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30 DAYS OF BALANCED LIVING: How to Become Balanced and Healed, Day 23

In life we have many firsts; a first date, a first kiss, the first time we got behind the wheel of a car, a first time at intimacy, our first fight, or the first time you find yourself in a situation that could end your life. Like I said, there are many firsts that we will have over the course of our lives. But, the first time you make a reveal will be just as unforgettable. Almost 20-years ago I sat down to write a letter to my mother as to why she punished me once when I was in middle school for not being home when she got home from work. Some people ask me why it took such a long time. To be honest, the incident was so traumatic that I literally pushed it to the back, then eventually out of my mind without ever addressing it. I accepted my punishment, and lived with her disappointment. I had my own hell from that point on. One thing that is clear to me now, is how easy it is to endure pain rather than deal with the long drawn out consequences from the truth. Why? We want to avoid being judged or being scrutinized. However, there is one other truth and it is that we want to feel as if we have control over our lives again.

1. We want to control some of what comes next. – We sometimes believe that if we can spin or tailor the message in a certain way that it will lessen the hurt and pain for others, and ourselves. Yet, that is not always the case. I know people who were called liars, and the situation turned out worse for everyone.
2. We want to control when we feel hurt again. – Maturity comes in time. We must ready ourselves to be emotionally mature to deal with the many schemes of the enemy that come our way. We must do it for ourselves and for the sake of our loved ones.
3. We want to control our level of vulnerability. – The incident that I am going to describe for you left me guarded and scarred for many years emotionally and socially. And, then it turned me into a person that needed God more than ever in order to save my life from a life of sin and promiscuity. Again, the need for control can drive us to be uncontrollable.
4. We want to control when we begin to heal. – Opening our eyes to the reality of our situations and how they affect us, gives us the ability to do a bit of soul-searching that will enhance and enrich our way of life. Healing is a natural process, but can only begin when we are ready to live with the truth.

Consider the child who tries to tell a mother that her father is molesting her, or that she sees her brother stealing from the store or from her purse, or that one of the siblings sneaks out of the house to party and do drugs with friends. There are times when the truth does not lead to believing, but the healing must begin none-the-less.

I made my first reveal when I was in my mid-twenties. I wrote the letter to tell my mother that she punished me as a teen, because the teenage boy next door had abducted me and tried to rape me, that I had bitten him and hid in kitchen cabinets in his home until his brother came home and stopped him from terrorizing me, that I got away and jumped over the fence into our backyard and locked myself in my closet to get out of that skirt, so I could run to a neighbors and stay until she got home, only to hear him calling my name, to find him in our home waiting to rape me and torture me, that God had intervened just when he was penetrating me and heard a car pull up that sounded like yours and he got up and ran away out of the backdoor, and I ran out the front door, that I then went to the elder neighbors and then to another friends whose parents were home for shelter, and that he stalked me for 9-years trying to finish what he started. I couldn’t tell my mother these things. She didn’t like me being a latchkey kid and this would have killed her on the spot. I was the one who convinced her it would be okay for me to come home from school on the bus on occasion. Her worst nightmare had come true. So I kept it to myself until the appointed time. Over the years I came home less and less, I made my sisters stay in the house, and found them afterschool programs to attend while I was away at college. One day I came home only to find a funeral was happening at his home. I discovered he had been sent to jail and was killed in prison for doing to someone else what he had done to me. And I cried. Not for his death, but that I had to no longer live in fear of being caught off guard and being abducted or even worse, killed by the hands of my childhood attacker.

My charge to you is to discover how to be free and live again.