Life Altering Situations
Today is 9/11. For many people and for our nation as a whole the events that happened 11 years ago were life altering. Many people lost loved ones and our nation was rocked to the core of who we are because of the attack on our soil on 9/11/2001.
Some of us have things happen in our lives that are that life altering. It feels like a tornado hits and we are lifted up, spun around, dropped to the ground and laid flat. When this happens there is always the aftermath; which includes the clean up and recovery. We examine the damage, what's left to rebuild with, if anything, and start the restoration process.
My mother had our baby sister lying on her lap wrapped in a pink blanket. They had been released from the hospital that morning. My two little sisters, Anita not quite 3, Sharla not quite 6 and me, 8 years old, were gathered around them to be introduced to our little sister for the first time. Poking out from the blanket was all of this dark hair and this darling little face with the most beautiful dark eyes fringed with long eyelashes and dark eyebrows. She was gorgeous. But wait! Mom was saying that something was wrong with her. I felt my heart begin to race, I got sick to my stomach, and I wanted to run. NO! I didn't want to know about this. I had no idea what I didn't want to know about, but I knew deep down it wasn't going to be easy.
Mom uncovered our little sister's hands and feet. She had only one finger on each hand and one toe on each foot. At first I was shocked and horrified, because I had never seen anything like this before. That only lasted a moment or two, just to be replaced with a fierce protectiveness. Nobody was going to harm my baby sister. She may look different, but she is still my sister. Mom explained to us that day that God has chosen our family to raise a special little one who may have a birth defect, but that Loretta had a special spirit.
Loretta was born exactly two weeks after the only Grandpa I ever knew had died suddenly of a heart attack. Grandpa Heber George was my Dad's dad. The events that happened within Dad's family with the will and with Dad's siblings were extremely difficult. Then when Loretta was born with a birth defect, it seemed to make some small-minded people think my parents committed some horrendous sin to have this happen to them. They even had the audacity to express it when they came to see Loretta. My mother, already grieving and suffering from post-partum depression and possibly some guilt that maybe this was her fault in some way, sunk lower and lower into a deep, dark depression. Many nights Mom would come wake me up in the middle of the night and say "We need to pray" and so I would groggily get out of bed and we would kneel together and pray.
I tried to keep the house clean, so that Mom wouldn't have to worry about that. The phone ringing would terrify Mom as well as any other loud noises, so I was constantly trying to keep Sharla and Anita quiet. Mom wasn't eating or sleeping, and finally, the day Loretta turned three months old, she called her doctor and told him she was losing her mind. He suggested going to the hospital, and Mom was there for two months. They had a name back then for Mom's condition. They said she had a nervous breakdown. The two younger girls went to my aunt's house, about 30 miles away. Sharla and I stayed with my Grandma Hannah, the grandma that had recently lost her husband, since she lived in the same town we did, and we could keep going to school. Our lives were in an uproar to say the least.
I always loved going to Grandma Hannah's house. It was an old house with a big front porch. Her kitchen always smelled so good because Grandma was always making pies. She had one of those big, black coal and wood burning stoves. Off from the kitchen on the right was the bathroom. She had a big, four claw bathtub. I loved that tub. Grandma's house was full of the cutest knick-knacks. I would ask her where she got this one from, and where did she get that one from. Off from the kitchen to the left was a big family room, with the TV and big couches. From the family room, to the left was a bed room, and straight from the family room opened up the "Fancy Living room". That living room was only for "guests". Off from the "Fancy living room" was Grandma's bedroom.
One night while my Grandma was out, my uncle and I were on the couch watching a western. He had just returned from the Korean war. I loved westerns; Bonanza, Gunsmoke, Cheyenne, etc. I was innocently nestled up next to him. A few years before I had played doctor with my cousin and we both got in a lot of trouble when we got caught. I had recently been baptized as a believer in Jesus Christ and I had taken that step very seriously. I had quit sucking my thumb, which was a big deal, and I had repented for playing doctor, which was another big deal. Horrifically my uncle took advantage of my innocence and sexually molested me. Tears started rolling down my face, and the next thing I know, he was telling me that this is to be our little secret, and I better not tell anyone, or people would think I was a bad little girl. I ran to bed and wished I could lock the bedroom door. I felt defiled, dirty, shamed, but mostly, like I had let the Lord down. The last thing I said before I finally went to sleep that night, was "Oh God, I hope you can forgive me".
Grandma's house was no longer safe. I don't know how much longer Sharla and I were at Grandma's, but I know I hated my uncle and I would not be in the same room with him again. Sometime after that happened, Dad came and took us girls home and he had a baby sitter come sit with us after school. She was a sixteen year old named Janet. One day, I ran home from school, to find my uncle kissing my baby sitter on the couch. I ran to the goat barn, hid in the haystack until dark. Several times when I got home from school my uncle would be at our house and every time I would hide in the haystack.
Of course, I never told anyone what my uncle had done. I buried that dark secret deep inside for a number of years. Just because I had buried it, doesn't mean it wasn't bearing fruit. I thought I was not worthy of God's love. Shame and humiliation were my constant companions. I didn't know it on a conscious level, but I was suffering also from abandonment. Why wasn't someone there to protect me? I felt that God had abandoned me. Another question that always haunted me was "What's wrong with you, Joie?"
Years later, when I was a senior in high school, I finally told my mother what had happened. She told me that while she was in the hospital, she had the premonition that Dad needed to get us girls out of Grandma's house and quick. She tried to get Dad to hurry, but he had a hard time finding a babysitter. By the time he found Janet, and had moved us out, it was too late.
I don't know if Mom ever told my Dad, I know I never did.
When I received the Baptism of the Holy Spirit when I was pregnant with Ben, my second child, my uncle was one of the people that God worked on my heart to forgive. I thought forgiveness meant that I was to condone what he had done, and there was no way I was going to do that. I went on a journey of finding out what forgiveness really meant. It took me a couple of years before I felt like I had forgiven him. My uncle died of a sudden heart attack at the age of 44. By the time he died, I felt like I had already released him and forgiven him. I was so very thankful that God had worked that into my heart before my uncle had passed away.
Those few months of losing my Grandpa, Loretta's birth, my mother's hospitalization, and my uncle's sexual abuse, were life-altering for me on many, many levels. I was shaken and rocked to the core of who I was by these events.
It's only been because of the blood of Jesus, and the power of the Holy Spirit, that I have received a great deal of healing and restoration. I praise God every day for the healing and restoration He has worked in my life. He truly is our loving, gracious, compassionate Father who loves us deeply.
It took me a long time to learn that about our Father. But I will save some of those stories for another blog.
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