When I was 15, I lived in the midwest. I had been moved there because I had relatives there. I was considered to be a difficult teenager that would not live at home.

I felt that I had proved that I could survive on my own through a hitchhiking over 2000 miles on with nothing but the clothes on my back (and my body). My folks would not sign the letter of emancipation so instead I was shipped off to other relatives in the hopes that I would develop some sense.

Unfortunately for me the relatives I had been sent to live with had cult connections in place and so I went from the frying pan into the fire.

I remember a specific time when I missed school for 9 weeks. The cult had kept me in some tunnels under the cemetery. During the day I was starved and guarded by dogs. At night I was sold or farmed out to the highest bidder. Being in the dark, alone, as a captive, for long periods of time during the day does funny things to the mind. I lost touch with what we call humanity. It eroded and I more resembled a wild animal. I can remember going up to the grate- one of my relatives would bring a picnic basket that smelled of fresh hot food and they would mock me and rationalize their behavior; they ate and I stayed in the futile hope that a crumb would drop. I would beg for bread. I would scramble and lick the ground if fluid came. There is no respect or pride in starvation. I would have done anything to eat. At night no matter how much money changed hands for me, the exchange was never with my well being in mind.

One night stands out in clarity. Some farmers bought me. They took me to a barn. They had bought me and a little boy for the evening entertainment. My breasts and my vagina and bottom were taped so that those private areas could be saved for their grand finale. They left the rest of me uncovered. I was blindfolded. They hung me up by some kind of rope under my arms on a hook that seemed like a meat hook. My arms were above me so that I could not fight. One of them whispered greedily in my ear that I was going to be their candy. I was suspended off the ground and helpless. They decided they wanted me to watch so they used a ladder and removed the blindfold to shove it in my mouth. Then they took the young boy out of the burlap bag he had arrived in. He was already gagged. His eyes were wide, scared. He did not look like one that was regularly used. Possibly a kidnap victim.

There was a jersey cow on her side in the barn. I think she was drugged. They stripped the boy and their fun began. He had to milk and be milked. He had to sodomize the cow and then the men sodomized him. He rubbed her, they rubbed him. He licked her, they licked him. I saw and tried to stay numb. He had to bite her, then they began biting him. He was bleeding and dirty and still trying desperately to please them or somehow to make it stop. From time to time one of them would come over to me and rub my privates, telling me the best was yet to come.

The boy, they called him tommy boy, he had to slit that cow’s throat. Yeah, and then, they did his. Blood spurting everywhere. The end for him, the beginning for me.

The blood made them crazy. It was like they became inhabited. One of them grabbed a bat. The party would continue, he said. Now it was time to break the pinata. I was the pinata. The first one to get a gusher got first rights. They took turns. There is an initial ‘fuck, that hurts’ that continues into the fifth blow or so. After that there is just body response and grunts more than blinding pain. I was spitting blood into my rag. I could taste it. My hair was over my eyes. My body swung with each blow so they would try to synchronize their swings with my movement. One of them got my nose. A gusher. I couldn’t breathe. I floated between passing into unconsciousness as they quick took me down. I was rolled as they unwrapped my woman parts. The rapes were brutal, each one trying to prove to the next one that he could be more nasty than the last. I am not sure if they were all done before I lost consciousness. I remember one rolling off and then. Nothingness. And next, a stairway, a spiral set of stairs going up. They were white and didn’t seem connected to anything. What was weird is they seemed unformed at the sides, they sort of unblended but did not have definite shape at their outsides. I was dummied up by the beating, not really thinking very clear. The barn and the men were gone. The stairs remained.

It seemed like a way out. I began to climb. Crawl. Climb. Just trying to escape in my mind as well as with my body. Just wanting to be done. Please God was not really a prayer so much as an epithet. Anything, just…make it stop.

I made it up. I knew it was heaven. I saw a set of eyes upon me. They were gentle and brown. Kind. Their focus brought warmth to me. I didn’t realize how cold I had become. Warm brown eyes. And a voice. A melody of some sort within each word. Kindness settling upon me. Rest like I had not known in such a long time. I spent some time there, with those eyes and in that voice. At the top of the stairs. I kept trying to get further into the white light beyond but a membrane kept resisting me. I would push, meet the push back, then rest again in the voice. It was enough. For the moment.

Then something changed. Time, invaded the space. I was told I had to go back. I said no. I clung to the stair. There was gentle firmness, a tone that would not be convinced from my pain. I sobbed. I begged. I pleaded. I broke. I kept trying to stay, even as I was being pushed back and reinserted into my body. I tried so hard to not come back. It didn’t matter. It was an inevitable lose for me at that time. I found myself in my body, on the floor, in that barn. The men had finished and were gone. They had left me there crumpled on the floor. It was dark. Again I passed out.

