, “Knowing the truth explains the pain, and is ultimately worth the further pain it causes on the way to freedom in Christ.” God had given me enough faith and hope, even though I didn’t know the future, to trust Him to guide me.
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More healing came as Mark and I sat many nights just talking and trying to get back our friendship that we had let slip away. We were honest, trying to speak lovingly but sometimes hurting each other with words of bitterness or pain. We kept reminding each other of our covenant and how we didn’t want to just throw away all the years we had been together. When we got stuck, we sought wise counsel, including a few sessions with a Christian counselor, and we followed the counsel. We knew God was big enough to heal us both, but had no idea what that was going to look like. We prayed together, read books and talked about them together, went on date nights to just have fun together, and slowly started to rebuild all aspects of friendship and intimacy.
If you are walking through this process, you might go through times of deep sorrow and righteous anger about the sin against you and the sin you’ve responded with toward others. You might also feel selfish or awkward having so much focus on yourself, or as if you will always keep seeing more and more layers of junk to work through. This should eventually lead to peace, forgiveness, and trust in God’s healing hand. Your spouse might not know how to respond at all, so you need to express what you need from him or her as patiently as possible. Try not to be demanding and be prayerful in your conversations together. Sometimes couples need to have a pastor or biblical counselor walk them through how to respond to each other lovingly. It is a process of building trust and it might feel as if you are starting all over again. When you feel like giving up or it’s too hard, pray for wisdom and push through to the other side of the pain. Be willing to rely on God in new ways. He is faithful!
A Friend in Need
I remember calling a friend and crying. “I can’t do this. It’s too hard and painful. I can’t stop crying and just want it to stop!” She listened, prayed with me, encouraged me to listen to God through reading the Bible and praying— which seemed too simple and obvious in that moment—and said she loved me and would be there for me. She said she couldn’t fix anything but knew God was working, and I needed to depend on Him in new ways. Somehow she knew just what to say at that moment. Unfortunately, many people don’t know how to respond to abuse victims, and they can do more damage with a shaming response. It is important to listen, not place blame on the person, and pray for and with them asking God for words.
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If you don’t know what to say, don’t just fill the space with your own words or leading questions; rather, tell them you are very sorry for their pain and, if they are ready, try to help them find someone trustworthy to get counsel from and get them biblical resources. (Mike Wilkerson’s book Redemption and Justin and Lindsey Holcomb’s book Rid of My Disgrace are excellent.) You could even offer to go with them as a support. Godly church community during this healing process is essential. It is also important to make God the first person to “go to” when you are confused, hurting, lonely, in need of wisdom, whatever your trial, because He knows what you truly need and is faithful to answer. As the book of James says, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.”a When God gives you that wisdom, don’t allow your fears to keep you from obeying Him.
The process of what theologians call “expiation,” cleansing from the stain of sin on our souls, needs to take place for the victim to feel clean and whole again. Many abuse victims, specifically women, didn’t have fathers who protected them or gave them wisdom about guys. If girls are allowed to date just any boy who shows interest, not given healthy boundaries with them, and not told about the way guys in this world think, girls are bound to get hurt by them, as statistics show. Sadly, I wasn’t given this protection, either, but I also made the choice to have a relationship and sex. I wasn’t honest about the danger I was in because I didn’t have a heart-level relationship with my dad and was ashamed for him to see my sin. While my dad committed the sin of omission—not doing what he should have done to protect me—the guy and I committed the sin of commission, by having sex outside marriage. At first it was voluntary, and later he assaulted me. Both types of sin are hurtful, both physically and emotionally.
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In no way did I deserve to be abused; that was fully the guy’s sin, but I needed to see my initial sin and where it led. It changed the course of my life, took my dignity, my joy, my virginity, and separated me from God and Mark because of the overwhelming shame. My judgment was clouded once I had sex with someone outside a marriage relationship. The abuse made me feel dirty and defiled, and the lie that I had no value became even more believable. This prevented me from getting help and kept Mark from really knowing me because I didn’t allow him to get close. When God peeled back the layers of shame, I could see clearly the death and destruction caused by my sin and the sins against me.
We are all made dirty and defiled through the sins we commit and the sins committed against us. So, how do we “get clean”? Because of Jesus’ death on the cross, if you are a Christian, God sees you not by what you have done or by what has been done to you, but solely by what Jesus has done for you. You are a daughter of Christ, and He already did all the work to make you clean. He takes your shame and filth and replaces it with His grace and righteousness. Isn’t that incredible? And we don’t even do anything to deserve it. You just need to accept Him and believe His promises.
Serving and Protecting Your Children
How would I want my own daughters to be cared for? When I think of the possibility of my own daughters experiencing such things as I have, I am devastated. Mark and I want to do all we can to protect and inform them so that pain can be avoided and their legacies can be different. Being preventive as a parent is very important. Resources such as “Kids Need to Know”12 booklets and training give helpful discussions and terms you can use with all ages of kids. Not only are many children sexually abused; most are abused by children and adults they know. Tragically, many parents think it is rare and would never happen to their kids. They trust people without even knowing them and end up leaving their children vulnerable.
Safety is an urgent issue and one that parents can overlook for the sake of convenience. It takes time to get to know and trust whom your kids play with or the family members present. Often parents just want to drop the kids off to get a break, not considering the possibilities of how their children’s lives could be altered if they are abused. As parents, we need to be teaching our children healthy boundaries with their bodies (private parts are what a swim suit covers); giving them words to use if they need to report abuse; explaining the difference between good secrets like surprise parties and bad secrets that a child is told never to tell; helping them not be afraid to say stop or no if someone is making them uncomfortable; believing them (young children rarely lie about sexual abuse); and assuring them they won’t get in trouble if they tell about someone harming them.
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We also need to be regularly asking safety questions when our kids have been out of our care: What did you do at your friend’s house? What kind of things did you talk about? Was there anything that you really enjoyed or that made you uncomfortable? Were brothers or sisters or anyone else in the home? If we take time to have regular conversations with our children, we will more easily be able to educate them and detect if they have been harmed or are in danger.
If your child has already been abused, you need to be available to talk about it and find a biblical counselor who can point your child to Jesus and show you how to walk alongside through the healing process. In retrospect, had I learned these things as a child, my sexual assault as a teen may have been prevented.
It’s About Jesus
First John 1:7–9 says: “But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
I needed to confess, journal, and talk with Jesus, Mark, and godly, safe, wise Christian women about the sins I committed and the sins committed against me. This would keep me from hiding in shame and teach me to walk in the light. As daughters of Eve, we all have the propensity to put on fig leaves to cover our sin, but God calls us out so we can have honest fellowship with Him and others.
A few years into this, I now think redemption is always an opportunity in front of me, and my fears and “victim identity” are becoming a part of my past. There has been so much fruit that has come from the pain of healing that it has caused me to have more faith and hope in Jesus than ever before. I have shared my story and God’s faithfulness with many women who struggle with sexual assault. If God can use anything in my story to help other women in their marriages, I will share whatever He asks. It doesn’t mean it isn’t still painful at times, especially to hear other stories, but I’m so thankful that God has removed my shame and has replaced it with His righteousness! I don’t have to worry about what other people might say about me; rather, I get to tell people about Jesus! It’s about Jesus, not me.
a Ps. 34:18 NIV.
a James 1:5–8.