It all comes together here

For a safe place, go to http://littleselves.blogspot.com/ 


    There was no way I was going to marry again after Rick's brave heart finally stopped. I vowed I wouldn't do that to any other man. Besides, whether he meant to give me that message or not, I got it--he was the only man with the patience to put up with me.
     I brought sexual issues into that marriage that were not my fault, that I was not even aware of. I was only aware of symptoms. But my husband had some--shall we say--modesty issues of his own, based on how he saw himself, his weight, etc.
     After our wedding we checked into the Disneyland Hotel. Or rather he checked us in. He had me stand across the lobby in my little brown velvet going away suit with the corsage on the lapel, holding our overnight case. When he signed in, the man behind the desk threw his chin in my direction and said, "Who's she?"
     At the restaurant, putting off going up to our room, we realized I was pointing to entrees on the menu with my card of contraceptives. He blushed and shoved it out of sight.
     I don't mean to put my first husband down in any way. He had his own issues for his own reasons, many of which were anguishing for him. But all my life I'd been through the hells of abuse and its effects plus the strain of abstinence, waiting for marriage to do it right, and I was anticipating for the first time being in a relationship that was legal, moral, sexually free and fulfilling, ready to experience sex as God intended it. I was ready to be naked and not ashamed.
     Each of these moments which he found embarrassing, including ones in our room that night, let some of the hope out of my heart. When we came back from our honeymoon to his parents' house and he was worried that they'd overhear us--not overhear us making torrid, passionate love but just talking and moving around--in the family room, the rest of the hope drained from me, the assurance that marriage would make things different, that sex was okay now.
 
     But it all comes together here. Yes, as it turns out, I was in love with my father. And yes, the violations I experienced were sufficient to justify the severe symptoms I exhibited. I'm not any crazier than any other normal person would have been given the abnormal background I had--and there's NOTHING wrong with me!
     He was a child molester but he was the perfect father for me. I wrote a novella about him called New Every Morning and the sub-title of the book is, "He hurt her. Now he is at her mercy. A different kind of love story." It is a love story because we were both broken, father and daughter, and God's love was big enough for both of us. 
     Now I am in love with my heavenly Father, the one who hand-picked my earthly father.
     Yes, I had a husband with whom I could not let myself go sexually because he was "too good" and I saw myself as bad. How could I do those bad sexual things with such an upright, moral man? And I have a husband now with whom I can let myself go because, well, he is slightly flawed, too, so it's okay. 
     As Jerry says, we are each the sum total of all we have done, left undone, had done to us--and we needed all of it to be who we are meant to be. I would not be the person of compassion and fiery indignation for the justice of little ones if I had not been through all I went through. I don't regret a bit of it. I am victim and overcomer, simple lover of cuddling and complex amateur psychologist/philosopher/theologian, seeker of truth and inconsistent hypocrite. I am fearfully and wonderfully made, work-in-progress, wounded healer, God's forgiven child.
     So are you.   
     And it is all, all so worth it, every single minute detail so marvelously designed and orchestrated, the end planned before the beginning for our very best good and His eternal glory, even now before He pulls aside the veil and shows us how that can be.

For a safe place, go to http://littleselves.blogspot.com/ 

Today I am thankful for violins.