Friends

"If I don't have friends, I ain't got nothing." Billi Holiday

I'm overwhelmed. Tonight my friend, Debbie called. Her voice in a panic. Begged me to come over and to hurry. I went. I wasn't prepared for the surprise party she had thrown for me. Even my sister and her husband drove the eight hours to come. They all chipped in and bought me the mountain bike I wanted. It had all the bells and whistles.

I wanted to run. I wanted to hide. I didn't want the attention. I didn't want the focus on me. I, who have spent a lifetime hiding, not wanting to be seen. Here were about thirty of my friends focusing on me. My first thought - I don't deserve this.

Later that night, after everyone left, Debbie told me, 'I would do anything for you. God brought me into your life because He wants to heal you completely.'

I met Debbie online. In a writers critique group. She read an excerpt of my book. I didn't tell her my real name. She emailed me and said she lives twenty minutes away. She wanted to talk. I panicked. I gave her my number. She called. I told her my real name. She wanted to meet. I couldn't. She knew too much. We emailed. We talked on the phone. She asked if I would ever meet her. Three months later, we finally met - In the park. Over the next few months she read more of my story. She wanted to know details. I couldn't talk. I hesitated. My words faltered. I started a sentence, then stopped. She encouraged me. Then begged me to come over to her place. We sat opposite each other, I unable to have her look at me. The shame was too great. She respected my need and talked with her face turned away from me. Over the next few months, we got close. Really close. We talked everyday. I told her things I had never told anyone. Things that happened. Horrible things. She said it made her care about me even more. She said our friendship to her is like David and Jonathon in the Bible.

My daughter told me on the drive home from the party, "Mom, you have some great friends." I do. I really do. I have been afraid of letting them get too close, afraid they would see the shame, afraid they would know my past and hate me. So I kept them at a distance.

My friends are awesome people. Each one of them. I still don't know how God did it. Took me out of a lifestyle of hopelessness and misery and brought me into one of love, friendship and family. The Bible says God came to set the captives free. It's true. He really did.

The Strength of Gentleness

"There is nothing stronger in the world than gentleness." Han Suyin

Growing up in a strict religious Jewish home, I learned very young, God was harsh, demanding and to be feared. We were taught if we didn't submit and obey His commands we would be punished and punished severly.

In our house, there were tons of rules to follow, - rules for everything.
Entering our house or any room in the home, we had to kiss the mazuza, a
small case that contained scriptures from the Torah attached to the doorposts. Rules dictated when we could answer the phone or doorbell, or what days we could or couldn't drive the car . Tons of rules centred around food. We had two sets of dishes and cutlery; one for dairy and one for meat products. At Passover, we had to hide those dishes and had two more sets because those plates had to be strictly free from having any leavened bread touch them. Everything we ate had to be 'kosher,' blessed by a Rabbi. Specific foods were considered 'unclean,' like pork and shell fish. These were forbidden.

God to me was mean, demanding, punishing. My father held high positions in the synagogue. He was greatly respected and given honors, but at home, he yelled and cursed and beat my sister and I so badly. We were nothing more than scapegoats for his frustrations. I was terrified of him and he represented God to me. Once I failed a french test. He beat me so badly, smashing my head over and over against the wall until I passed out. He told me later, it hurt him more than it hurt me. I never understood that. Many times he told me I was to obey and respect him, no matter what he did. That was God's will.

The rapist was well respected in his religion, but like my father, he terrorized the vulnerable and weak. He forced me to sit cross legged and unmoving for hours in a cold dark room listening to tapes of him. Then he raped me. He told me he owned me. He said God gave me to him because of his religious devotion.

I'm not sure how God convinced me of His gentleness. Everything I lived taught me He was cruel. But from the moment He freed me from the drugs, I felt the presence of His gentle Spirit.

I fought with Him, screamed at Him, dared Him to kill me...
But He waited, waited until I calmed down, waited until I could hear His gentle whisper. Then He drew me close and showed me what I had been taught was deception. Lies. Deceit.

