Does the Neglect and Abuse of Your Childhood Sometimes Still Jump Up and Surprise You (Even as an Adult, Christian Woman)?

Recently, a dear friend of mine wept silent streams of tears as she learned a little bit more about my childhood and some of the suffering I experienced in my family of origin. This is not a topic I talk about often, but when I do, it does not currently hurt me. It did at first. The ache; the ripping open of my chest as though I would die; the hot feeling of acid on every inch of my skin and the acute, instinctual reaction to pull back from every single person? I felt it all as a young adult when I first started to look back, acknowledge what had happened to me, and bring light into the darkness of my childhood (1 Peter 2:9).

I wanted to minimize my experience. (“After all! People have suffered FAR WORSE than me! Maybe it wasn’t as bad as I remember …”) I wanted to protect my parents; not speak ill of them; not draw attention to the ways that they hurt me and the imminent danger they continually put me in. (I think in many ways, I still wanted to somehow preserve the possibility that they were actually functional, loving, stable adults and we could possibly have one of those healthy, happy, functional families that I had read books about and dreamed about and observed in so many peoples’ lives—especially in the church, once God saved me as a teenager and brought me into his eternal family.)

But reality is what it is. My life story is my life story, and I can cry both for the man who has no feet and the man who has no shoes.

Yes, the Lord is sovereign. Yes, he is most definitely good. Of course there is no aspect of my childhood that was a surprise to him. Yes, he was present. He saw what happened to me as a child and he hated with a holy, hot anger the wickedness that I had to endure, just as he hates all evil, everywhere. God’s Light is so against all darkness and evil that he sent his only begotten Son into the world to deal definitively with every aspect of creation that is subject to the Fall.

This includes any and all suffering I experienced as a child. It also includes any and all suffering I am experiencing now and will experience this side of Heaven. One day, all suffering will end and God’s glory and lovingkindness will reign. Forever. But in this life, “we will  have trouble” (John 16:33). Our suffering varies, but we all suffer. The question is: how do we respond to our suffering? 

Lately, I have become more concerned over well-meaning, mature Christians who try to push themselves (and others) to “get there” (trust God! rejoice in the Lord always!) without allowing a little time to remember that God is also the God who weeps (John 11:35). Yes, we are called to trust in God’s sovereignty. Yes, he really is good. But we are denying neither God’s sovereignty nor his goodness when we stand at the tomb of our friend, suffer, and weep. It is not sin to feel pain (Luke 22:39-46). We are not failing to “rejoice in the Lord always” (Philippians 4:4) when we curl into the fetal position (in our bed, in a Garden) and finally give ourselves permission to cry so hard that it feels as though we may never stop.

One aspect of growing in grace, maturing in Christ, becoming even a slightly more functional adult Christian is learning how to remember past hurts, name them, feel them, experience them, grieve them, and entrust them to the Lord, so that we can move on. Grow up. Not be stoics!  But also, not give in to bitterness and judgment of others (especially the people who hurt us). Not give in to an overly-morbid-self-introspection that just chews and chews over our past hurts and ascribes to them far too much power, blame, and causality re: our present struggles.

(David Powlison has a fabulous article series about processing through our present sadness related to our life experiences that I strongly urge you to read. You can click here for Part 2—my personal favorite—and here to find links to all five sections.)

Some of us really did survive childhood experiences that can rightly be described as neglectful and abusive. We may be relatively functional adults now. We may have experienced great growth and healing regarding the difficult aspects of our lives. We might not be in an acute stage of suffering related to our past experiences, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t still have memories that jump on us—surprise us!—hurt us, even as we are going through our little normal-happily-boring-currently-non-abusive lives.

That’s how the conversation with my friend got started last Sunday. For reasons I can’t remember now, I happened to mention to her a relatively innocuous experience I had related to cleaning lint off of a dryer. It went something like this:

When Fred and I first moved to Billings, Montana (from Chicago) to work for Peacemaker Ministries, Fred drew no salary and mine was so small that we had to live (for free) in the basement of one of our PCA elders for a year.

