Monday, August 11, 2008

More Hope.

8:49 AM by Christi Bowman

I was abused. I don't say that so that people can feel sorry for me. I am NOT a victim, and I don't use it as an excuse for behavior. I do think that it has earned me the right to comment on abuse without being called cliche.

I have spent most of my life making excuses for my abusers. I have told myself and others that it wasn't all that bad, that people have experienced much worse than I did. God was tired of that. He walked me through it so that I could have a better understanding of it's ramifications. It was that bad.

I have heard that not all abused people go on to abuse, but of the people who do abuse, 99% have been abused. That statistic is saying that people who do abuse have been abused. I have also heard it said that you form the majority of the opinions you have about the world and about yourself by the age of 5. Five and under is when a lot of abuse takes place. Children, at that age, don't have much of a voice. When they do talk, they can not put into words what is going on, and they do not know how to fight it when people don't believe them. If abuse is what you knew when you were forming the bulk of your opinions about yourself and the world, then that will have to play itself out in some form or another until you experience healing from it. It is what you knew. It was your normal. It is how you relate, even when you are unaware...especially if you are unaware. I know what it is like to have an idea of what has happened to you, to know that it was not right, and to realize it was your most painful life experience and yet still come face to face with your own thoughts about abusing others. Powerfully scary thoughts. I know what it is like to believe that those thoughts are yours and coming from you. I know all about the confusion, the anger, and the compounding guilt that scenario produces.

God gave me an insight into how Satan works one day. Part of the reason why I drank was because satan kept telling me I was nothing. He made me believe that everyone else held this same opinion of me as well. I did not give satan the credit he deserved for all of this until God exposed him to me. I thought that it was me that thought I was nothing, and I was convinced that everyone around me thought the same thing. I had awful tapes playing in my head all the time. Those tapes would play things like "You are so ugly...you are so fat...you are the biggest idiot...you are a loser...you are dumb...you have no right to say anything to anyone...you shouldn't even open your mouth. People laugh at you when you walk away...people hate when they see you walking towards them. People pretend to like you to your face...really you bother them and they can't stand your existence." These are only a few of the things I thought I was telling myself. These are some of the nicer things I heard on a daily basis. I lived for the weekends when I could drink and not hear them. When I could enjoy people's company and not be plagued with how they really thought of me. I believed that if I hid myself in alcohol people would never find out who I really was. They would not be able to dislike me and hurt me. I was a rock...I was an island...and my moat was alcohol.

I have talked a lot on this blog about God having to pull me away from the alcohol first before He could heal me...and that was very painful...letting that go. However, having to deal with how I saw myself and how I believed people saw me is one of the ways God revealed how satan works. After I quit drinking I was having one of my episodes where I was beating myself up, and I was believing that others were beating me up as well. I had just come from a group of people and I couldn't stop the voices in my head from telling me what an idiot I was and what a fool I made of myself. I was practically hyperventilating over things I had said...going over my words again and again...analyzing everything. I was paralyzed by fear...wondering if giving up drinking was worth all this pain...and then God opened up my spiritual ears...and all of the sudden all that name calling took on a scratchy evil hateful voice. It was not my voice saying all those nasty things to me. I knew immediately who it was...it was satan, and I knew he HATED me with a hatred that I had never felt before. I knew right then and there that I did not hate myself and others didn't hate me either. He has not come at me in this way again, and the ability to hear him for who he is has not left me altogether either. When he attacks it is not as profound as that moment, but I am well aware that it is his thoughts and not mine.

This is a long post and I apologize. I needed to explain how satan works to elucidate seeing abuse as a fight against "spiritual forces of evil and not against flesh and blood."

I did not realize I had a bad temper until I had kids of my own. Sure I would get mad at my parents, and we might have a fight when I was younger, but I was pretty easy going. Nothing fazed me. By the time I had my own kids I had lived away from my parents for 6 years...married for 3 of them. Kevin and I never fought, and I never fought with anyone else. If people bugged me I just chose to not be around them...I never felt the need to confront anyone, or change their behavior. Things like that were a none issue. Once I had kids though I was confronted by a very ugly side of myself that I did not like at all. Some of it, I was told, was normal...but they couldn't see on the inside of me. I didn't like what I was feeling. It wasn't normal, and I couldn't walk away.