I discovered God is nothing like I had been told. He is not a series of strict rules nor is He cruel and hard to please. The gentleness of His love frees me, heals me on the inside.

Telling the Truth

"We know the truth, not only by the reason, but by the heart." Blasie Pascal

For years, I refused to tell the truth of what happened, even to myself. For some reason, I was afraid to admit it, to believe it took place. My body knew though. The shame and fear lived inside me. It made me sick. It made me want to hurt myself, throw up, hide. And my body hurt in weird ways. I walked around feeling like puking all the time. My head itched from a rash that refused to go away and I had terrible migraines that forced me to spend even more time alone in darkness.

Truth - how could I not know or admit the awfulness of what took place? I minimized, I said it wasn't so bad. I said the abusers were only doing the best they could, that they didn't mean to do what they did. But I couldn't look anyone in their eyes. I knew if they saw into mine, they would see how bad and awful I was. They would hate me and be disgusted, so I hid. The shame tormented me. For years I tried to dance around it. I pretended what happened didn't really take place or it wasn't that bad.

Then someone told me the rapist's son killed himself. I learned of the brutality of what was done to him. It reminded me of what had been done to me, how I fought to get away from him with no one to help me. I survived. That boy didn't. And something in me knew I needed to tell. No one protected that boy. No one helped him. My sister returned from overseas. She called me everyday telling me the abuse was horrific that we suffered as children.

It felt like God was giving my head a good shake. When I was a child being beaten and bullied, I lived in a make believe world. I told myself if I were good, very good, my parents would stop hurting me. I told myself if I helped them, they would love me. I tried really hard to be what they wanted, to give them whatever they needed. I became really good at reading them, focusing all my attention on being there for them. The problem, - in doing that, I cut myself off from me. I became lost and it took years to find my way back.

Every time they punched or slapped me, threw something at me that left my body in pain and with big black bruises, every verbal assault that told me how bad, stupid and wrong I was, every fist in my face forcing me to eat even while I threw up,-in my child's mind, I believed they were good people. It was me. I was bad, wrong, undeserving. I defended them, stood up for them if anyone said bad things against them.

God waited until I could talk. He waited until I was strong enough. He waited until He knew I would tell. Last year, when that boy committed suicide and I knew no one had helped him, I promised God I would tell the truth. If telling what I went through can help someone so they don't have to live years lost in darkness, - then I want to do that.

At first telling the truth hurt. I felt like I was falling apart. I retreated into the woods. I spent most of my time running through the forest, hiding in its safety. There God comforted me. He told me its ok now to tell the truth. It's ok to admit what happened. I felt His presence. I heard the gentle whisper of His love. I came home after running and wrote. I struggling in writing. I didn't want to say everything. God nudged me. I saw that boy in my mind taking his life. I wrote the truth.

Funny thing about speaking the truth. My body felt better. The migraines have gone. That rash on my head, isn't there anymore. I feel lighter, better, freer. Someone once said, if we don't scream, our bodies will. Someone else said, "and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free."

The Art of Breathing

"Breathe DEEP!" The Snuggly Fabric Softener Bear

For years I walked around holding my breath. I was pertrified of being hurt so I learned to hold myself rigid, on guard, on edge... waiting.

I spent hours hiding - crouching in the dark, in a corner in the basement, under the balcony, in the closet - staying very still, quiet - not breathing.... I needed to hear, to be aware of every sound, to be ready. If I was ready, I could take it, I could handle whatever happened. I waited for hours like an animal being stalked by its prey. The waiting made me sick. My head hurt, I threw up. I bit my arms until they bled... to force myself to stay vigilant, to stay strong.

I grew up and continued to hold my breath. I lived on the edge. Reckless, wild. Life hurt. It hurt really bad.

