Healing Child Abuse Scars Through Active Faith, Forgiveness and Forward Thinking
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Whatever method you choose for recovery of childhood abuse or any form of abuse, you can’t let your past abusers or those who don’t understand you make you angry, bitter or depressed.
Negative emotions will escalate over the years to deeper negative feelings that will destroy all of your peace and joy. They will keep you in an infantile state that will not allow you to go forward with God or any endeavor to heal. Your reality will be stunted to believe the negative information formed within your mind and soul from the abuse you experienced. You’re also allowing those who abused you to destroy the best part of who you are!
Don’t Let Past Abusers Keep You Living Half A Life!
Forgiveness was the first step of my healing. I studied what the Bible had to say about forgiveness and it was different that what most people think. As I began to forgive God’s way, I began to see all the anger and bitterness in me that I didn’t know was there.
I came to realize how every morning when I got ready for the day I would think about how I could never make myself good enough for my mother and sister’s to love me. Then I would get mad because I wanted to be close with them, but I could never please them. By the time I was getting dressed, I was bitter and angry that I didn’t deserve what had happened to me as a child and I would reflect on all the problems my mother’s treatment of me had caused. I still loved her, but I felt frustrated that no matter what I did, she couldn’t love me. Instead, she loved the people who had abused me. She knew what they had done, but she said they were important people that she had business dealing with so I needed to just get along with them.
I couldn’t see through my desperation to understand that in my frustration I harbored unforgiveness toward my mother. I was angry that she wouldn’t love me no matter how hard I had tried. What I needed to do was forgive her and myself for not thinking more about my children and giving them my thoughts in the morning for having a good day at school. I should have thought more about my loving them to make sure they never felt the way I was feeling–but instead, I was stuck in the past with childish thoughts. I was an adult woman who had become selfish and a good example of infantile behavior.
Healing Child Abuse Scars Through Separation
With my new understanding of what forgiveness really is, I was able to stop that type of unproductive behavior by forgiving and not being bitter, but instead prayerful for each of their souls. However, I also needed to stop all communication with my family in order to do that. I didn’t need to receive notes that told me that I should stop trying to be happy because I didn’t deserve it or answering angry phone calls because I couldn’t attend family gatherings where the uncle who had attack me was always the center of attention because of his money.
Separating from relatives was one of the hardest things I had to do. My father had just died a year before and I was trying so hard to get my family to be close, but eventually I realized that I couldn’t cause others to love me or respect me if it wasn’t their “will” or “desire” to do so. They saw my life as worthless and so did I until I stopped all communication with them and began to look at who I was in Christ. As I drew closer to God I came to learn my true Christian identity.
I’ve never smoked, but I believe that separating myself from my family was like quitting smoking cold turkey. It was difficult, but as time went by it gave me a new life and a new outlook on life. It separated me forever from the abuse I had suffered. That didn’t mean that I never heard about the untrue stories they created about me. I received cruel and accusatory phone calls about doing things I had never done, but I kept centered upon Jesus Christ and in time all that noise went away. I was free, but at times I had wished that I could have seen what I needed to do much sooner. However, I forgave myself and kept looking to the Word. In a short time I was healed from the negative issues of my past.
If you don’t believe my solution is right for you, find a firm solution that will keep you out of the past and in the present free of abuse and bad memories.
Healing Child Abuse Scars Through God’s Love
When searching for a means of recovery from the Bible, I naturally studied God’s love for me and realized that it’s tied with forgiveness. While we must love all others, we don’t have to be with everyone to love them. We can be separated from them, pray for them and put out good thoughts for them in a more productive way that is pure rather than tainted by mixed emotions, anger and bitterness. I realized that I could love my family in the best way by severing ties with them, and therefore developing a healthy attitude about them. As a result, I became a mentally and emotionally healthy person.
I also learned that faith works by love (1 Corinthians 13:1-13) . So as I learned to love myself, my immediate family and relatives God’s way. I grew in faith to change my life and my family. It wasn’t always easy because something I looked to myself, but as I learned to let God take over my life, I found life to be easy. So when you hear people say that being a Christians is difficult, that’s not true. We may suffer persecution at times, but the most trouble we have is when we look to ourselves for solutions instead of God. As I looked to god for healing, the child abuse scars of my past disappeared.
If you’re an adult who suffered childhood abuse realize that whenever you choose to move forward, it will take courage because you may have to stand alone if necessary (God will always be with you). It’s not a time where everyone is going to agree with you. In fact, the reason you got along with most of your relatives is because you said and did what was expected of you, knowing that if you said or did what reflected the truth or how you really felt, they would go ballistic on you.
You were trained to believe that it was wrong to cause that kind of confrontation, and because of it, you’ll be accused of causing trouble for everyone involved by uncovering the truth. So look to Jesus for strength and guidance. Forgive, build up your faith and keep God’s love within your heart as you begin the new life God intended for you to enjoy and fulfill.
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