This story is not for everyone.

Do you ever have dreams that bring up something from your past you never want to remember?

God is reminding me of James 5:16, “Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed.”

I want to preface this story with the fact that the first 10 years of my life were hyper sexual.

About 2014-15  I met my dad’s sister, for the first time in 50 years. I brought a video received from my dad and I wanted to ask if she knew some of the people.

The video has a quick look at me taking a bath with my dad and I am about 3 years old. My aunt runs out of the room so fast, I know something’s wrong with this picture.

I have memories of taking baths with my dad up to age 4 or 5 years.

This exposes how skewed my norms are! 

From the ages of 7-10 I was kidnapped, trafficked, (taught how to please a man), given as an offering to Satan by my dad and used by 5 teenage boys, then rescued.

Mom saves us and brings us out of the cesspool, but the cesspool is in us.  Now I feel the need to teach what I have been taught. The boys I meet at 9 years old I bring into a closet and teach them how to kiss.

After a few years on our own Mom marries a man, (Dad 2,) who will protect her from her first husband. On their blind date she asks him if he will protect her from her first husband who is in town wanting time with his children.

I notice when we move in with Dad 2, he doesn’t ever come out of his room without being fully dressed. Somehow this translates into my broken soul as safety and I never again feel the need to teach a boy to kiss.

Before I enter teen years I am found to have scoliosis and am fitted for a Milwaukee body brace. This entails a body cast put on my naked body so they can form the brace. Two years of wearing the body brace, my spinal curve grows from 35 degrees to 65 degrees.

I am set up for surgery.

They take before and after pictures of my naked body. After the surgery I need a body cast to live in for 9 months. There is nothing like having grown men talking about girls as they cut away the chest piece so I am able to breath but it leaves my developing breasts open and smoothing the cast around the groin. Just a bit traumatic.

With the cast and brace gone I am skinny with a little figure and my brother’s friend takes me for a drive. He puts his hands where I don’t want them but who am I to say anything? Then he takes my hand and puts it where I really don’t want to go. I hear around school that I am easy. No one ever told me I had any right to say no.

Society influences us easily when we spend much of our lives without boundaries. After watching the Carol Burnett Show do a skit on strip poker, my brother and friends decide to try it. I am about 15-16 years old.

I CHOOSE TO NOT LIVE THIS LIFE.

We are drinking in our friends basement and playing card and stripping with the losses and it turns into to a sexual encounter.

God has shown me this is a turning point, I choose this point to decided I don’t have to do this. I closed my legs and decided no matter how good it might feel I didn’t want to go there. No one forces me so it is a start to change.

The consequences of my childhood start being exposed when I meet a guy I feel safe with. We meet in February of my senior year in high school.

I give in to sex because that is what I have been taught, but every time he gets on top of me I weep and cry. A breakthrough arrives with summer. A group, (I am the youngest) camps at the lake and I drink 8 cans of beer,(the only time in my life to drink that much).  This deadens my emotions I am able to go through with sex. It feels like an accomplishment.

After that my mom realizes what is going on and writes me a letter. She says I should be bringing my boyfriend around and not hiding out because that is when sex happens. Little does she know what I was taught at 7 years old with her first husband and friends. I lived in shame and hide all my experiences but it is what I know.

Healing begins at age 19 when I truly find Jesus! Holy Spirit has given me great desire to study the Word which gives me a safe set of guardrails to guide my life. I dig in deep because He is The Safe Place of ALL TIME.

God has been healing all these years but one big healing is when God took Keith, the teenage boy who taught me how to please a man, out of my head so I could make love with my husband and not have to have the TV on to distract my mind.

God heals me and at 50 I am set free! I am finally allowed to make LOVE with my husband and it is only my husband on my mind.

GOD IS SO VERY GOOD!

How many of us know when we are adopted we gain full rights to the family you are adopted into? What does that mean in our daily lives?

My brother, sister, and I  were adopted by the man my mom married.  I remember the judge asking, “Do you want to be adopted?”

Did the judge tell us we have full rights as a child of the family? I have no idea, but I know that when Dad died we three received the same inheritance as the two natural children.

My husband and I adopted our daughter, I remember our judge being very stern when he said, “Do you understand this child has equal rights if you have natural children?”