A few years after God touched me, I went to see a Christian counselor. She looked at me and said, "you're not breathing. You're holding your breath. Breathe! Let go!" Her words made me afraid. To let go meant to trust that I would be safe. I went home after seeing her and threw up and cut my arms. I couldn't let go. I couldn't trust. Experience taught me the world was not safe. To let my guard down meant I might not survive.

Time passed. I continued to see that counselor. She kept telling me it's ok now to breathe. In the quietness of my house, in the darkness, alone - I let go. I let myself breathe. I survived. I went back to see her and told her. She asked me to show her, right there in her office - to breathe with her. To trust. I did.

I know God led me to that counselor. He used her to bring me out of a place that I had gotten lost in. She taught me to trust. She helped me feel safe, something I had never known before.... Safety. Feeling safe... helped me to breathe again.

From the moment God touched me, I trusted Him. How could I not? He cut the chains that wrapped around me, choking the life from me. He freed me. He took away the drug addiction. He took away the needles, the dope ...the highs that made me crazy and the lows that made me suicidal. They held me a prisoner for fourteen years, shooting up three and four times a day. He broke their hold over me so I trusted Him. He led me to others like that counselor. He wanted to help me learn to feel safe in the world. He wanted to help me learn to breathe again.

I was 12 when I started the drugs. By 14 I was shooting up. Life was dark. Ugly. The police, the courts, social workers sent me to jail, to hospitals, to rehab. Nothing worked. Only God. He did what nothing else could. He broke the hold of darkness and taught me to breathe, taught me to feel safe, helped me connect first to Him, then to myself, then to others.

Taking A Stand

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controvery." Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Taking a stand and speaking out when we see or hear an injustice being done takes courage. It's not easy to get involved, to have our voice - it's so much easier to walk away; to kid ourselves into believing we didn't see, we didn't hear, we didn't really know.......

Whether it's standing up for the rights of a child to be free from harm, or a nation to be free from unjust rule, or a cause that we know we cannot look away from - taking a stand tells the world we will not be silent, we will not allow wrong to be be perpertrated - whatever the cost to ourselves.

I have struggled recently with family members who knew my sister and I were being abused. They said they didn't know how bad it was, but they admitted they were terrified or our father and that many times they pulled our mother off us when she was beating us so badly. And finally they said, "we didn't want to interfere in someone else's family problems." So they walked away and left. Left us to fend for ourselves against adults who bullied and terrorized us.

Then they said we should have asked for help. They blamed us. They said we didn't reach out. It's hard for me to understand their reasoning. We were children who had no voice. They said I was quiet, that I never talked, never spoke. I had no words. No voice. How could I have asked for help?

To protect myself, I tried to disappear, first in my head, then through drugs, throwing up and cutting myself. I willed myself to not be present. Once, while at the park, it started raining. I ran to the store to look for my sister. She wasn't there. I ran back to the park. Everyone had left. Alone in the rain, thunder and lightening, I ran home. As soon as I got in the house, my mother attacked me - punching, kicking and slapping me. She put her hands around my throat and two of my aunts grabbed her and pulled her off. I slipped away and made it to the bathroom, locking the door. I dropped to the floor, soaking wet. Her screams filtered through the door. I closed my eyes and forced myself to pull away in my mind until I couldn't hear her anymore.

I became lost. I never talked. Teachers told me I was the saddest child they had ever seen. But nobody did anything. Nobody helped.

When God wrapped His gentleness around me, poured out His love - I knew I needed to be a voice for those who had no voice. I couldn't do what my relatives had done, look the other way and walk away from anyone experiencing any form of injustice or cruelty.

I went back to school. Got my degree. For all the drugs I did, the many times my head was bashed against the wall, for all the times I was called stupid, retarded, garbage, an idiot, I somehow managed to get on the Dean's Honor List.

God empowered me. He gave me my life back, then my voice. I will never keep silent again. I will stand up and speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. I will not turn away. I will be a voice for the vulnerable, the weak and those unable to stand up for themselves. I want to make a difference, regardless of the cost to myself. With Him in my corner, I will not be silent anymore.