Dear Fellow Abuse Survivors
This free style poem is an open letter to abuse survivors.
Please know that here you are taken seriously. You are loved and valued. You are believed. Maybe we can find community together in the healing.
Dear Fellow Abuse Survivors,
I’ve been where you are. Maybe not exactly but in a similar way. Abuse effects us all differently but very much same.
Maybe you trusted a person or perhaps you never did but it was someone who should have been safe and was a lion's den instead. They used you and abused you in ways too awful to comprehend.
After the fact well meaning people think it’s all over and done. But what they don’t know is that your hell has just begun. “You’re free now!” everyone tells you, “Your world is again right.” But what they don’t know is that the darkness is now assaulting you from within.
Your abuser may be gone, locked up by miles, bars, years or death but that doesn’t take away the haunting that stifles your every breath.
The shame and fear, the depression is hell. Sometimes you wonder, “Will I ever be well?”
Could anyone ever want me again? Maybe I deserve the treatment I got. Who would want to put up with someone so broken and distraught?
And even if someone wanted to love me how can I trust them... when I can’t even trust me?
Friend, the way that you are feeling is something I know as well but the point of our suffering I just cannot tell.
But, please know this, it was not your fault. God did not want this for you at all. And while I cannot give you answers for all of your (or my) pain, I can tell you this, Broken is not your name.
You are loved and worthy of love. You have value this atrocity cannot touch. God is not finished with you yet. For your life He still has so much.
He is known for taking people with broken pasts and using them to display His glory the brightest, brighter than day.
You are not a victim any more. You are a survivor with a special gift. You have compassion and awareness to help ease the suffering of those caught in the same kind of tricks.
Your healing wont come easy. You wont be without scars but He is able to take them and turn them into shining stars (1).
So, put one hand on your wounded heart and with the other touch His wounded side. Know that God will be with you like a mother is near her (2) new born child.
-Ashley Easter
Notes and Sources:
(1) "Scars into shining stars" This is a phrase, I have heard my grandfather say.
(2) Did you know that in the Bible God is sometimes described in feminine terms. God is not just pictured as a father but also a mother. God transcends sex and gender. God cannot be completely understood or adequately described to us so we must use human pictures and metaphors to portray The Divine. Both men and women are created equally in God's image and reflect their Creator. While we often focus on male descriptions of God, feminine descriptions and metaphors are also used and are just as accurate. Feminine metaphors of God occur often in Isaiah but also in other places in Scripture. In fact in the Old Testament, when talking about the (Holy) Spirit, the Hebrew word "ruwach" is used. This is a feminine noun. Below are two of many feminine descriptions of God:
Old Testament feminine metaphor: "As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you; and you will be comforted over Jerusalem.” -Isaiah 66:13 {NIV}
New Testament feminine metaphor: "Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation—if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good." -1 Peter 2:2-3 {ESV}