Where Was God?

This has been written in tears: Tears of a 4-year-old who doesn't understand what Daddy is doing. Tears of a 6-year-old who is told, "It won't hurt much longer." Tears of an eight-year-old who is told, "Stop crying it doesn't hurt any more," or, "If you don't stop crying, I'll give you something to cry about." Tears of a 10-year-old who hears, "If you don't do this to help me, I'll leave; and then you, your mother, and your brother will have no food or place to live." Tears of a 12-year-old girl who prays that God won't make her pregnant (and prays that prayer for seven more years). Tears of a 14-year-old who prays that God will wipe her father off the earth.

Incest is the subject I have more knowledge of than any other. It is also the subject that is the most difficult to write about. By so doing, I leave myself exposed, stripped of all pretenses of who or what I am, and therefore, totally vulnerable. But so vividly do I remember the abuse, so strongly do I understand the need to feel affirmed as a child of God, and so powerfully am I moved by the Spirit of God, that I am persuaded to bring light to a crime that must be an abomination unto God.

Most children, it seems, know little about fear. As a parent, I do everything in my power to protect my son from fearful situations. I suspect other parents do likewise.

But fear is a state of being that an abused child knows intimately. An abused child lives in fear created by someone who professes to love him or her.

Eventually the child grows to adulthood, as I have, afraid of life and suspicious of other people. It came as a shock to realize I was terrified of men and that I must constantly battle that fear.

I learned from my experiences that I was not lovable. If the person hurting me was supposed to love me and continued to hurt me, something must be wrong with me that made me unlovable. A child cannot draw any other conclusion.

I don't recall the day I recognized this or even remember consciously taking, ownership of the thought, but I know it is part of me that I work daily to erase. No matter how hard I tried to please my father, nothing I could do satisfied him except relieving his insatiable sexual appetite. That left me in a constant state of fear.

We are taught early in our Christian education that our bodies are the temples of Christ. But my temple had been violated so many times it ceased to have any significance to me except as an object of hate. I was raped more than 400 times in my childhood and adolescent years. The memories of those experiences are horrifying.

During that time, my body was the source of nothing but grief and pain. It was demeaned to the point where I saw it as no longer glorifying my soul but only as the prison of my soul.

I was desperate to control what was happening to me, but I couldn't. Nothing belonged to me. Nothing was sacred, and I had absolutely no rights or privacy. So as a child, I learned to control the one thing I could—my emotions.

During my mid-teens, however, another contributor to my self-hatred developed. I found my body responding physically. Not understanding how I could enjoy something I hated so much, I concluded that I was evil. "Good" people didn't do this awful thing.

I believed everyone could ask for and receive forgiveness from God, but came to think I was the exception. All persons except me were entitled to God's mercies. That belief has imprisoned me for years, and only recently have I been able to verbalize that I believed I was not part of God's kingdom.

There was a time when I did not care if I lived or died. Death held promise because that was where all the wrongs would be righted. The emotional pain of everyday life would find release. Therefore, death was not frightening. Only life was.

I finally shut the door to my feelings and became a person who did not live, but merely existed. Survival was the key, and I refined survival to an art.

I pretended to hide inside my body. In my mind, I left the rape experiences completely. I knew he was not doing anything to the real me because I had retreated into that inner part of my being that was sacred, clean, and pure. He didn't know that part of me existed, so he couldn't rape that part of me.

My body is still, in many ways, the entity that I am trapped in and the entity from which I attempt to escape. If I were to use a phrase to describe myself, I would say I am an actress who is constantly on stage, playing to an audience.

What has happened is that I have sought to hide the only part of me that is truly mine—my inner being. It is the only aspect of my existence that has not been dredged out, knocked around, beaten, and demeaned. My inner being belongs to me. It is sacred territory.

I wear armor and create soldiers to protect myself. The armor is my masks, and the soldiers are the different roles I play when I'm performing on the stage of life. I play the roles brilliantly, and my soldiers protect me.

I have just begun to take the masks off, but they have been on so long that the stage make-up is caked. I have found it very painful to peel the layers off, but I am determined to succeed.

A voice calls to me, and it gives me no peace. It keeps urging me forward even through the pain. It is the persistent and persuasive voice that transforms the world and transcends its pain and suffering. It is the voice of the one who has borne all our grief and suffered all of life's indignities. It is the voice of the God who came to us incarnate in Jesus Christ. It speaks of the healing relationship and the relationship in healing.

Claiming my innocence was painful. In so doing I had to decree that my father was unworthy of my love. But more painful is the knowledge that he did not love me. I fought accepting that knowledge for so many years. It was easier to believe I was evil than to believe my father did not love me. But as long as I chose to deny it, freedom was impossible.

Where was God when I needed God most? I have searched my soul into its depths for the answer, and in that search I have found a new freedom that comes from experiencing God—a God who comes to all of us in whatever form we need and in whatever place we happen to be.

This very question is our common denominator. It is the question we ask when there is no more light at the end of the tunnel. The question plagues us when we are in crisis. Each of us struggles with this question from the time we are able to identify what the word "God" images for us.

I have found my answer. My answer came from the crucified Christ as he cried out in his passion from the cross, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthan," "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Surely a God who has such mercy and such love would not let a son die on a cross, even if we are sinners. I, a mere mortal with limited capabilities for love, would move heaven and earth and fight with all my being for the life of my son. If God's love is greater than ours, why wasn't the son saved?

Scripture tells us in Matthew 27:40 that the chief priests, lawyers, and elders asked the same question. Even the bandits who were crucified with him taunted him in the same way. Jesus died a broken man—mocked by his accusers, betrayed by his disciple, and denied by one of his closest friends. Jeered at, spit at, taunted, ridiculed, and laughed at. But God had the last word, because Jesus overcame every earthly affliction. No matter what the abuse, the message God has given us in the resurrection is that coercive power never works; it only destroys. God has the final word, and that word is Life.

Victims of coercive power can find salvation and redemption in the message of the cross. The message is not only that Christ died for our sins but that Christ died because of sin. That sin is the need for one person to render another a slave. The need to control, the need to hold power over someone else is, I believe, the reason people abuse children. Who better is there to exert power over than a helpless child?

But Jesus' death is our resurrection. If there were ever a time when God could have used coercive power, it was on that day when the earth shook and the sky was dark and Jesus was nailed to a cross. But instead God raised Jesus from the dead. And just as God raised Jesus from the dead, God has also raised me from my death. I believe God did not remove me miraculously from my surroundings because God knows that coercive power never works.

You and I are children of God and can receive that same love from God as Jesus did. That love will bring me to the light at the end of my tunnel, and that love will bring you to the light at the end of your tunnel.

God the Father. Can I really love God the Father? If my own father was my molester, can anyone including God expect that I could love Him with all my heart and soul? Is it possible to love someone, something, or some other if the image is a reminder of my own father?

My God is the creator, sustainer, and redeemer of all life. Some say God is the Father. Others say God is Mother or Spirit. The important message is that God will speak to us in our own imagery. It is not important whether we believe in God the Father, or God the Mother, or God the Spirit, or God the Other. What is important is that we allow ourselves to hear God speak to us in ways that will make our lives whole and complete. I believe God—whoever or whatever God is—will move in our lives with such force that we will be carried to new freedom and life, if only we will be open to the opportunity.