I have also heard that in ancient Greece if you adopted a child you could not give them up. You could give up your natural child but not one that you adopted. That was for life.

Many people who have received Jesus as their savior don’t realize that it comes with the Holy Spirit which testifies our adoption as sons. (sons= mankind= daughters of God.)

Galatians 4:4-7

God sent His son, born of a woman under the Law, that He might redeem those under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. And because we are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying “Abba, Father!”

Therefore you are no longer a slave but a son and if a son, then an heir through God.

Romans 8:14-18

For all who are being led by the Spirit of God these are sons of God. For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by where we cry out “Abba Father!”

The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God, and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him in order that we may also be glorified with Him.

Just hearing we are adopted doesn’t change much, but when we realize we are not orphans, (Psalm 27:10 says God takes us in), and we meditate on it, our lives will change from the inside out.

I know this! God Bless you all with the Joy of The LORD! Amen!

God Is Good!

Do you know how I am able to be joyful even when my basement has water pouring into it?

Deuteronomy 31:19B, I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse.

I Tell you CHOOSE LIFE in order that you my live! 

The first time I ever really tried this concept was when my husband confessed something God was after him to expose to the light. For the first time in my life I knew I had a choice. I could be upset and angry or forgive and be happy.

I thought what it would look like to be angry.  I have been there and done that and I didn’t want to live that way anymore.

I DECIDED TO CHOOSE to FORGIVE!

What took me by surprise is the JOY I was FILLED WITH!

I could not keep it to myself! At work the Joy kept spilling out and I told everyone how wonderful it was to forgive!

Back to today, after the water stopped flowing last Monday, when we were heading to bed I choose to read Philippians 4:4-9 for our nightly devotions.

4. Rejoice in the LORD always, again I say rejoice!

6. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer an supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God

7. And the Peace of God -shall guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

8. Finally, brethren, what ever is true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on these things.

We just happened to have our devotional book say the same thought.

Proverbs 4:23 (NCV) Be careful what you think, because your thoughts run your life.

I HOPE you catch the idea of choosing what you think and how you want to live.

2 Corinthians 10:5, Take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.

I enjoy my life even when it feels like everything is against us, much of my life has been lived in fear of everything and laughing was not common.

I Choose to See the Good!

God Is Good! God Bless You

Have you ever wondered why you do the things you do?

One day I  asked  my dad, “Why do you act the way you do?” and got in big trouble. It is probably something to ask yourself not others.

I grew up being  criticized and turned into a  person pointing out everything not done perfectly. The pain it caused others made me want to change but no matter how hard I tried I could not start out positive. If I opened my mouth it had to state the problem before I could get around to the good stuff.

God wants us to cover mistakes not expose them, so I have tried  so hard to change, but can’t. It probably has something to do with self protection, if I hurt you before you hurt me all will be good.

When I was about 50 I started a counseling program but my mind had everything locked up believing it was too difficult to face what happened so I was sent to a specialty counselor. I talk about it in the story, “The Picture that Ruled My Life.”

Self protection had its place getting me  through a very hard season of my life.  When I didn’t have a place to deal with what happened  it took on a life of its own and Kept me from my LIFE.

God helped me to TRUST HIM!

The more I could trust God  I didn’t need to self protect. God turned my fear into a strength and confidence to go to places I have always wanted to go but couldn’t. I finally was able to go to the Joyce Meyer Women’s Conference meeting my cousin who I had not seen since I was 7. A desire I had for over ten years.

With success I signed up and, drove to Kentucky to volunteer at a Joyce Meyer Conference. I was able to do the whole experience such as checking into the motel, ordering food, eating alone, and finding where I go to do my volunteering. All the tings I could not do when my self protection kept me hiding at home afraid of the world.

I have been growing and changing the last 10 years and life is very different and Good! I could not have written this blog without facing and healing from everything my seven year old self was protecting me from. I will also say that at age 59 I was able for the first time compliment my daughter on what she did and not offer one comment about what was left undone. God is so very Good!

LIFE IS GOOD! LEARN TO ENJOY IT!

LOVE AND TRUST THE GOD WHO CREATED YOU AND WANTS TO HEAL YOUR BROKEN HEARTS. AMEN!