I never told anyone. I kept it all inside. I started to wonder if it was some crazy dream or if it even happened at all. I thought maybe I made it up? Other times I thought - it wasn't that bad - it was no big deal. But last year people I hadn't seen started surfacing - family, friends - people who knew....
You're a miracle they said. How did you survive?
Survive? Miracle? What did they mean? They started to tell me stories of their memories of how bad things were, how thin I had become, how out of control......My older sister who I hadn't seen for a long time returned from living overseas. She needed to talk. She forced me to listen....forced me to remember.
The memories hit. They hit hard. I wrote to get the images out of my head.
I couldn't eat or sleep. I wanted to get in my car, close my eyes and drive. It felt like it was happening all over again - the beatings, the confinement, the rape - throwing up day after day after day even if I had tasted even a small bite of something - shoving needles in my arm - three and four times a day - ripping my arms with jagged rocks to feel something because I felt nothing. I was numb inside.
Why now God? Why are you letting me go through this now? I didn't want to remember and yet in remembering it dawned on me - finally - just how far down God had reached to free me.
Everyday in the heat, rain and cold - I ran - alone in the woods - in the hills near our home. There I felt the gentle touch of God - And I heard His whisper - You're stronger now. It's time to tell the truth of what happened. Tell your story to give someone hope -
How could I have never told anyone what He did. Nothing worked. Nothing could break the chains that kept me in living on the edge. Nothing except the gentleness of His touch.
The power of His gentleness.......
This November, I will publish my story In the Eye of Deception. A True Story.
