Afraid and Confused about God Community Group
This group is for those who: (1.) may be people like me, who have spent time seeking God through involvement in church and religion, and/or personal study and for some reason still find themselves confused and hurting, (2.) those who think they may be in a cult/or those coming out of a cult and are in need of support without the fear of being controlled and manipulated,...
I was a child who loved God, who loved Sunday School and Church, who tried my hardest to use His teachings for my life, and the lives of others. Then, even as I had my child's trust in God, this God stood motionless and watched as me a my little sister were violently abused by our mother, and violently, horribly malevolently sexually abused by our father. This went on for years.
As the years passed, I prayed without ceasing for the humiliation, pain and torture to stop. I prayed to God to stop it. I prayed unceasingly, as I and my little sister lived in terror in our nightmarish lives that God refused to heal. Even as I chronologically became an adult, I stayed faithful in my actions and faith, but the terror continued. I tried to flee my biological home, but I couldn't leave my little sister.
When my sister left home, I married a wonderful Christian young man who I had become friends with for years before we married. After the third year of marriage he became gradually more brutish and abusive. After we had three beautiful dear children, he began to groom my daughter for the same abuse as my father did me. After more investigation, I discovered that sexual abuse and exploitation of little children flourished on both sides of his family. When I told him to stop all bedroom issues with my daughter he actually said: "This is the only way I can have a relationship with her."
It was true, he had abandoned his family for another family 17 years before. Again I had prayed and prayed without ceasing for God to heal our marriage. Still, my husband stood up in front of the the church as an elder, and as music director, with me in service for God - with crazy terrified chaos going on at the home I kept praying for. I went to a Christian counselor for help, and then he sexually attacked me, leaving me with serious PTSD.
I got the children and myself far away from my husband and his family, and him on supervised visitation only, which I never allowed to happen until the youngest child was 12, and choosing for himself. I was divorced, a single mother of 3 children, suffering from PTSD, and still I prayed for God's help. Even after my youngest child left home, while thanking me for all my hard and good work, my home was forclosed on, even after I had kept current on all my payments. I went through a major illness, and PTSD homeless and alone.
After the children grew up and left for their own lives, I began praying for a loving, kind husband, and a loving, healthy relationship. I prayed for years and decades. This has NOT happened.
Now I am very old, and I live in a rented room with a landlady who is getting worse and worse with aging issues. Now she has very weird boyfriends coming and going. I don't feel safe even now. I have prayed for a healthy home of my own for years. Still, no home.
My life has been one punctuated with terror, nightmarish existence, heartbreak, and now chronic aloneness. I never heard from God.
I was a student of the Bible, I committed much of it to heart. The scriptures didn't work for me, even though I claimed them. All I wanted from God, Jesus too, was the same protection I saw other girls and then women got. All I wanted was a whole, healthy marriage. Today, I see older couples walking hand in hand in the neighborhood. I see them standing on the steps of their own secure home, together welcoming grandchildren.
I still believe in God. I still have faith the He exists. I still believe He can work a miracle in my life. Yet now, when I remember the verse: "Cast your care upon HIm, for He careth for you", or any other of the Biblical verses that explain God's love and loyalty, I can only say "Yeah, right".
I feel alone and abandoned. Why did God abandon my and my little sister? For me, it is as good as if God committed the molestations, as He chose to stand by and just let it happen, as two little girls had their lives ruined. Why?
As the years passed, I prayed without ceasing for the humiliation, pain and torture to stop. I prayed to God to stop it. I prayed unceasingly, as I and my little sister lived in terror in our nightmarish lives that God refused to heal. Even as I chronologically became an adult, I stayed faithful in my actions and faith, but the terror continued. I tried to flee my biological home, but I couldn't leave my little sister.
When my sister left home, I married a wonderful Christian young man who I had become friends with for years before we married. After the third year of marriage he became gradually more brutish and abusive. After we had three beautiful dear children, he began to groom my daughter for the same abuse as my father did me. After more investigation, I discovered that sexual abuse and exploitation of little children flourished on both sides of his family. When I told him to stop all bedroom issues with my daughter he actually said: "This is the only way I can have a relationship with her."
It was true, he had abandoned his family for another family 17 years before. Again I had prayed and prayed without ceasing for God to heal our marriage. Still, my husband stood up in front of the the church as an elder, and as music director, with me in service for God - with crazy terrified chaos going on at the home I kept praying for. I went to a Christian counselor for help, and then he sexually attacked me, leaving me with serious PTSD.
