What I am about to write, I honestly thought I would go to my grave with, and never discuss it out loud. It is truly a grace that I have the courage to say what I am about to say. I want to share how I went from being a child of fear to a child of God.

 Ironically, “why” is the one question the Lord has never promised to answer. Even his own mother asks him why and he doesn’t answer her. Well, he does answer her, but not in the way she was probably hoping for. He says, “How is it that you sought me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” He responds to her question with a question. What could Jesus possibly be teaching us?

I have comforted myself before in prayer and allowed Jesus to touch my wounds by wrapping my arms around myself as if they were his. I imagine him holding me while I rest my head on his chest. Today I lift my hands like a child and later cradle my cheek in the palm of my hand imagining it is his cheek against mine. It seems silly, but alone in my room I feel comforted.

...my version of “forgiveness” was simple: never let anyone get close enough to hurt me. But the Lord broke through my defenses and gradually brought me back to Him through a reversion to the Catholic faith. ... When I first attended the Life-Giving Wounds retreat, my heart overflowed with awe and gratitude as I heard the truth about God’s intention for the love between mother, father, and child.

The title is a reference to the old unit of measurement that was roughly the length of a forearm. It expresses how the poorly managed conflict and ultimate breakdown in my parents’ marriage left me avoidant of relationships with others, particularly romantic ones. Even as I met amazing individuals who were attractive on so many levels, I kept them at a distance out of fear and shame...

I am here to tell you some amazingly good news! Jesus said in the Gospel of John, “I will not leave you orphans. I will come to you” (Jn 14:18). God, in His infinite wisdom, knows fully the hearts and minds of all His children. He would never write a desire into our hearts without also providing for its fulfillment!

This healing journey has been bittersweet for me. I have come to grips with the fact that I am a survivor of child abuse. The term still brings tears to my eyes and probably will for a very long time, only because it can sometimes make me feel like a broken doll, or what may be a more popular term, “damaged goods.”

As I navigate my own personal struggles in 2021, I am praying and asking Joseph to help me along with understanding. I may not know why certain people have caused my hurt, but I do know that Joseph, Jesus, and the Holy spirit can alleviate the hurt and pain if we ask.

Continuing with the themes from Part Two of this series, let us look at boundaries with God in light of the extremes of avoidant independence and enmeshed dependence.

In my previous post “Believe His Voice,” I told in detail about my struggle with the different voices in my head, all vying for power and control. Once I came to realize and recognize the voices I was hearing, so many things became clearer in my life. Simply knowing what was going on in my mind and heart was (and is) empowering.

Forgiveness is hard. I can attest to that. I was born angry (by the looks of my baby picture!) and my parents’ divorce cemented that anger even more. I was the queen of holding grudges; I literally held them for years. But that was before I reverted to Catholicism, and I heard about forgiveness on a daily basis through the Lord’s Prayer and the teachings of Jesus.

I learned to forgive my father over time. It started with a question, “How can I forgive him?” and developed from there. I realized that he had done what he thought was right, and that he never meant to harm me. Even though I felt rejected and abandoned by him, I knew that he never stopped loving me, and realized how much I had stopped trying to love him.

I’m fifty-fife years old, and up until recently I spent most of my life after my parents’ divorce in pain and not knowing why. I also spent my life running from that pain— into the arms of men, towards the bottle, and literally running for exercise, all of which gave me a brief reprieve from my problems.

When my father left the family during my late teens, I fell right back into infancy: I was unable to call my father “dad” because “dad” was no longer present. And that translated to my relationship with God: I did not call God “Father” because it seemed that God left me, too.

Know that you are not alone, and that this is not the end, though it may feel like it. Know that even if I don't know you, that I am with you in this journey, that I care about you and so do many others who are like us. Know that you deserved a family who would stick together and that you deserve to grieve that you lost that forever.

The image of the Pieta by William-Adolphe Bouguereau was an image I had glanced at a few times over the years, but I believe the Lord had a specific time for me to be moved by that image, so that I could be led to love Him and His mother more deeply, and to be loved by them both in a new and profound way.

I spent years of my young life praying my parents would divorce, as it seemed like the only option for any peace in my family. I had witnessed my Dad hurt my Mom and attempt to kill her several times. The last time, he tried to kill us both. I absolutely believe our Guardian Angels protected us! Eventually Dad became seriously ill and the violence stopped.

Rebuilding my trust in God’s goodness has been quite the disaster relief project. Some days it feels like only pebbles are being added to my rebuild; and other times it feels like the whole building collapses down upon me again and it’s time to start all over.

In addition to this invaluable spiritual support, we need to shore up strengths and acquire new skills to heighten and expand our ability to love. Understanding our temperament can help us do this. This is not a theory of fixed personality traits identifying unchanging characteristics that put people in a box. Rather, understanding temperament helps us identify our strong and weak tendencies to react in certain ways in certain situations. 

I was at a crossroads. My heart ached for this love to be true, I wanted so badly to believe it was for me, but I was so scared what that might mean. How silly! My life had changed 180 degrees over those 7 years, so what the heck was I waiting for? What was I scared of? I was scared that God would change his mind, like I thought love did when my parents divorced when I just a baby...