My Journaling from Christmas 2011, Just felt prompted of God to share. May He use it to Today’s writing isn’t pulled from my book… rather my heart.
Yesterday was Christmas. I love my Lord, my God, so very much. He is the center of my universe. I love feeling His peace as He wraps me in His embrace. Love closing my eyes to quiet my pain – loneliness and weariness these days – all from the flashbacks night after night. I settle into His presence so grateful to know He catches each of my tears – catches them that I know He sees them – cares as He cries with me, for me. He loves me so much, I so know this. “You’ve kept track of my every toss and turn through the sleepless nights, Each tear entered in your ledger, each ache written in your book.” Psalm 56:8 The Message
Sometimes I cry because I know He understands, cry because it can be so releasing to do so with One Who knows – knows how it feels to endure, press forward, carry on – when it feels as though you are at your end.
My flashbacks are always worse over the holiday season. Thanksgiving to Christmas to be my own personal lived nightmare as a child. My mama always “went away” at Thanksgiving, leaving me open for greater abuse then what was endured. I always cried for her even though I was at least free from her side of it in her absence. Yet, what child doesn’t cry for their mama in the darkness – even soldiers are known to do so on the battlefield.
I have been asking my God to show me how He understands as I have been reliving my abuse on the deepest level, physical and emotional flashbacks. How does He understand my horror revisited. How can my God say He understands rape?
He answered me recently. As I sat in church next to someone who I so struggle with wanting sometimes – wanting them to have been my mama and papa back then – that way I wouldn’t have these memories. I would have ones for my child within of holding and cherishing.
Yet, would I then have my closeness to my Lord? I don’t think I would, I am who I am because of all I endured. It wasn’t what my God desired for me yet He is so using it to shape me – to help others – to build my future now that I am learning to yield it to Him.
So I shall close with my journaling that my loving Father, God, whispered to my heart in church. May you too find His peace, it is already yours, just ask in faith and you shall receive.
“My flashbacks are all about rape these nights. I to wake wrapped in the memories of being sold and used. My emotions so full, so twisted. How my soul screams, can You, Father God, understand this? You say You do, say You have walked my path. How is this Abba? How in rape? Now today in church You answered me, You told me this…to my heart and spirit, to my little me crying within. “I do understand, Tammy. I was raped of heaven, My pure existence. I was raped here in My journey to the cross for you. In the beating and tearing, the scaring of My fleshly body… My blood flowed. I was raped as all of Me was exposed, no shame allowed, all to see Me. I know rape. I know the emotions of it, the feeling of it, the invading it is. I know, I lived it, so… I understand. I will only allow what you can endure, no more, no less either. No more that you can feel My strength is enough, no less until you learn I am enough, unto more.” So I shall endure my flashbacks. Endure to feel my God’s strength as I experience it’s being enough. I will turn from the feelings of being raped to instead focus on the purpose of the flashbacks allowing. Focus instead on how Christ understands, God is here as He was there – the Spirit to even now speak for me in my clouded thinking, childish pain fogged mind. Even as I wake lost, weary of heart and with unresponsive body I will be ok because God is here each and every time. I will say to my me, it is ok, God is here.
In Christ, the best place to be,
Tammy
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