It was too hard.
The memories, the pain, it was too hard.
I remember.
What a joke it seemed, to be recovering memories for this kind of pain.
Yeah I understood that it was for the best. I understood that I had to feel what was impossible to feel the first time. I understood when people told me it would get better although I really did not believe them.
I had just gone through an Easter memory, and it was too hard. That was all I could think.
Something had to change.
I went to see Mary. I tried to explain.
She asked if I had a plan.
Pills probably. But I would not be one who got caught. I was not doing it so someone would see me. I would do it to exercise choice. My. final. choice. The ultimate.
She reminded me of my husband. She brought to mind my kids. She talked of the positives. But when we were done, my mind was not changed.
I went home. The next day was good Friday. Great, a weekend of Easter. I sat on my couch after the kids were at school. Looking at nothing. Unable to move. Pain permeated every inch of me. Overwhelming pain. God!
I was trying to regain some sort of cohesion. When he came. Into my living room. Invisible but visible. I saw his outline and sensed his solidity. Jesus. He was there. I did not think it would matter. I hung my head.
He stood before me, then sat. How, where there was no chair, but he did. And he spoke, gently.
Your husband is not enough.
He knew. I loved my husband but the pains demand was greater.
I shook my head. No.
He spoke again.
Your kids are not enough.
I began to cry.
They should be, but in the honest examination my love for them was not overriding my need to escape this pain.
I was ashamed.
As I said again, no.
He paused. He was not surprised. He did not condemn. He was not shocked or overwhelmed. He didn’t need to fix me or persuade me or change me.
After awhile as I continued crying he spoke again.
I was wondering, he began….he paused. I was wondering if….there was an uncertainty almost in him, as if he was not certain what I would say. I focused on him. I was wondering if….for a little while….if living for me would be enough of a reason for you….to choose life.
It was a pivotal moment for me.
I realized he would not force me.
He was willing to offer himself even though it would hurt if I rejected him.
He made himself vulnerable to me. He risked. For me.
Knowing. Knowing it all. He waited.
The place inside me that had been touched by him before came alive.
Hope that had no faith arose.
I said, I guessed, I could try.
The moment I did, strength came.
A drop of his strength, into me, making me able where I was unable.
His pleasure was my strength.
His joy made my pain lessen.
And I could move again.
It was not gone instantly. There was not a miraculous stopping of the pain. But I became able to breathe again and think of other things beside it.
This Easter I am reminded. Of that Easter. And what He has done.
All praise to God, my Father, who has freely given me all things through his Son.
I don’t live in that pain anymore. But His joy is still my strength.

I didn’t care.
If I was caught it would be worse but if I stayed it would get worse too.
It didn’t matter.
I didn’t care.
I was disconnected. Always cold inside, and disconnected.
It was better to not feel. Feeling meant being surprised. Surprise was always scary. Better to stay alert and not be vulnerable by reacting.
That was how I lived.
I could tolerate a lot of pain that way.
I could commit unthinkable acts.
I did not have to have time to process. I just stuffed it elsewhere and another part of me rotated out to do life.
There was a constant low level anger. It only surfaced if something unexpected got in front of me and I felt blocked.
It didn’t seem that bad.
Nothing good lasts forever.
I did not know real joy but I did not get bogged down in negative emotion either.
What did I know?
Was there any other way?
So when I was dropped off at the shopping center with a little money to do some Christmas shopping and I was told to meet back in a few hours, an idea came and I acted on it.
Nothing ventured, nothing lost. It did not matter, what did I have to lose?
I found my way to the freeway.
I used my thumb to catch a ride.
And I left.
North, I thought.
Towards the ocean seemed right.
And I traveled.
Men picked me up, mostly.
I remember one ride, I got in the back with a couple of other teenage boys. We hopped on the freeway. We got behind another car in the fast lane. That car threw something out their window. A bottle. It hit our car. They car I was in exuded testosterone and we swerved close to the car in front of us, threatening with our recklessness. Surprise. The car swung over three lanes to take the next off ramp. We followed. Shit. There was going to be a fight. The guys I was with were primed for it. Until. The guy in the car ahead of us got out, with an axe in his hand. Uh oh. My ride went frantic in an instant, shouting and rolling up windows. The guy continued his approach. He got to our car. Raised the axe. Brought it down, hard on the roof. He calmly walked back to his car and departed. While the guys in my car began to assess what had happened and got out to look at the car, I quietly decided I might be better off finding another ride. There was no disagreement from their deflated egos. Onward. North. I traveled. There were many adventures. My life has been full. The money ran out fast, but there was me. I kept going. I traveled up to Washington…and back again. It took about 6 weeks. When I returned I asked my mom to emancipate me. I had proved I could live on my own. It was decided instead to send me to the midwest to live with my sister.
So I remained dependent, independent and traveled.
But I still didn’t care.
Or so I kept telling me.

