I had a very traumatic childhood. My parents were actively involved in church life and supposedly good Christians. But at home it was a different story. My father sexually abused me from the age of four, and my mother resented me for taking my father’s attention from her. I remember her holding my head under the bath water in an attempt to drown me when I was a pre-schooler, and I received many a thrashing, often not fed and frequently locked in a garden shed or medicated with sleeping tablets to give my mother a break, as she called it. As I grew, the abusive dynamic continued although the methods changed, and emotional and mental abuse was more the order of the day. I became a tense depressive with extremely poor self-esteem and little hope in life. I married, lost my first child, and then my father committed suicide, and this by the time I was 26. At 32, my heart began to fail and the doctors believed stress was a vital factor. I lay in hospital unable to lift my head, and barely conscious. I had a friend who visited me every day, often late at night after work, and he would lift my head for me and help me to sip water. He read Scripture to me, especially Psalms which I loved. He prayed for me. He did this almost every day for weeks.
Move along another 10 years and, stresses at work coupled with my inability to resolve my childhood pain led me to have a breakdown. I was hospitalized and became suicidal. The nurses asked if they could do anything to help me, and I told them that what I wanted was to see this same friend again. This person had dropped out of my life, but not daunted, the hospital discovered his phone number and rang him. He came to visit me that very night! He observed my fragile state and stayed with me until sleep crept upon me. After that he visited me most evenings, relieving the nurses so they could eat their dinner, for I couldn’t be left alone. He spoke gently and hopefully. He allowed me to be exactly how I was and I always felt accepted and valued. I know that he was the reason I did not kill myself, for I wanted to live to see him the next day, and the next day, and so on, and time passed, and I began to pick up. I left hospital and was recuperating at home.
During this time my friend often invited me to his work, where he would allow me to help with mailouts and packing of parcels. This gave me a sense of value. It gave me a reason to get up in the morning. It motivated me. During his breaks he would go out of his way to speak to me with that same gentle encouragement. He invited me to his home where I ate with the family, watched T.V. and often stayed the night. This gave me a sense of belonging which was beyond my own direct family. It brought me hope and even laughter as I mixed with his family. Gradually I recovered, step by step, and all the while my encouraging friend was in the background, just at the end of the phone, and always ready to spend time with me when and as I needed it.
I owe my life to the encouragement of one person. I am alive and in ministry today, with a happy and wonderful marriage and family, great hope and vitality for life, and I recognize the true value of encouragement. It can be life-changing. It can be healing. And it can save a life like mine.
[Name withheld].
[One day later]: An interesting discussion ensued when this was posted to my Facebook page. Some of the responses:
Christ in action.
Yesterday at 12:47pm ·
Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another.
Yesterday at 1:34pm ·
Devout Christians don’t abuse. I wish we could get that sort of wording straight. But I understand the “point”.
Yesterday at 2:03pm ·
[A Christian psychologist]: I agree that devout Christians dont abuse but how wonderful that this person expereinced the hand of Christ through one who truly was a follower. Studies on resilience indicate that one of the factors in being resilient is having at least one person who is there, consistent and caring.
Yesterday at 4:27pm ·
Supposedly devout or to all appearance devout…”devout” Christians have done all sorts of evil though,…..
Yesterday at 4:50pm ·
My point was only to wish that that word could be reserved for the “real” thing… not to refer to someone who isn’t but looks like they are.
Yesterday at 4:54pm ·
Sometimes the last fruit of the holy spirit, self control, is just not there … part of the problem is in our days there is an anormous effort to make christianity easy … but this is not the point Christ was making …
Yesterday at 5:17pm ·
Or perhaps they are just ‘people of the lie’, people who present themselves as christian but are in fact and in practice a long way from it, and have neither the present desire nor the intent to become such…
Yesterday at 6:12pm ·
But we are all human and Paul talks about the way we wrestle with sin…now I am NOT AT ALL condoning or excusing sexual abuse BUT many devout Christians wrestle with many things …
Yesterday at 6:51pm ·
I must admit that i have huge problems with the “devout” and “christian” bit. Taken at face value, this person suffered terriby and multidymensional abuse. I cannot see Christ in this action at all.
