It Ends With You

My husband and I recently saw a movie on our date day. I had no idea when we sat down what this movie was all about. But I was significantly triggered at a level I cannot articulate.

Triggers can come from almost anywhere, a smell, a place, a familiar face, or a repeated abusive action. We tend to think being triggered is bad because it feels bad. I believe it is a nudge from the Holy Spirit. It touches a place in your soul that is not fully healed, that is still raw. It says, "Your soul needs attention"

Abuse takes many forms. It would seem physical abuse would be the worst atrocity one human being could inflict upon another, and to the victims it is. But all abuse in any form is devastating. It can shatter a relationship, break trust, irreparably damage a soul or worst of all, end a life.

Abuse is defined as:

1.  Physical maltreatment.

2.  Language that condemns or vilifies usually unjustly.

3.  Improper or excessive treatment or misuse.

Statistics show that 30% of women have experienced intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence. That is 736 million women around the world: a horrifying reality. Nearly half of those murdered in the past decade were killed by a current or former partner.

Abuse is real. While its most violent form is what we hear about the most, there are many other forms that don't make the headlines. The little girl who witnesses her mother’s brutal assault at the hands of her father and the casualty of her impaired heart that no one sees. The bully who terrorizes his victims while others stand by and watch. The harsh, belittling words thrown like darts at the vulnerable heart.

The adage "Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me" falls inadequately short of reality.

Vulnerability is "the inability of an entity to withstand the adverse effects of a hostile or uncertain environment." When we encounter an abusive situation that leaves a wound in our soul, our mind then builds a wall of protection around itself. Sometimes the abuse is so traumatizing we like to leave those walls up...just in case.

The abused often have one of two reactions. They lash out when triggered or they stuff all of that pain up like a corked bottle. But one day, something or someone loosens the corks grip, and all the pain comes pouring out, usually at someone who had nothing to do with their abuse.

Hurting people hurt other people.

 I felt the feelings of that moment so long ago. The terror I felt as a small child. I felt like I was back there, reliving the trauma I will never fully forget. My father’s voice as he berated my mother. I could hear the unrelenting blows of unprovoked drunken anger being thrown at her. What I never heard was my mother cry out or defend herself; this wasn't her first rodeo with my father. When I found her in the bathroom, she looked at her face and buried it in a towel to cry. I wanted to cry beside her, but I did not. The walls around my little heart were holding firm.

As I sat in that theater, I could feel the tears rushing to the surface to find expression. I wanted to sob for the pain of all the people who have been hurt and abused, I wanted to weep away my own pain so that my soul would be emptied of it once and for all.

What we stuff longs to be addressed. If we do not open it up and look at it, that repression can alter the fabric of our souls until the real us is unrecognizable. Just like lightening when it strikes a tree, the very essence of that tree is altered, leaving it twisted and burnt.

Abuse is the invitation from our enemy, Satan, to so wound us that we cannot or will not be who God has created us to be. He desires it to hit us so hard it knocks us off the course to our intended future. He aims to twist our hearts up so that life cannot flow from it but only more pain.

Certain kinds of abuses are generational, passed down through families like a disease. I needed to understand my father. I needed to look for his “why.” Why was he like this, what happened to twist his soul? When I learned of his past, the losses, the pain he suffered, it gave me perspective. I hurt for the way he was hurt, I could now somewhat understand. It answered my why. Again....

Hurting people hurt other people.

When something impacts my heart in this way and makes me look at my own and others abuse/misuse and its' effects, I am compelled to try and help someone with my own story and my journey to healing. Vulnerability is not my favorite feeling, but helping others is.

The only way for the abuse and its effects to end is for it to end with us. WE are the ones who must choose to stop the vicious cycle, to go forward with resolve that we will be different, we will be better.

But that does not happen just because we want it to. It is so important to allow yourself to FEEL what happened, to acknowledge it fully. To let the pain out and the tears flow. Just brushing it under the rug will not bring the healing our souls need.

Healing takes time and it takes persistence. Nothing is fixed overnight. I trusted the Holy Spirit to lead me, and He did. To books, to prayer, to inner healing and to counseling. So many tools are available today. Take advantage of the ones that feel right to you.

If God can bring me from where and who I was to where I am today, He can do that for you. He wants to. You can be free and whole. The first step requires vulnerability and trust...but you can do it. Won't you do it...?

Father…so many people are hurting. They have been broken in places no one sees. But you see. You never left them when it happened and you will never leave them. I’m asking you to show them, help them to see there is help and healing for them. Give them the grace to reach out, to contact someone, to begin. Put the perfect person in their lives who can reach them, who can love them into wholeness. I thank you God for your goodness, your mercy, your love for everyone of these precious peole reading this. In Jesus name….