I am in the Gospel of Luke this week. I was reading today about the parable of the Minas.
Do you know the story?
A nobleman went into a far country to receive a kingdom for himself and return.
Before he leaves he calls ten servants and tells them to do business till he returns, and he gives them each a mina.
We read that his citizens hated him and sent a delegation after him saying he would not reign over them.
So the first servant turns the one into ten, the second servant turns the one into five. The third one hides his mina. In a handkerchief.
The nobleman returns, and he rewards those who made more out of what he gave them.
I have always heard this passage taught this way…Multiply what God has given you and he will reward you.
It is true, but today I am seeing a different picture.
When the man who hid his mina returns it to the nobleman, he says, I feared you, you are austere, you collect what you did not deposit and reap what you did not sow. The nobleman calls him wicked, not because he hid the mina but because he did it with what he believed about the nobleman. The nobleman says the servant’s own words judge him, because if he believed that, then he should have put it into the bank and earned interest.
It is not just our activities that God judges.
He looks at what our heart believes to be true about him, then sees if our actions line up with that, and then he rewards or disciplines.
I wish I had parented my children with this insight.
How we act on what we believe…is us judging ourselves. It is our choice to align with what we believe or to shrink from it, or to deny it.
What a good note to begin the day!
Selah.

I feel the anticipation.
I laid it down. The whole birthright thing.
When I read it has its own timeline, and when I realized mine had been replaced.
There was nothing I could do.
And now he is sending me to the land of my birth.
I so was not expecting it.
I so know it is him.
I do not know what it will look like.
I know not the product, nor what it will look like finished, nor the process.
But I FEEL God.
And I know he will lead.
I am going to serve first.
A group with my understanding of the human spirit.
The Lord said to start them with a snapshot.
A group activity.
Groups of four.
Write snapshots about each other.
Teach them to anchor there.
Lead them in the way.
His voice is so clear.
His heart, his heart, his love.
Oh my.
Release to them what I have put inside you.
And I am repaying, restoring what the locusts have stolen.
You are my beauty.
My bride.
I could not leave you here.
Your glance has drawn me.
My sister my bride.
As you are led, I will lead.
Me and you.
Becoming one.
I am so undone.
He makes everything beautiful in its time.
Yesterday I was in the garden, asking where is the one my heart loves. I could not find him, though I looked for him.
And here, he has found me.
he created the tree to shadow over me.
His whispers are awakening my heart to song.
Crying in the airport.
How great is our God!

I lived with my boyfriend. Jim W.
We had a studio apartment, a few blocks from my high school.
That worked well for me.
I was a senior in high school.
My boyfriend was an aide at the high school auto shop.
I had met him the year before, when I was given a non running vehicle and told I could keep it if I fixed it. Auto shop had been the solution- I had rebuilt the motor and added some fancies to it. A 1970 Toyota Corolla. I enjoyed that car. Except when I had to push it. Aluminum heads and a steel block meant a recurring problem of blown head gaskets for me, and that car was crazy heavy to push.
It seems like yesterday.
My boyfriend also worked for his dad at a produce company and was a delivery driver in the early mornings. He would go downtown around 3, load up and make rounds, delivering fresh produce to certain restaurants and stores.
The early mornings were hard.
We started doing speed to keep from being tired.
And then we would get super cranky with each other.
We had a dog, a cream colored short hair, medium size dog we called puppy. I can remember taking him on walks behind the junior high where my step dad taught, up the mountain where I had gotten high in middle school and run away to, in elementary school. Those were favorite times, being out of doors with nature and my dog.
I used the pill as birth control but was not always regular in remembering it.
Sometimes Jim would use condoms.
One time, one broke.
I didn’t really think I could get pregnant.
I had already had sex so many times by 18, with so many people. I was told I had an inverted uterus and it would be nigh near impossible to conceive.
That turned out to be inaccurate.
I had a baby forming in my body when I graduated high school.
I was devastated.
My boyfriend was pissed off about it.
It seemed like abortion was the only option.
The day after my 18th birthday he took me to the clinic.
They put me out and when I woke up, they made sure I knew my name and then sent me home.
She would be 33 this year.
Elizabeth.
My little girl.
Jim and I didn’t last very long after that.
Our relationship was based on the physical, and emotional evens caused distance.
So 18 sticks out as a year I found solace in the land. And the year I lost my second baby.
When I consider how much God has done, I am still amazed.
May it ever be so.