Our hosts were the most gracious  human beings on the planet and we could not have been more grateful for their ministerial hospitality. But I still vividly remember when the wife was showing me how to use their laundry machines and I had a HUGE, EMOTIONAL WAVE OF SHAME well up in me re: NEVER leaving lint in the lint trap or on the top of the machine. I wanted to PROMISE HER and PROVE TO HER that I would DO. IT. RIGHT. (The intensity of my response rightfully startled her, poor, dear, sweet woman.)

But here’s the thing (and this is what I was retelling to my friend last Sunday): when I was little, my parents were very unhappily married. We moved almost every year and even after we finally got settled someplace, my dad would often intentionally take a new job out of town, leaving my sister and I in the care of my mother who was a mentally ill addict. My mom was also in-and-out of mental institutions and detox centers, and my parents finally divorced when I was in junior high, so I was shuttled back and forth between so many chaotic childhood homes, I cannot even remember them all.

I do remember this, however: I was a NOT-GOOD-ENOUGH kid and neither of my parents wanted me with them. I would do something, say something, “blow it” in some way–and I would be kicked out. Again. Sent to live with the other parent who didn’t want me. Sometimes to a well-meaning friend’s home, but I would blow it there too. Back and forth. Not good enough. Not good enough. Not keeping the lint off the dryer good enough. And then I would find myself, literally (no exaggeration), sitting on a curbside with my little bag of earthly belongings, knowing I was being sent away and forced on people who didn’t want me; pretty sure I would blow it again and be kicked out. Again.

I had no hope that I could ever change and no hope that anyone would ever love me unless I changed. So of course I felt as though there was no place for me in the world. I felt like I had no safe place—NO HOME—because the truth was, I really did not have a safe place and I did not have a home.

Until that fateful day in 1985 when God saved me (just as I was) and put me into his family (the church) and then put me into the household of the Livingstons (a Christian family who took me in after I saved my mother out of a suicide attempt). The Livingstons did not kick me out, even though it was horribly, horribly hard for them to have such a messed up kid in their house. All they wanted to do was love me, but I was so terrified, wounded, incapable of trusting and loving—it was a hard, hard season of suffering for them. Plus, of course, the members of my little church in Morris, Illinois had to choose to love the unlovable me. (I really was a manipulative, mean, terrified little gossip of a jerk—but I was a Christian! Just a really, really immature Christian.)

The people who loved me when I was unlovable taught me to trust in God’s love (God loved us when we were yet his enemies—Romans 5:10), and they modeled, instructed, and helped me to learn how to love people in response.

Thirty years later, sure … I have to admit that my childhood was influential as regards my overly-strong “I won’t blow it! I WILL clean the lint off right!” response to dear, sweet, patient Peg H. as we stood over that dryer years ago. But my childhood was not causative re: my response.  I sin today because I am a sinner, not because of sins done against me decades (or weeks) ago. I have annoying parts of my personality and I respond in weird, emotional ways to some situations because I am a fallen creature living in a fallen world with huge areas in need of further sanctification and growth in grace. 

That little story? Especially the laundry dryer lint little episode? I think that was the reason my sweet friend cried for me last Sunday. It can be so easy to forget (or just not know!) how much the people around us have endured. But every once in awhile, we get to learn about some of the specific, terrible, terrifying things that have happened to one another. We get to say the words:

“I am so sorry this suffering happened to you.”

And in despair I bowed my head
“There is no peace on earth,” I said,
“For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail
With peace on earth, good will to men.”

Yes. At times, painful memories may still jump on us. Until glory, we will have new reasons to feel pain and we may be tempted to withdraw or hide ourselves in shame. But we don’t have to respond in this way! Instead, we can “entrust ourselves to our faithful Creator” (1 Peter 4:19). We can “comfort in the way we  have been comforted” (2 Corinthians 1:4). We can feel our feelings, sure. But ultimately, we can listen to God, more than our feelings, more than our past memories, more than our present sufferings:

“The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come.” And let the one who hears say, “Come.” And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price.” Revelation 22:17

Amen & Amen!

