32 years ago and the memory feels like yesterday

 TRIGGER WARNING. I don’t want to cause anyone to go to a bad place.

32 years ago my innocence was shattered.
It sounds like forever ago when I count the years like that.
In my memory it could have been yesterday.
Sometimes I’m taken back and I still feel like that little 13 year old girl who’s world, in just one night, was turned upside down.
I can still smell the stench of alcohol on his breath.
I can still see his eyes that pierced into my soul.
The physical pain lasted but for a few fleeting moments compared to the real pain that came in the years to follow.
Sleepless nights and questioning why.
The slow death of my self esteem, my hopes and dreams, my identity.
Sometimes It came in strong bouts of shame and condemnation.
Years of guilt thinking I could have done something different.
The death didn’t come quickly, no it came gradually over years of thinking I was dirty and used.
It was 30 years before I would settle in my heart that God was good and He didn’t like it either.
It was a long slow walk of pleading and screaming, crying silent tears and mourning. Great loss and brokenness is not easy to mend.
It would be years before I would see God in that part of my story.
It was just this year when I allowed myself to let go of feeling dirty and used.
Just this year that I put the blame in the right place and let myself off the hook for it even happening.
Looking back it was ludicrous to even think I had a part in it, but lies do that, they lie to you. They wreck you.
I bought into the lie that victimization brings, that you aren’t worth anything anymore, that you are used goods ready to be broken at any moment.
The lie that I can never be whole again and I’ll always be that broken little girl that sobbed and pleaded.
No I am not her anymore, though at times there are remnants of her existence.
Joy comes in the morning.
Mourning I have done.
Sometimes no joy came and it was years of waking up to those same dark realities.
Joy does come in the morning though, sometimes decades later but it does come.
I know sorrow and I know broken.
I also know a savior.
One night changed my whole life, bringing years of dying and decay.
One night on the cross Jesus was beaten and abused.
His death bore through greater pain than we could ever know.
One night on the cross brought a lifetime of hope and healing for my pain.
His cross covered my body when my innocence was taken,
His cross covers all those silent tears and hopeless nights and questionings.
His cross covers all my wanderings and all my dying and all my broken misplaced feelings.
32 years ago and it still sometimes feels like yesterday.
32 years and I have joy after mourning and peace after agony.
32 years and I’m still healing.
32 years and he didn’t take it all.
Beauty for ashes…
Strength for fear…
Gladness for mourning…
And peace for despair.
He restores the years the locust have eaten.
He heals what the enemy has stolen.
Though I walked through the valley of the shadow of death, He was with me.
He restores my soul, surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

He wins!

If you know this kind of pain, you are not alone. If you need support please PM me I want to be there for you.

#tellsomebody