In My Mother's Womb

A Child is To Be Nurtured and Loved

God formed me in my mother's womb... that can be comforting to most, but not to a child that is born into an abusive home. Abuse is tossed around today to describe an angry push, a frustrated scream or any action that harms another. When I grew up in the 1970's abuse in the South was a secret word... something that didn't happen in middle class neighborhoods... something to be ignored or hidden in hopes that it would just go away.

The middle child of nine, I didn't fit the peacemaker mold commonly associated with that child. Peace was a foreign concept - I knew about survival, fear, torment... these all go hand in hand with being raised by an unstable father who claimed to "have the beast within" and a mother passively detached from reality. Was he mentally ill, demoniacally possessed, or just choosing to be evil? Little children don't care why, they just want the beatings, chokings, accusations,  forced labor, everyday-life-threatening-nightmare to stop.... but when something is not seen, ignored, denied, too dangerous, too ugly, too unpredictable.... no one gets involved, no one comes to help.

The violations pile on top of each other like rubbish in a landfill... its putrid, rotten, growing, toxic, and seems never-ending. Sex, violence, cruelty and madness escalates to the point that breathing too loudly can be something to fear. I have seen it, heard it, felt it ... to the point of my soul separating into multiple personalities to exist. How does one recover if she makes it out alive? When will the past stop haunting, bleeding into the present? Where was God my soul finally cries out to make sense who I have become? Shattered, pieces, broken, chards .... I am damaged and it feels beyond repair.

But the story doesn't end there... matter of fact, it is just about to begin...

"In the beginning God!" enters my life! No easy answers, no magic potions, no pixie dust. Real life means you will walk though real answers. God alone made you, and God alone knows you. He creates the stories. He changes lives. Trial, faith, trust, perseverance,  justice, and safety are real, messy, painful lessons that must be learned. Healing begins the moment our first response is always, "Yes, God!" It is not a saying, or a song.... it is a life of submitting to the purifying fire of God's sanctifying love.

You can't understand freedom until you know what it is to be in prison, a fearful slave to your life circumstances. You don't know liberty until you first acknowledge you are bound by anger, hatred, revenge, and shame. Do you want to know hope, security, provision, healing? I had to learn to put God first! "In the beginning God"... and for me, 'in the middle God," "in the end God," "in the between God," "in every step of the way God."

He led me from hell to heaven, from denial to reality, broken to whole, damaged to restored. I know no easy road. I only know the one with God holding onto my hand... where real stories of suffering can be changed to a life worth living... to become who He originally created me to be... from in my mother's womb. I am now alive!