Every so often we come face to face with an obstacle that seems even greater than the last. We fall into a deep physiological pithole where we fear our efforts to climb to the top will not be sufficient enough to actually reach it. First, we try to rationalize the situation. We tell ourselves that the situation is not as bad as it seems and that everything will be fine. But sometimes, when the walls start to close in on us, we break from our false hopes and become desperate to escape. We claw, stomp, and chew at the sides of the pit, yet the pit is unaware of such harassment.
The pit isolates us from everyone else, the pit becomes the center of our attention, the pit becomes our new lifestyle. Nevertheless, despite the impossible odds, we can not stop to wonder what life would be like outside the pit. At least I couldn’t stop wondering. I began to descend into my pit hole when I was just five years old without realizing that I was falling towards the deepest and most treacherous hole of my life to date. In my innocent mind, I thought my life was meant to be inside that pit because I had grown up there for as long as I could remember.
At the time, the walls were comforting, they did not seem to hurt me or be out of the ordinary. In fact, it would have to take me eight years until I realized that maybe I was never meant to have grown up in the darkness of a narrow pit, but rather outside of it and yet another two years to seek further healing and understanding of my unfortunate ordeal. To put this in the simplest way possible, I was sexually abused without the knowledge of my parents for six years and I did not know that what was being done to me was wrong.
In the beginning, it was all a simple game of mommy and daddy. Sometimes I would be the mommy, others the daddy; it did not matter who I was because the game always ended the same way. As I grew older, I began to crave the feelings that were exposed to me as a child and the person, whom I will call X, was always willing to give them to me. However, one day, after six years, X came to me and told me that we could no longer continue what we were doing. I did not understand why, at the moment, so I simply shrugged off the matter.
And since I no longer had anyone else to “play” with, I began to seek the pleasure that I was taught and conditioned to love by myself with the help of the internet. This continued for about two years until the summer of 2013. During that summer I stumbled upon a book called “The Source of All Things” by Tracy Ross. I was actually in a Dollar Tree in Dallas, Texas when I decided I wanted to pick up a few cheap books to read on my way back home to Naples, Florida; nevertheless, by the time we got home I had already finished reading the book.
The book was about Tracy Ross and her own sexual abuse story as a child and how she eventually overcame i. After I finished the book and realized that the games I played with X were not actually games and that the feelings I experienced were not meant for me to have experienced, I sank a good fifty feet deeper into my hole. I did not want anyone to look at me, touch me, or even compliment me. I wanted to vanish from the face of the Earth and cry out my body weight. I could not run to my parents for help because I was too embarrassed and ashamed of myself. I felt dirty and worthless.
I withdrew from my family and isolated myself from social activities. I voluntarily made myself a social outcast. I first confessed to my brother about my abuse, but the confession did not make me feel any better. Later, I decided I would want to seek professional help and asked my mother if I could see a psychologist. She said yes, not knowing what the purpose of the visit was, and took me to see a Christian psychologist. I grew up in a Christian home and I even accepted Yahshua as my savior when I was thirteen years old so this did not seem strange to me.
At the time, however, I was not so intimately connected with my spiritual side and was rather depressed. The only thing that stopped me from taking my own life away was the little spirituality I had left. I remembered that YHWH told us to honor our bodies and that since HE was our creator he was the only one who could take our life away. So, I went to my psychologist and began to discuss my problems with her in an attempt to find a healthier solution. Eventually, I found out that what had happened to me was not my fault and that It did not have to hold me back from achieving new goals and having new aspirations.
In other words, I learned that the past did not have to define me. However, despite figuring this out, I still felt hollow and unpeaceful inside. It was then that I realized I would need a new form of identity and it was then that Yahshua showed me I was a daughter of YHWH. I found a deep unconditional love that rescued me, that liberated me, and that gave me a new perspective on life. All along, his love and open arms were there, but I was just ignorant to the calling.
Nevertheless, in the end, I turned back to him and HE has yet to disappoint me. I never thought I would recover again, that I would climb out of the pit. In fact, I do not think I would have if HE had not found me. YHWH gave me HIS hand and offered me a life of peace and salvation, I simply accepted HIS invitation and was brought outside my pit hole into the world I had always longed for. I overcame my impossible odd through love and my ordeal became a lecture of compassion and strength. My past has shaped me for a better today.