I have to admit that the past few months have been quite horrendous. My whole world was shaken up by the actions of one individual. An individual who I trusted. An individual who I looked up to and had great respect for. He broke an agreement that we had even though I kept my end of it. But in hindsight, and we have both learned this through a few joint counseling sessions that he has so willingly attended, we really didn't have clearly defined limits to that agreement. Although even still, he did acknowledge he could have handled it much better and much differently and yet to this day I feel like I am being punished, rejected and left out.
I recently lost a "friend" over the whole mess because I said some things about him that may not have been very good to say because I was so hurt - devastated. But the reality of that loss is that she and I were just not meant to be friends. Every thing I ever said, and I mean every thing, was judged by her to be antagonistic in nature, yet she did more than her fair share of antagonizing. There was a moment in which a question had come up in our Sunday night group meetings. Yeah, a question from her. She always did ask a lot of questions, to the point that hardly anyone else could ever get a word in edgewise or ask any questions they might have. Her recent question was a question that I, as a thirty-two-year-old and not quite a two-year-old baby Christian, would naturally expect from a two- to four-year-old child, not an adult with children. "Did Adam have a belly button?"
My pastor, in all the grace he could muster in response, just basically said that there were bigger things in life to think about, such as why it is that in our modern day, there are still countries that have not even heard the Word.
I reminded her of this and even though it was exactly what my pastor had said, she basically threw it back at me to the extent that she came across sounding as though she did not give a rip what my pastor had to say about it but that she can think about whatever she wants. That was the straw that broke my back. I do not take kindly to people who do not respect my pastor and friend.
I will admit that only earlier after he did what he did that I was so hurt that I actually implied that he killed grace. I am now to a point where grace may not be dead, but it still feels quite fractured. My pastor and I have to work on re-establishing a trust between the two of us so that we can experience a full restoration. And it seems like it is taking forever. But he has gone above and beyond what would be expected of a pastor. He has sat through no fewer than two hours of counseling sessions and will be embarking on a third in a couple of weeks. And I am only guessing that he will probably continue to sit through some additional sessions until he and I both feel confident that we have made progress and are restored. Baby steps are great for babies, but when you are thirty-two and have experienced the infractures to the trust infrastructure that began when I was a child, you would begin to understand why what happened hurts so much.
And this is where it gets really personal because to be honest, I think I am afraid to say this to my counselor, so whoever is reading this, I hope that you can provide some encouragement and some support and perhaps even share this with my counselor on my behalf, but yes, one of the biggest reasons I question God's providence and sovereignty is because my human father took away my innocence when I was just six. He beat me with a belt one night after my mother had gone to bed and at that time we lived in a trailer house and the two bedrooms were on separate ends of the trailer. Matter of fact, for the past four and a half years, I have had night terrors as my subconsciousness has revealed bits and pieces of another traumatic event that I am not entirely sure about the who and the what of yet but I suspect that my father did put me through SA. And that is a reality of which that if it did occur, I do not know if I am ready to know.
My counselor asked me why I suspect that. How do I explain that a physician who almost caused my death four years ago planted that bug to start with just because I explained that I felt violated when I went to the women's doctor? And because of something that I have lived with for the past 16 years, not counting the cutting which intensified around the same time because I used to feel so guilty for the shameful thing that I fell into that I would begin to cut my wrist? At first it was a paper clip, then it advanced to scissors. I had to get the pain out. I have never intended to do anything but.
The biggest pain was the biggest relief for me. My parents' divorce just before I turned 21. But my father disowned me. Then when my grandmother on his side died in 2003, that summer was the last communication I ever had with him and that was enough to realize how hateful he really was and to cut him out of my life altogether.
But you know why I still love my pastor despite what he did that has brought so many of these issues back to the surface? Because he never killed grace. If anything, despite of what he did that hurt me so much, he has actively been showing me grace and refusing to let me go despite my stubbornness and my continual "pooh pooh," let me go, let me leave, let me forsake you and everyone else because I do not like feeling rejected and left out which is what I feel right now because of what he did.
And if he is reading this, then we have a lot that has spilled out here that we probably need to go over for the next session if that is okay by him.
I am sorry that I ever said that he killed grace because he did not. I just do not understand grace. I hope that everyone reading this will do one thing. If you see me in the next couple of weeks, kill me with that grace and give me a giant bear hug, okay? Just do not come that close to me if you have a bacterial infection or have had one in the past couple of weeks because the nature of my immune deficiency is that I am most vulnerable to bacterial infections.
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