What About God?

A Victim’s Prayer

Oh God, I am so torn and ashamed….things have happened to me that I wouldn’t wish upon my worst enemy. The wounds I’ve experienced are deep and ugly, I feel stained and abandoned.

Trusting, really trusting another is pretty difficult for me. And if I can’t trust people who I can see how can I trust You?

Questions unnerve me; they jumble around in my mind….not only questions of why You let this happen but questions of why You didn’t rescue me. I am told that You love me…..and as much as I would like to believe that, believe You, the word “love” is so polluted in my heart that it’s hard for me to know what Your love for me may mean.

 In some ways I am afraid of love, God. Yet, I desire love….I need Your love…I want You to reach down inside my fearful, wounded heart, way back behind my defenses and put Your Holy balm upon me. It’s so painful God. It’s so ugly and appalling. I am so ashamed to even think about what happened….can You love me….are You really willing to love me? I have to believe it, because without Your love I fear I may be completely lost and hopeless.

But hope seems like such an elusive word…Yet I need hope…I need Your love….I need You to teach me what it’s like to be loved by You…..please help me to love me…..

Learning how to stand up for the person You created me to be will probably come in time….I know I have not always liked what You created when You made me….I have lived with too much pain to respect me…it’s been a matter of survival for so long….

So I am coming and asking You now, God, to help me….I am taking a risk and reaching out to You…will You come for me…will You heal me…will You give me hope and life again….Amen

 

I think one of the most difficult challenges, at least I know it was for me, is accepting the fact that God did not set us up for the abuse. Coming to the place where we truly understand and comprehend that it is the perpetrator who always sets up the victim….breaking the agreements made that somehow we are to blame, somehow we asked for it.

And I think just as difficult for many abuse victims is learning to separate God , the loving Father, from the image of father or male as perpetrator. I’d like to take some time and share my heart and my journey how I came to know God as a Father and finally learned to separate Him from my earthly father….and I don’t think I am alone in this.

Although I prayed the above prayer many years ago and God indeed has shown Himself faithful in answering and healing the deep wound of my Father issues, I confess there are still triggers, there are still times when I struggle to not put Him in the same category as my earthly father….when the word love can still be directly associated with the experience of abuse….

“Hope” is what you’ve got left when nothing else is working out right. Taking it to God in prayer, removes the obstacles of alone-ness and worry. If He’ll take care of the lilies of the field, He will take care of me. Sometimes I don’t see His process or His favor; but “hope” keeps me going. Although I KNOW He walks with me EVERY day, His presence sometimes feels far away. In my heart, I KNOW everything will turn out all right; I just have to wait and persevere through ALL life puts me through. “Be still, and know that I AM GOD.” ….. Lord, sometimes it’s just so hard…

“If God can bring blessing from the broken body of Jesus and glory from something that’s as obscene as the cross, He can bring blessing from my problems and my pain and my unanswered prayer. I just have to trust Him.”

Anne Graham Lotz

“What gives me the most hope every day is God’s grace; knowing that his grace is going to give me the strength for whatever I face, knowing that nothing is a surprise to God.” Rick Warren

Hope sees the invisible, feels the intangible and achieves the impossible. –Anonymous

Psalms 39:7 “But now, Lord, what do I look for? My hope is in you.

 Proverbs 13:12 Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.

Jeremiah 17:7 “But blessed is the man (woman) who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him.

1 Corinthians 13:13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.