As first time parents we had a difficult first baby. She never slept...EVER. I was up ALL night, and then she would nap for 30 minutes 1 time during the day. She cried ALL THE TIME. I was beside myself. Kevin had to get up early for work, and in those days he had a long commute. I could not in good conscience make him get up with the baby because I feared for his life in the car at 6 a.m.. I understood why moms shook their babies, and I repented of judging them. I never did it, but sometimes I would hold her away from me and imagine it. I never expressed any anger towards her physically, but my anger never went away, and I found my anger carrying itself over into other days, and building on itself until I resented her.

As she got older she got a little better, and I learned how to stuff my emotions. I loved her I really did, but I had a lot of guilt. We had a second baby, and she was an angel. She slept all the time. I didn't have the same issues with her until she hit 15 months and I got pregnant with our third. Our second became a tornado. A good friend who watched her for us for a couple of days called her the tsunami. She was a literal hurricane...and a VERY destructive one. My anger started surfacing for her as well, and I couldn't get rid of it either. I loved my kids and their were MANY good times and fun moments with them...still I always had this nagging anger and guilt over it. I would blow up very easy. I saw the fear in my kids eyes when I would yell at them. Their eyes would haunt me and bring me to tears after I tore them apart with my words and slammed the door. I refused to spank them because the only time I wanted to spank them was when I was angry and I was afraid of what I would do...I was SO afraid of this anger. This was another reason I loved to drink on the weekends. I wasn't angry when I drank. I was giddy. I could care less if the 3 year old tornado came through the house after I had cleaned it. I could care less about anything. I could sit and cuddle the first born like she always wanted me to...I had time to sit, drink my wine, relax, and not care about a thing. Alcohol calmed my demons...that was why it was so addicting.

God has explained a lot and restored so much more. I say all this because I know what it is like to have horrible thoughts...thought that aren't yours but sound the same as your voice. I know what it is like to be completely convinced that you are solely capable of pure evil, without giving any credence to powerfully evil forces. What if you are Bitana's dad? What if you are in a far less healthier place than even I was. What if the voices in your head tell you to shake the baby and out of frustration and lack of education you do it? What if they tell you in your anger to throw your kid across the room and you do it? I have heard those voices. I know the release you can get, even if only for a second, by verbally berating a helpless child. The forces of evil are powerful. They allow for an instant gratification when you do something abusive. If you don't fight it, that feeling of gratification will spur you on to more abuse. Some people will not be able to understand this but it is REAL. What if in your angry stupor that feeling of instant gratification is the only "good" feeling you have felt all day? Anger feels good. What if you keep it up because you hate yourself and everything around you and the only thing that makes you feel anything good at all is that second of release when you no longer fight the voices? What if giving in spurs you on to more anger and you get so angry that when she vomits from the abuse, you make her eat it...going further somehow makes you feel better while you are doing it. While you are under its power, it will render you powerless to stop...that is the power of evil...and that is why our struggle is NOT against flesh and blood. Bitana's dad hates himself...he has to. It may look different then the self loathing I had for myself, but he can't participate in that abuse and see the things he sees without being in one of the darkest prisons known to man. I can only begin to fathom the pit he is in.

I can only begin to fathom the pit, but I believe there in lies the starting point to hating the sin and still being able to love the sinner. The sinner needs our love to change. It is evidence that there is a God in the midst of this evil world, and that evil does not negate his existence or lack of love. The proof of His love is that He came down and did something about it...and we don't have to live in that pit any longer.

God has given me an excellent ability to see my face in the people who do the wrong. I do not see big and little sins. I am not giving them excuses, but there is hope. I know this because there was hope for me. I was constantly on the edge of something, and I was very fearful of the day I would no longer be able to fight it. That is why my drinking got worse and worse. I trusted in it to make me the person I desperately wanted to be, but in true satanic form it was beginning to fail me as well. The Bible says to always be ready to give a reason for the hope that is in you...and that is the hope that is in me...the hope of restoration. I know what it is like to be scared of who you are, and I know that because of Jesus you don't have to be that person. It is slavery that makes us that...and we don't have to be slaves. That was beaten and finished a long time ago. The hope is, that we can be transformed and our former self barely recognizable, when we live in The Light.

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