Not sure you remember, but I contacted you from the ACFW loop after you'd posted about not being acknowledged as a writer by your family, I believe. This was a few months ago. I told you I am also a survivor of childhood abuse and that I hadn't read any of your work because I just wasn't at the place I could.
I picked up Thin Places last week in Denver and I just want to tell you how beautifully written it is! And how it has impacted my own journey.
Some background:
I was sodomized at age 2 by my uncle who was about 18 and lived with us briefly. To my knowledge, it was a one time event, but one that led me on a journey of beating myself up through abusive, serial relationships and sexual promiscuity as I tried to figure out life and why it hurt so much. At the time I remembered what I'd been punishing myself for, I'd been married four times and had finally stopped running from God after finding myself alone with no answers for life at all. The one thing I hadn't wanted to do was to be a single parent so I didn't have my daughter until I was 33 and sure that that relationship would last. It didn't and my healing began when my daughter was two and looked just like me at that age. God's timing is perfect.
Through prayer, I re-experienced what I'd experienced at age 2 but had buried for 33 years. Jesus came into the vision and carried me down the steps into our basement and stood holding me by the bed where it happened and told me to not carry the shame of it; it wasn't my fault.
For as long as I could remember, I'd felt like underneath all my success (I am an over achiever even now :0) I had done something really bad, I just didn't know what it was.
Jesus in His mercy and grace returned the buried memory on the Friday night before I was to be baptized on Wednesday evening so that when I went under the water it truly was a cleansing. Nothing else to wash away.
I dealt with the anger at my uncle who was beloved in my family and known as a "great guy." He had died in an accident by the time my memory returned but at family events he would be talked about and everyone would tell "Ronnie stories" (he was a real practical joker so everyone had a funny story). It was all I could do to not stand up and scream, "He ruined my life!"
Worse still was the anger I felt at my Mom for not protecting me or noticing something was wrong. My mom is not a person who deals with things--she stuffs them, puts on a happy face and goes on. Somehow I knew she could not/would not deal with this about her favorite brother and so she does not know even now. I told my older sister who told my younger sister, but after a "I'm so sorry" it is almost like it is "get over it already" attitude.
Because of my past, I have always been the different one, the family black sheep. Talented but messed up. Successful but messy otherwise. I am known as selfish and self-centered in my family and my family goes on without my input. I live 250 miles away from where most of them still live and though sometimes that is easier, I wonder how other people can love me and think I'm a great person and to my family I'm still the irresponsible girl who talks too much. I think part of it is that when I achieved "worldly" success and financial success, they could still say, "Yes, but her personal life is messed up." After my memory returned and I could heal, I married a great Godly guy, began my drama ministry and wrote my first book (which they hated, btw :0), they no longer could box me into the successful but messed up category and so they just hold me at arms length.
Which brings me to today--As I read Thin Places, I saw so many places where our lives parallel in our emotions and how we react and respond to life. My need to control, my inability to take criticism well, my choice of bully friends, an interest in porn even at a very young age, even down to struggling with singing on the worship team.
I have been in a season of life where I have again faced many challenges--everything in my life except my marriage and family have been challenged in some way--my drama ministry where I portray women in Scripture, my work as a Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist, loss of a friendship and prayer partner of 5 years and most importantly, my friendships in my church where I have been worship leader for 5 years (small church, small town, non-denominational church with some used to traditional hymns and lots of young people who want "modern" music).
A couple of prominent women in the church began to first criticize the music choices and then it turned to criticism of me and my involvement not just in the music, but saying I was doing so many things in the church, no one else had a chance to do anything. My husband and I met with the other couple and the Pastor met with the other woman and her husband and they were repentant but it didn't really stop. We're talking about stuff like filling the coffee pot for Sunday morning because I'd be at the church Sat. night going over music--just so someone else wouldn't have to come in, or decorating the altar--minute stuff which when I stopped doing, no one else did! When I asked if I should step back in or who was going to do these things, I was told people were too intimidated by me to step up--I was a "hard act to follow!" Give me a break! Anyway....it was just very hard because my "family" has been my church family and I was left feeling lonely and hurt by all of that. For months I went to church not really trusting anyone because those who'd talked against me, I'd considered friends and sisters in Christ. It has been very painful.
Enter Thin Places. Oh, Mary, you write so beautifully! God has so gifted you to touch broken hearts and those that need to understand them. I wept my way through about 1/3 of the book the first night and then couldn't sleep. I got up to cry and pray and read Scripture. I felt a little like I did when I was first saved--who am I? If I am not the funny girl who parties and tells dirty jokes, then who am I? If all of this perfectionism, control, over achieving busyness comes from the abuse then who am I and who was I meant to be if this had never happened. I find myself at 53, trying to figure it out.
I posted a request to the ACFW prayer loop and had an outpouring of love and prayers and the fear and hurt has lifted from my spirit. I am continuing to read and also see parallels in the husband God gave to you and the great gift of a husband God gave to me. I am seeing evidence of healing in every page and seeing it in my own life. God has always worked with me in seasons and I see myself entering a new season of Him pouring life into me in a new way. I am grateful for that. I am grateful that I could finally see that some of my "personality traits" were residual sin patterns left behind as coping mechanisms that it is time to jettison. That I have far to go before I sleep. And that is okay. He is faithful.
Bless you, Mary. Thank you for being honest. Thank you for not hiding and pretending. Thank you for saying it is okay to be messy and broken. That even after we know and walk with Jesus life still has challenges as we are transformed into the image of our Savio
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Praise the Lord.
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