Abuse destroys, God restores

Abuse destroys, God restores

This week I watched the first part of Football’s Darkest Secret. 

Here, numerous, courageous individuals share the level of destruction wrought in their lives by the atrocity that is childhood sexual abuse.

Unfortunately, I am all too aware of the prevalence of this from both my personal and professional experience.  Yet, listening to this most innocence shattering, soul killing of experiences never fails to move me afresh.  How can it not?  Such an act permeates every aspect of life of the individual subjected to it.  It effectively steals the potential joy for life and continues to steal despite good experiences.  It is the tragedy that keeps on taking until we turn around to face it.  Even then, the process of healing can be long and hard.

What struck me from this program was the way that it is not only the paedophile that commits this crime but the entire community around them who consciously or unconsciously collude if only by refusing to see or stop it.  It could be the turning of a blind eye by those in positions of power, the playing down or trivialising, writing off as imaginary, a refusal to believe it or the denial that it is of consequence. 

There is a great quote that says something like,

‘All it takes for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing’.

It would seem that the paedophile is such a powerful if despicable breed that they appear to silence or pull the wool over the eyes of entire family systems and organisations.

They leave a wake of destruction in their path and are often not called to account, at least in this life, for the lives they destroy.

We have seen this with Jimmy Saville, within the world of football, within several parts of the Church and basically any other organisation or family where paedophiles have infiltrated their way in to prey on young and vulnerable children.

It takes a whole community to allow this despicable abuse to happen and continue.

And it can destroy lives. 

Not only those who experience it, but those who genuinely care for them.

I know personally that it leaves a legacy so wordlessly painful that being unconscious is at times the only form of relief.  For me and for many, many others this is achieved through drink and drug abuse.

How grateful I am that before completely destroying myself with drink and drugs, I came to meet the God who is able and willing to restore the soul of all impacted, including me.

Some may wonder how it is possible to believe in a good God who allows children to endure such terrifying horrors.

I know I did. 

During the hardest parts of my own healing process, I often raged at God as to how He could claim to love me yet have allowed the things that happened in my childhood.  I raged, I shouted, I cried, I turned the air purple with my fury and I kept asking, ‘Why God?’.

But every time I poured out the rage, fury and pain of my heart, He met me with an overwhelming sense of His love.  This was a love that had no words, no answers, no explanations and no justifications.  But it was so powerful and so pure that I broke under the tangible weight of it and cried out my pain on numerous occasions.

We do not heal whilst denying our experience or any of the feelings about it. 

The process of healing can be long, painful, lonely and ongoing.

I am not sure where I would be if I had not encountered en route the love of this God or His silent assurance that whilst some refused to acknowledge my experience, instead casting me out for speaking of it, my God SAW EVERYTHING.  The wool has not been pulled over His eyes by anyone.  He saw, He knew and I felt His pain at what I had experienced.  It was His love that began to heal my deepest wounds and thus to restore my heart, soul and appetite for life.

And so I know personally what it was for me to live with the hell of abuse.  I equally know the hell of the pain of walking the path of healing.  But I also know the freedom and joy of coming out the other side.  Not that everything is now wonderful and perfect in my life for no such life exists.  But I do know the all encompassing love of a God who enables, empowers and equips me to overcome every ounce of pain, every obstacle, every trial and challenge and to still find life, growth, healing and joy despite periods of deep sadness. 

It is a love that saves, restores and releases me to see, know and experience the good despite the presence of evil.

I’m not sure that I would still be here without it.

Whilst over a decade of therapy has been crucial in my own healing, it was God alone who could be with me 24/7, who assured me that He see’s and He knows and His love enables me to face life with a courage and confidence I never knew existed before.

He is indeed a God of restoration.

The love, healing, peace, comfort, courage, strength and joy that he offers is SUPERNATURAL thus making it a powerful antidote to the entirely unnatural and evil act of sexual abuse.

Abuse needs to be surrounded by silence, shame and secrecy in order to keep stealing from the quality of life and the peace of mind of anyone involved.  This spell is broken when it is bought out in to the open and spoken about.  This is the first step towards healing.  Whilst there is further pain involved in the healing process, this is far better than the pain of not healing.

Abuse is never ok and is never the fault of the child or adult subjected to it.

It needs to be out in the open, spoken about and worked with sensitively in order to break the collusive, silencing community’s that allow it to happen.

I suspect that recent revelations around Jimmy Saville and the Football Industry are only the tip of the iceberg.

My hope and my prayer is that anyone impacted by abuse will find supportive, understanding people with whom they can begin to come out of the silencing, destructive prison of being alone with such trauma.

God gave us all the free will to do good, evil or anything in between.

Unfortunately, some do commit the evil of abuse. 

Whilst this destroys, God is willing and eager to restore.

None of us can go back and erase the experience of abuse but every one of us is called in to relationship with the one who restores our hearts, souls, our capacity to trust and to give and receive love, as well as our desire for life itself. 

Such a love enables us to bear the pain and to continue embracing the fullness of life, in spite of it.