I got the children and myself far away from my husband and his family, and him on supervised visitation only, which I never allowed to happen until the youngest child was 12, and choosing for himself. I was divorced, a single mother of 3 children, suffering from PTSD, and still I prayed for God's help. Even after my youngest child left home, while thanking me for all my hard and good work, my home was forclosed on, even after I had kept current on all my payments. I went through a major illness, and PTSD homeless and alone.
After the children grew up and left for their own lives, I began praying for a loving, kind husband, and a loving, healthy relationship. I prayed for years and decades. This has NOT happened.
Now I am very old, and I live in a rented room with a landlady who is getting worse and worse with aging issues. Now she has very weird boyfriends coming and going. I don't feel safe even now. I have prayed for a healthy home of my own for years. Still, no home.
My life has been one punctuated with terror, nightmarish existence, heartbreak, and now chronic aloneness. I never heard from God.
I was a student of the Bible, I committed much of it to heart. The scriptures didn't work for me, even though I claimed them. All I wanted from God, Jesus too, was the same protection I saw other girls and then women got. All I wanted was a whole, healthy marriage. Today, I see older couples walking hand in hand in the neighborhood. I see them standing on the steps of their own secure home, together welcoming grandchildren.
I still believe in God. I still have faith the He exists. I still believe He can work a miracle in my life. Yet now, when I remember the verse: "Cast your care upon HIm, for He careth for you", or any other of the Biblical verses that explain God's love and loyalty, I can only say "Yeah, right".
I feel alone and abandoned. Why did God abandon my and my little sister? For me, it is as good as if God committed the molestations, as He chose to stand by and just let it happen, as two little girls had their lives ruined. Why?
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I have 3 kids. 24. 17. 15. My 17 yr old has become super defiant. He and his 15 yr old sister have on their own decision stopped going to their dads because he and his household is so toxic.My 15 yr old and myself feel like we have to tip toe around my son who is 17. And physically towers over us and out weighs us. He has become emotionally abusive and on the verge of becoming physically...
I'm so sorry to hear about these things that have been done to you and how disappointed you feel with God. Over the years I've seen situations in my life and the lives of others that cause me to ask why God doesn't step in and strike somebody down, like He used to in the Old Testament.
Reading your post I can understand why you'd be as angry as is clearly coming through.
I do know this, God's Word is clear about how we are supposed to treat each other. Just because God did not strike your abusers down, does not mean He wanted them to mistreat you. Those people chose to disobey God, for what ever reason they chose that. It was wrong! And, God says so!
Over the years I've come to the conclusion that God doesn't step in because maybe the way God works these days is (mostly) through people. People who say, "hey, I've heard the way you talk to your wife, that's not right", or "you can't treat your daughter like that".
I hear that you're saying that you personally aren't (and weren't) in rebellion against God, and yet still you were harmed by other people's sin. And, I know that the fact that all of Creation groans under the weight of sin, while true, won't help how hurt you feel. And the neat and tidy "Footsteps" poem that people are so eager to cite - about how when we look back on our difficult times in life and see only one set of footprints, and wonder where God was, that those were His footprints carrying us through it - while maybe even technically true, doesn't help explain why He didn't prevent it. And even if it did, it wouldn't take the hurt away.
Even in the Old Testament, there are a few times where one person suffered because others sinned. (For example when the children of Israel, in Judah, went into captivity after they had turned from their parents' and grandparents' sins and we're themselves (many of them anyway) following God.)
I always imagine when someone is hurt and God doesn't appear to have intervened that it must take what can only be described as a holy amount of self-control for Him to resist swift, severe, and justified punishment of the abuser; but the Bible is clear that God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, and is truly wanting all to come to repentance. But that does not answer why God doesn't intervene in some more muted way, to stop the abuse without killing the abuser. The only reason I have for that is that God gave humans free-will and will not rescind His gift. (In the same way that he does not rescind His gift of salvation, or spiritual gifts.) One day we all will be held accountable for how we use it.
Ok. You asked why, but I realize that this may not be a fully theologically correct answer. It is however my best attempt at it.
Also, I realize that even if this is right, it still doesn't take away the pain, disappointment, PTSD, and other results of your mistreatment. At this point I need to state that I'm making the assumption that is was your husband who attacked you when you were in therapy (and not the counselor, I was confused for some reason). Normally, I would recommend someone who had experienced so much trauma see a Christian counselor, and if you found it useful before perhaps going back could provide some relief to the after effects of abuse that you experience.
I saw that you hadn't posted in months and wasn't sure whether to respond, but I just found out about this group and wanted you to know that people do care. (So does God)
Wishing you peace and healing
Beryl