The next time I was awake I was in somebody’s bedroom. I was all wrapped up and did not have freedom to move. I remember a straw being brought to my mouth often. I think I was there for a few weeks before I could return to school.

I was mad at him for a very long time after that, for making me come back. I convinced myself it didn’t matter. It was easier to believe that then to consider there really was a God, he was sovereign and good, and he didn’t stop what happened to me. 15 was another hard year, in a life that had many hard years.

Some of the God given gifts in me have allowed me over the years to connect with various people in non verbal ways. Esoteric, right? I don’t know. I think each of us walks what is in front of us to walk. Defining and describing are luxuries we don’t always have. I did not choose to be this way. I did not choose the abuse that opened me all the wrong ways. But I am convinced that God, in his wisdom, is making everything beautiful in its time. The gifts the enemy saw and perverted God is now using for good. When done through his light, with a motive of love, the gift can be of great benefit.

One of the last times I saw Mark on earth I had a word for him about Africa, and rhythm, and songs. It was a chance meeting in Balboa Park, he was with his wife. I gave him the word then continued on to my car with the kids. We were returning from the Zoo. I got within sight of my vehicle. “It’s a good gift, you know.” It was him, but he wasn’t there. I said, really? in my mind. I was very skeptical. “It’s a good gift.” I shrugged. I thought, maybe this was relating to the prophetic word, and that he was talking about prophecy. The jury in me was still out on that. Today, Father, let Mark know for me, he was right. It is a good gift.

Years before I had a nephew that was killed. My brother’s son. Ritual killing, called the most heinous crime in our area ever, the perpetrators had thrown his body in the dumpster when they were done. He was three. I remember after that, I was brutalized by people trying to connect with me in that non verbal way. Chants and curses and taunting. Some of it was demonic. Much of it was his mother’s family, they were indigenous folks who understood their wiring better than I did mine. They got satisfaction and power from harassing me. I had to learn how to do ‘street fighting’ with my mind. Crazy days.

By the time I was 32 I was married and had three children aged 6,4 and 1. My life was normal on the outside. We attended church, the kids an I. My husband was in the Navy and was less interested. Inside I was mainly a mess. The memories had begun a few years prior and chaos reigned. The outside order and demands were what kept me anchored. I was going to school at night to earn a degree and my husband would watch the kids. I was marked. Perpetrators could see me still. I remember a couple of professors and the mind games they played with me. Being connected felt familiar and was seductive in its own way. I did not want to choose sin but I seemed helpless against the mental connections that were sought, found, then used against me. It was like mental rape. I am thankful it never became physical, and I have the strongest sense that God in his grace averted me from that possibility several times. I did not see it as a good gift. I saw it as open doors that needed to be shut hard and forever. I tried deliverance after deliverance, memory after memory, to get that accomplished. To no avail. It was like ley lines inside of me, open routes of travel the enemy could recognize and use. That year was so hard. Memories came, three a week for most weeks. I seemed to always be on the brink of one, in one, or grieving. I saw Mary every other week and my sister helped love the children during that time. It seemed never ending. I was always tired. The special grace I had on worship was where I found God. As deep as the pain uncovered went in me, his love began to penetrate more deeply. Some morning I would awake with a clear choice. Choose life, or choose death. My family of origin still had connections to me and were very aware of what memories I was processing an I was powerless to stop it. I cried out for God. I worked harder to get free. The doors remained open. Sometimes there dead animals left around our property. One day there a chemically treated rose in my mailbox that the Lord told me not to touch with my skin. He would tell me what needed to be removed from my house and he was so specific about where to trash it. Different things were trashed in different places. I remember one time dumping a mirror that was given to me by my dad. Then I went into the store and down the frozen section I saw my dad there. He had a wig on but I knew him. He just stopped an stared. I got out of there fast and shook all day. I did not know then that they could only take me if I was voluntary and if they were able to call out the parts of me that they had trained. I got an answering machine that year because of the terror the silent phone callers would bring. The doorbell stopped my heart. I believed the threats. I knew I would die. It was just a matter of time. But I would rather die trying to get free than to live placidly in the destiny they had planned for me.

32 was a hard year. I was bothered less when my husband was home. And the kids and the love God put in my heart for them was a godsend as well. Looking back to that year I see the great grace God has had on my life. And today, in heaven Mark knows I found the truth. The gift is good after all.

