So God has really been working on me for several months (well almost a year) now about sharing my past. I've always kept it a big secret for various reasons. Mainly I'm afraid. Afraid of being vulnerable, of exposing the pain, of not being accepted when people learn where I've come from, but ultimately none of that matters. I've been told that this is what I need to share about my past and I'm going to do it because
I know God is going to use it in some amazing way that I can't even imagine. So here it goes...
I was born on May 24, 1988 and within the year, my parents were divorced. By the time I turned 3, my mother had left, moved 3 thousand miles away, to
Massachusetts and we (my older sister and I) were lucky if she remembered to send us a birthday card each year. I grew up with many questions of why she left, what I had done to make her leave, and why she didn't love us enough to stay. Living with my father was fine at first. When I was 8, he remarried and it was around that time that he began to physically abuse my sister and I. My stepmother often tried to step in when it first started but after he began abusing her, she just stayed out of it. I would go to school with long pants and long sleeves year round, just wishing that someone would notice or care enough to step in but no one ever did.
I spent every spare minute I had trying to find a way to please my father. I worked for the best grades I could get. I began working full time jobs as soon as I was old enough to work and I attended college at night during my senior year of high school. It was during that time that my life forever changed. There came a night that I was attacked and raped by a man that I trusted. A man that offered to help me with some things. I was
naive I didn't know better. I never saw it coming. I told my family and they didn't believe me. That night sent my life into a spinning black hole. I began cutting myself, I struggled with an eating disorder, and I was severely depressed. I just didn't know how to cope with it all. I wanted to give up and believe me, the thoughts crossed my mind but I was too scared to do it.
And by the grace of God, there was 1 person that believed me when I called. I hadn't spoke to Aprill in months but when I called her, she was there and she just listened and she never judged me for it. She also got me connected at her church and I remember the first time I walked in, Kathy Crispin walked up to me and introduced herself and she knew my name before I ever told her and she made me feel like I was at home and I never left. I've met so many friends there but I still chose to keep all this to myself and pretend that I've had this perfect life and that's the worst thing you can do. It will eat you alive I promise.
So I don't know what the purpose of this really is. All I know is that God told me to share it. And I hope I can use this blog to stay open and vulnerable during this journey and not to keep any more secrets. Going through some of this stuff can be so dark and scary and alone and I'll post some of my journal writings from that time to show you how dark it got. I just hope that God is going to use this to touch somebody's life. Anybody's... You really aren't alone.