I hope you have a blessed, hope-filled Wednesday. I’m off to little Miss E’s swim lessons now …

Your friend,
Tara B.

PS
I know I already pointed you to the David Powlison article series, but just to tempt you to click through, here is a brief excerpt that I think is particularly on point to what I am trying to express in this blog. (The bold emphases are mine.) Dr. Powlison is addressing how to help a (very self-introspective) woman who is trying to process through her past hurts and suffering:

“Exhaustive analysis of an emotional moment is impossible and not worth pursuing. One of the pitfalls to which introspective people are prone is the attempt to exhaustively understand and explain themselves. You’ll drive yourself to distraction if you try to figure out the percentage. Is it 80% self-pity and 20% honest faith? 50-50? 20-80? Or is it 20% self-pity, 20% faith, 20% not knowing how to entrust cares into God’s hands, 20% just plain hardship, and 20% not knowing how to do what needs to be done?

You can’t do the calculus and come up with numbers. But you can help her sort out when and how she crosses the line into self-pity, or avoidance, or confusion. You can help her fill in wisdom where blind spots exist. And you can help her sort out how living faith and loving actions think, talk, and choose. Wise friends and wise pastoral counsel can walk with her. We can help our sister to move forward constructively even without exhaustive understanding. We can honor her bravery in asking tough questions, her existing self-awareness that enables her to even bring such questions to the table, her desire and humility to not give herself over to what might be an ungodly temperament. She can find help in moving from self-pity to faith. Other people can help her to think through and walk through some of the matters raised in the various “Perhaps ____.”

Our letter writer is dealing with what our forebears called a “case of conscience.” When is it right to feel the sadness of the world’s wrong, and when does it become an expression of self-pity or some other redressable problem? How can she move in a fruitful direction when she feels that sadness, and is tempted to turn inward? We can help her grow more fruitful and constructive without claiming to understand all the ins and outs of a particular emotional experience.

Here’s another reason to not rush too quickly to make the moral assessment. We are God-made to grieve at losses, to be troubled by troubles, to be distressed at evil. And we are God-made for taking refuge in him and for growing in confidence in him. Faith is human and humane. Self-pity works to magnify and distort grief, turning me in on myself, rather than reaching out to God and to others.

It is possible that our letter writer uses the return of Christ to short-circuit honest sorrow, and then constructive engagement with a broken world. Instead of spinning her wheels in introspection, wise cure of souls aims to lessen self-pity’s self-preoccupation (however it appears). Pastoral care and Christian friendship aim to help her grow into faith’s humanity. Faith reaches out from ourselves, rather than turning in on ourselves. So faith grieves. Faith longs, “Come, Lord Jesus.” Faith trusts God and rejoices in hope. Faith pleads with God, “Deliver us from evil.” And faith reaches out in love for other strugglers.“

Praise the Lord! And thank you, Dr. Powlison.

(Oh. And if you are not already a financial supporter of CCEF—The Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation—I strongly, strongly urge you to consider even just a one-time gift this month. Even in our current financial situation, Fred and I have prayerfully worked hard to not stop our monthly donation to this organization because we believe in them so much. Won’t you please consider a gift? I don’t work for them. I have no formal association with them. I just appreciate their love for the Lord, His Word, His Bride—and their careful, biblical analysis of complex psychological/emotional/spiritual/physical issues. Thanks!)

PPS
If this topic resonates with you or someone you love, I strongly recommend the books Shame Interrupted and Loving Well Even if You Haven’t Been for further study. And (updated 8/12/14), CCEF has generously made this amazing article by David Powlison available for free too: “I’ll Never Get Over It! Help for the Aggrieved“