She said I could share.
We have been working together for awhile.
Typically we find the Lord as she focuses on the garden of her heart.
Sometimes he holds her there while she weeps.
Sometimes he breathes on her to refresh her.
Sometimes he comes and releases a supernatural peace.
It is always beautiful.
When we sat together last week, it was different.
He didn’t wait for her to settle into focusing on her garden.
Almost as soon as she sat down, a garden appeared.
It was not hers, though.
It was his.
The garden where he spent time, right before his death.
The place where he asked his dad, if he would take the cup from him.
She knew it was his garden.
He invited her in.
She went, cautiously.
It was new. She was uncertain.
And then he asked.
He asked her if she would be willing.
To share some of his pain.
He asked if she would be willing to share the pain of his heart in the garden.
My heart ached for her.
She knows so much pain already.
A thought came to me.
Lord if you are asking her to share your pain, will you show her the joy set before her, so she can endure?
I have seen him do this from time to time.
Sometimes he will show a person the Bride.
She is why I went, she is why I keep going. She was the hope in me, and how I endured.
Sometimes he will show a person their own face.
It was you that I saw. I looked and your face was there. And my love for you sustained me as I walked through the pain.
For her, this time, he said something I have not heard before.
It was thoughts of my dad, he told her.
I knew I would soon be with him again.
That thought strengthened me.
I know for him, it was all of that and more. Yet he always seems to know what joy each person needs set before them to endure.
He always makes it so incredibly personal.
The thought, of Jesus looking forward to seeing his dad, brought strength to her. It enabled her to say yes. yes to sharing his heart.
Not because she likes pain. But because she loves him more than she fears her pain.
It is watching the overcoming spirit have its way again.
It is the victory that causes death to lose its sting.
It is the eternality having life in the temporal, and weighing more.
Some days I think I have the best job in the world, to see this stuff.
Surely he makes everything beautiful in its time.

I knew when I awoke that the courts were opened. There is a flavor of holiness that I only associate with there.
As I sat at the table to pray, in the spirit I was ushered into a court room and seated at a table on the right side. It was whispered to me that I would know what to say when the moment opened. The court was already in session.
The Lord began to speak to me there at my table.
He said if my heart is properly aligned with love I can present any case.
He said if my heart is to present his case, my bias will not interfere with his presentation.
Somehow I know this is linked to what I have been learning is partaking the fellowship of his sufferings.
Sometimes when suffering comes we are being invited to share a small portion of what the Lord endured while he was here on the earth as Son of man.
I was in a session with a survivor recently.
She knows something is coming that is hard.
Immediately I saw Jesus in the garden, saying to his dad, if there is any other way, take this cup from me. I knew she was being invited to share his moment, the way we invite him to share ours.
Recently I was with a friend who is incredibly frustrated with the church. What I saw in the spirit is that the Lord was inviting him into feeling his hunger when he looked over Jerusalem and said, how I have longed to gather you as a mother hen gathers her chicks. The frustration my friend felt came from not being able to step into the longing with absolute faith in Father. Without the faith that Jesus had, that longing resulted in great frustration.
So in this case I was being told to present the Lord’s case. I was instructed to bring the truth of how each opportunity in each point of suffering had been rejected. Bitterness had been chosen, the hardship of the soul had been counted as more important than the healing of the cross.
Oh, the horror.
I realized I was presenting a case that would leave the individual under scrutiny with no defense.
I turned from it.
I looked at the Lord and said, God, please don’t ever have me do this to anybody I love!
He said, ever so gently, don’t you believe that I love them, Tanya?
He told me that my grounding has to be in his perfection. The place for my emotions to anchor is that he does all things well.
He brought to mind Revelation 19, where the bride, seeing the smoke that ascends forever from Babylon, cries holy and true are your judgments, oh God.
I am undone.
So I presented his case, before the courts. I offered the evidence that love that had been rejected. I was trembling with the weight of it. And I was very very very grateful, that I am not ever the one who has to judge.
And the one who does judge is himself mercy, and he has triumphed over judgment for whosoever will choose love.
My heart is heavy for the lost today.
Save them oh God, and they will be saved.
Remember oh Lord how you saved me…I was far worse!
The cloud opens and my cry joins with the groans of heaven.
Surely this knowledge is too big for me.
May I be found leaning. I am nothing on my own.