Yesterday at 7:48pm via Facebook Mobile ·
A terrible story with a wonderful outcome. Thank God for the kind friend. I too believe that we act like that friend we allow Jesus to shine through us and do what He so longs to do bring comfort and encouragement to others!
11 hours ago ·
Let’s not allow the “devout christian” bit to take away the “point” of the article here. This article inspiried me, irrespective of the debate of whether that “devout Christian” was a Christian or not. God can use our ordinary encouragement to change lives. As said about “True Love in action”
10 hours ago ·
Thanks. I’m with you! Sometimes we can be a little oversensitive don’t you think. The father was to everybody around a “devout Christian” – only the girl and her mother knew a different story. Let’s not mince words. What he did was evil but he probably still passionately believed in Jesus – psychologists have wrestled with this sort of stuff for years. Can a psycopath be a devout Christian? Sure can. Can a schitzophrenic? Why not? Some have been pastors. But it’s not up to me to judge. We miss the point when semantics get in the way. Thank God she survived the abuse. Thank God there was somebody who was able to care enough and minister the gentle love of Christ to her in her darkest times. That’s what matters. Nothing else.
10 hours ago ·
[A Baptist pastor]: Can a true believer be demonised? I certainly know Christians who suffer schizophrenia and other mental illnesses. I knew a chap with narcissistic personality disorder who claimed to be a believer, though I realised that he was too dangerous to associate with.
In this case, though, we need to realise that both parents were abusers, and the child’s “excusing” of the mother is her perception, but not necessarily the truth of the matter. Perhaps the father’s abuse of the child was his reaction to her mother’s issues.
All we can do is say that this is the young woman’s perception of her situation as a child. We can’t even say that her understanding of how her childhood impacted on her is entirely accurate. Which means that the one thing in her story which really counts is that she recovered through the constant care of someone who came to her with faith.
8 hours ago ·
To me one cannot call themselves Christian if they act contrary to Christian values of love,kindness etc. I guess I don’t believe in Christian in name only.
6 hours ago ·
Then I added:
Good discussion:
I just sent this email to the writer: “Would you like to put quotes around the word ‘devout’? Or add an adjective ‘outwardly’ or ‘apparently’ – or something even stronger?”
I’ll let you know her response.
Avagooddayeveryone
A few hours later:
My friend wrote:
I think in response, I will put:-
I had a very traumatic childhood. My parents were actively involved in church life and supposedly good Christians. But at home it was a different story. My father sexually abused me from the age of four……etc.
So for those of you reading this for the first time, we’ve taken out the word
devout
and substituted what’s above!
From a Christian psychologist : “I have worked with a number of folk over 20 plus years as a psychologist whose parents would describe themselves as devout Christians but who abused their children physically and/or sexually and who saw nothing wrong in that. For some there is a huge disconnect between various compartments in their lives and that is so sad for their victims.”
And from an American friend: It frightens me that more people seem to be concerned that this poor woman used the phrase “devout Christian” than they were with the behaviour of the man who dared to use her so badly.
Where were the “true Christians”, and why didn’t they see what was happening, or if they did, why didn’t they intervene?
And another: “I do not think the account needed to be rewritten. Sin is the common condition of all religions and cultures. Certainly sexual abuse is contradictory to the Christian faith but there is a great difference between professing to be a Christian and really being one. Sexual sin was known in the early churches as we know from 2Cor. 5 and 1Cor. 10. The church has to be prepared to minister to all sinners; certainly to the victims who often have feelings of despair, anger, hatred, and desires for revenge that are sinful although understandable, but also to the perpetrators who often have been victimized by their relatives. It is awful, but we live in an awful world, a world into which Christ came for redemption. Sin is nasty business and those who seek to show the love and mercy in Christ will feel defiled from time to time.”
Discussion
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