Living in Freedom

“You need to forgive God.”

I was startled to hear those words. They sounded… if not heretical, at least irreverent. But lightning didn’t strike.

You need to forgive God. In an instant those words went from unsettling to piercing. My precious friend—my wise and godly friend Roxanne—had spoken truth about me that I myself was completely unaware of. And she was absolutely right. I did need to forgive God….

I hadn’t known Roxanne very long. Less than a year, I think. I had first met with her and her husband when they wanted to publish a book. Over coffee, we did talk business for a while. The two of them were lovely. As one who never really had parents, I found their warmth irresistible and their company, life-giving. And at that first meeting, Roxanne made a comment that disarmed me.

“Lara, I sense some darkness—the darkness of pain—in your soul.”

My eyes filled with tears….

“Would you like to come to our home so we can pray for you?” And so began a rich weekly afternoon tradition of prayer, Communion, love, laughter, wisdom, encouragement, and—occasionally—homemade scones.

These two precious souls heard my story not only with their ears, but with their hearts as well. They received with compassion and tears the details about incest at the hands of a Marine Corps father. Of course I hated my body, the scene of the crime, so to speak. I hated myself. And—unknowingly—I brought into my marriage a three-year-old’s perspective on sex: it was a strange activity that definitely did not make me feel loved.

It wasn’t until two years into our marriage that all the memories surfaced. Finally the little girl who had been so badly mistreated felt safe enough to share her story. As she did, various parts of my life suddenly made sense.

Why was I always so busy? Perhaps that was my nature, but my wanting to at least be a moving target for my dad may have fueled my busyness.

People had asked me, “Why are you always smiling?” Perhaps that was my nature, but now I saw in those smiles my desperate need to be liked. But maybe it was a “you either laugh or cry” sort of smile.

Why did grades matter so much to me? Perhaps being able to succeed in school was in my nature, but those straight As helped me survive. I had purpose and teachers’ affirmation.

Why had I worn that fur-trimmed winter jacket every day of my freshman year of high school, even when temperatures rose into the high eighties? Perhaps my 100-pound frame needed the extra warmth? No, I was hiding.

Why, in grad school, did I basically starve myself? No “perhaps” here. My world was out of control when I was young: I couldn’t predict or control my father’s behavior. Twenty years later something compelled me to control the one thing in my world I absolutely could: what I ate or didn’t eat. So I didn’t. I also didn’t feel worth spending money on. Any money. Not even for food. And I didn’t ever want to be 200 pounds like both of my parents were. And I shudder to think of my father’s flesh.

Yes, Roxanne, you were right to see in my spirit a real darkness. Incest was a soul-shattering violation by a person I thought I could trust, a person I needed to trust. A child who experiences incest has two choices: she can believe she is bad and that’s why she’s being hurt, or she can believe that her parents are bad, her parents who are all she has to protect her and provide for her. Believing that her parents are bad is much more frightening than believing she is bad. And I easily believed I was bad, and every abusive incident reinforced that conviction. Yes, life was lonely.

As a military kid, I moved around—a lot! Every year between kindergarten and sixth grade, I was at a different school at a different base in a different state. That was my normal—but that “normal” meant not knowing my grandparents or uncles or aunts or cousins. It meant not knowing adults who might have become safe confidants. Yes, life was very lonely. And when the memories came back, I began to understand why I felt that profound loneliness.

Of course, as I put the pieces together, I wrestled with trying to forgive my father for abusing me, derailing my childhood, stealing my innocence, confusing my thoughts about myself—the list goes on and on. I also struggled to forgive my mother for doing nothing to protect me. I don’t know how long it took me to get to the point of forgiving them, but it was a matter of years, not months.

For me, the most helpful truth was “hurt people hurt people.” I finally reached the point of being able to see my parents as broken people. I didn’t know details about their stories. I could guess that his four tours of duty in Vietnam damaged my father. I could guess that my mother’s mother, with her witchcraft and mysterious ways, might have been the source of much of my mother’s brokenness. Hurt people hurt people. With that acknowledgment, I reminded myself, I was not at all excusing their behavior or dismissing the utter evil of my father’s actions. But the rage—which, to be honest, I can still too easily plug back in to—was, by God’s grace, transformed into a resigned, a reluctant compassion.

But then Roxanne suggested that I needed to forgive God. I had never thought about that! What I had done a lot of, though, was rage at Him. I was relieved to learn at some point that He can handle my anger, that He knew it was there even if I didn’t tell Him. He had heard words of my fury: Where were You? Why did You let that happen?