By then, all my eyelashes were gone.
Someone had told me that if I lost an eyelash and it landed on my cheek, I could make a wish and it would come true.
I got carried away.
Or I kept wishing.
So I didn’t have any eyelashes left.
Mom had taken me to a counselor because something was visibly wrong.
Two times, she took me.
But, I didn’t talk.
No way was I going to risk more or worse, of what was already going on.
Fourth grade.
That was the year the science teacher came, although he did not figure prominently until the next year.
Fourth grade was the year of kissing in the coat closet.
A girl and a boy were picked and pushed into the dark coat closet together.
It was probably the first kiss for some.
For me it was just another time to shut down.
I was a shell, an empty shell, it was better that way.
No one could hurt me and I could not feel my body when I removed myself from it.
I remember Edna was in that class with me. She was an abuse survivor. She fought. She became better friends with my older sister in the grade above me because I was a pacifist. I wonder if that was because of the enmeshment.
So she became my sister’s eyes and ears in the class. If I made friends, whether I was doing good or bad, and various other tidbits she would give my sister for my sisters favor. Some of it was true, some of it was not. All of it was punishable.
If I won at tennis, later on my sister would hit me with the racket.
Telling mom had stopped when Mom did not intervene and the punishment got worse. That was years before.
Sometimes my sister would hit me while I was sleeping. When I woke up, she would say- you bitch, you burped, get down and kneel to me for an hour.
I can remember several times of falling asleep kneeling.
Pinching. Pulling my hair. Poking me with pins. If I turned a corner and she was there I was in for it.
That was my daytime life.
For the coat closet kissing, I got a broom shoved in my vagina. I was told that was really what he wanted to do to me.
The only times my sister was gentle was when she looked to me for sexual comfort. And then only sometimes.
The stroking usually ended in a flurry of pain as she acted out on me what was done to her.
I felt so empty most of the time, so vacuous. I was like a walking robot. Doing well academically was fun for me as long as she did not find out. But if I did anything that would make me look good in mom’s eyes, there a dangerous jealousy in her that burned against me because I had Mom for four years more than she did, and she blamed me for it.
The night time stuff continued. The daytime stuff continued.
I guess we all just continue to try and put one foot in front of the other until we can’t anymore.
But, God.

Twenty years ago, I had my first audio memory of a past I had entirely suppressed.
At the time I was part of a christian twelve step program called the Most Excellent Way.
I had realized that while I did not have the crystal addiction anymore, I was still plagued by addict behavior/mentality.
When I had my first memory, it was one of the group members that I called. I did not understand what was happening to me. But she had shared personal stuff with vulnerability an to me she felt safe. She explained that since we experience thins with all of our senses that recall can come through the same ways. She asked if I wanted to meet. I did. The second time we met I had a memory of my finger being cut and my blood being used to write my name in a book. She suggested we get a team and do some renunciations. I agreed.
So she, my transparent friend, another gal (who was a ritual abuse survivor), and a clinical psychologist (who went to our calvary chapel) set an appointment time.
I came. They led me through some prayers. I only remembered part of it.
At the end, the psychologist said to me that he would like to talk to the girl who had spoken with him earlier. I looked at him blankly. In my head I heard, he wants to talk to me. I reported what she said and they had a conversation, him to her and her through me to him.
Our time ended. He looked at me and said, my healing might take a little while. There was kindness in his eyes. And I was sent home.
I was not given any reasons for why I could now hear this girl in my head. My condition was not labeled as dissociative identity disorder until months later.
When I heard the term, me being me, I wanted to go search it out. I wanted to read books. I wanted to get healed.
In those days, hearing from God was more like an occasional dialogue than the oneness and witness that relationship has now become.
He was so specific with me. No.
Looking back I see that he knew me, he knew my need to control. He knew that I would learn so I could fix myself. And he had a better way.
He would teach me trust through making me lean on him.
He would restore me to people by allowing me relationships where I could safely lean.
He would use people who knew and had gone ahead of me so that I could benefit from their journey while growing in my dependence on him.
He is so good.
At 30, I did not see. All I saw was that there was stuff inside me that I was not in charge of or connected to. God! That was scary. I had parts with distinct personalities. Not all of them loved God! I remember how unsafe that felt. The idea that there was junk in me that I had no control over made me doubt my whole world. All of my definitions were needing re-examination. What was love? Who was God? What was family? How could hate an love exist simultaneously inside me?
The anger made me afraid. I was afraid I would kill someone. Or that they would know. And come and kill me. They always knew, when I was little, when I was mad. I was punished for it. Whether we were together or apart. They always knew.
I remember going to Mick at church. I was not sure how to make him understand. I remember trembling. I stood in line, to wait to talk to him. My turn came. I said, I have some memories from childhood that I repressed. They are coming up now. I am afraid. I am beginning to feel anger. (It was not that I did not feel it all before. But it was an undercurrent of how I lived life. I overreacted in disproportionate ways to life’s curves.) This anger…I am worried, I might hurt someone. He put his hand on my shoulder. I closed my eyes. His prayer rings in me, it was an eternal sentence that was straight from the Lord to me. Turn the water into wine, Lord. That is all he said. That was it. At the time it seemed like it was not enough. Today when I pray this for others, I know that it was more than enough. He makes everything beautiful in its time. Even broken little girls who are filled with fear and anger. He did that for me. Beginning twenty years ago. Amazing grace.

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.