The memory came this week. It all fit together. No wonder the feeling of being powerless was such a trigger.
Volunteering to drown was easy compared to what followed.
When we went in the deepest place, there was a part I did not understand. He did not go all the way into the pit with me. He stayed at the higher level and did specific motions to help me stay focused.
When I asked him why, he said he only goes into places that his blood cleanses and restores.
This place was not one of them.
Could he go, I wondered? He said that if he went in there the deterioration would not be able to continue, because he is life.
I feel like there is still so much I do not know.
In the memory I had to go there to travel the paths I traveled as a child.
I had to know for sure where I was, what I joined with, and how that impacted me and aquifers.
It was so hard.
I would have done anything, joined with anyone, to escape the terrible feelings of being powerless there.
It was so hard to stay in them.
When I came back up, some sort of seal closed the lower place. The part where the electricity formed the barrier was still open to me but the lower place was sealed off an he said I did not have to go there again.
I am so wrecked and weary, bone weary, exhausted by the memory.
I didn’t really have a lot of time to process before today came.
Today a song was being sung about the glory realm.
I closed my eyes an was instantly fixed by a beam of warm light.
Him.
I then was on a platform and he said, where would you like to go?
He said I could travel now, while awake, as long as it was through the light.
Africa. And we were there. A woman with a basket was drinking from a pool of dirty water.
Where next?
He explained that I could not travel much with the other door still open. Now it was closed. I could. Always through the light.
I am excited. I don’t even really know what it all means.
He is delighted for me, so happy I chose to stay in the impossible place so he could heal me there.
It is amazing that I forget still, when faced with impossible, that on the other side I find God there.
I still feel a bit upset with myself for the joining.
I wish I had been able to be heroic, or a martyr or something.
But I was, when I volunteered for the drownings.
Sorting through it all, and the healing is starting to overtake my wounds.
Surely he does all things well…just look at my life.

I remember being excited. An author I enjoy had released a new book. Although it has a paranormal feel to it, I find the romance this person authors very satisfying to read. I was getting ready to go to the bookstore.

I heard the Lord. He said, I’ll go with you. Argh. I didn’t want him to spoil my fun. He was sure to tell me I should not read the book. He was guaranteed to have good reasons. And then I would have to battle with my conscience when all I wanted to do was have the simple hours of pleasure that the read could bring.

It had been a hard season. Surely I was entitled to it?

Of course then I felt guilty for not wanting him to come. That became the weightiest. So I said, fine, come along. And we went. As soon as I got in the store, I can feel myself tense, my soul expecting to hear the rebuke, anticipating it, wondering if it would become an argument.

The salesperson had a hard time finding where the book was.

Sure enough, as soon as it was in my hand, I heard him say, I see what is in your hand. It is not the best for you. I felt him begin to contend with me, shifting his weight towards me. And then he stopped. And the book became light. And as I read the inside jacket I was prepared to see what my conscience might object to. I think I was almost prepared to walk out of the store without it. But there was nothing there. Just a story. And it carried no real weight. And I felt the Lord say I could buy it.

I was a little confused, but okay. A gift horse and all that.

I checked three times before my purchase just to make sure. No matter how much I want the comfort, if it is really going to be a big deal with the Lord, I’d rather not go there. I remember being a bit baffled because now he seemed fine with it.

It was not until I was on the way home that the reason for his seeming nonchalance surfaced.

I’ll read it with you, he said. Ah. So he was okay with me buying it because he would be with me to bring correction to any response my heart had that did not align? No. It wasn’t like that. He just said, I’ll read it with you. No condemnation. Not resignation. Just an anticipation of more time when I would be listening for his voice.

About three miles later he spoke again.
He said the following- my desire to be with you is greater than my concern that correcting you in this way that would cause us to be apart. The book, and your desire for it, will fade. Your connection to me matters more than my need to correct you.

I remember the brokenness of my heart in that moment. Somehow he made it so that I wanted to correct me so that our time together would be more blessed. How does he do that?
How can he be so secure in who he knows me to be that he does not need to be the heavy, he just loves me while I pass through my disobedience and loves me with open arms waiting for me to return to him?

I did read the book by the way. He did meet me in the middle. And because of those days of training there is a trust in me when he brings correction so it is much easier to hear. I don’t need to rebel so much because he loved me, allowed me, corrected me and then cleansed me. He has proved to be trustworthy here. I know there are times when his correction is more critical, and it is his mercy to be the heavy in those times.

And when I sing the song amazing grace, I am reminded of him here in this moment. Loving me fully, not because of who I am or in spite of who I am, but because of who he is. God is love.