A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war and a time of peace.
Ecclesiastes 3 verses 1-8
The first time I can remember hearing these verses was in a song but the words stuck with me through time. To everything there is a season and a purpose for us all. There is a reason for all that we go through. All the hurt, the anguish, the pain has a reason in the end times though we may never realize why while we are living this life.
Abuse is a real thing. It hurts through to your soul. You know it’s wrong, you realize it’s happening to you but when you are in it, you don’t know what to do. You don’t know how to begin to escape, to get out, to move on. Fear freezes you into place and action becomes so far away that you don’t know how to find it.
For most of my life, I’ve lived in one abusive situation after another. I want to share them with you, to free myself from the secrets I’ve kept hidden all my life, but I cannot. Fear controls me. The fear that if I speak out against my abusers, somehow I will suffer from their retaliation, eventually. The fear of knowing that even though I am no longer in their possession, they still control my life.
Fear is a hard thing to let go of. It controls your life and leaves you debilitated. It takes away your ability to speak out, to move on, to stop others from affecting your life.
I am afraid of my past abusers. I’m afraid of the actions they can still take against me. I’m afraid of them controlling my life and with my fear I allow them that control still. They know it and so do I.
My abusers have moved on with their lives. They don’t fear me because they know they have me where they want me. They have moved on to new loves and new things while I still suffer from their hurt and their actions towards me in our past life. This is what those who are the ones that abuse others do, while those they hurt spend a lifetime suffering. I pray for their spouses, their children, their family that they may never know the life I experienced with them and if they do, they see it and find a way to get out.
I have been hit, screamed at, convinced I was the problem, told I was nothing, useless, hated. I have been told I’m ugly, hateful, disgraceful, unwanted. I have screamed back, begged, pleaded, allowed myself to be disgraced, been laughed at and harrassed. These things are the least of what has happened in my life.
Every day it’s a struggle to simply get out of bed without fear of which one of them is coming at me next. I’m in therapy because of their actions. I’m finding my strength again and creating a new life for myself and my children. I’m healing myself and I’m healing my children from the hurt they’ve experienced. Rebuilding our lives for the best and showing my children their Mother is stronger than the Evil she’s endured.
In this season, our lives are starting over. There is so much that you don’t know but the past is the past and the future is yet to come. Pray for me, as I pray for you and we shall all come through as God intends, stronger for His Purpose and Glory than we could have ever imagined in the end.
In this season, I have chosen to start fresh. I will be changing our blog name and setting it up to redirect to our new URL. We have a new home, a new hope and new challenges coming our way. And yes, there is a new love abloom, one like my children and I have never experienced.