How to Rise Above Abuse (Counseling Through the Bible Series) (35 page)

“When the sentence for a crime is not quickly carried out,
the hearts of the people are filled with schemes to do wrong”

(E
CCLESIASTES
8:11).

Probably the most frequently and fervently asked question by victims of abuse is this:

Where Are You, God?

Why do You hide in times of trouble?
Why do You let the godless rule?
Victims are ambushed, crushed, and downtrodden.
Wicked men care not. They’re prideful and cruel
and say to themselves,
“God has forgotten! He won’t see.”
I feel You are absent…that You never see.
Yet You encourage and lift the afflicted,
breaking the strong arm of evil siege.
Since You do hear the cry of the wounded,
cradling my heart in angel’s wings,
You help me gaze upon heaven’s glory.
You, O God, are my Father, my King!

—
BASED ON PSALM 10

God is a God of love, and He created us for love relationships. He hates violence, and He takes up the cause of victims who fall prey to violent words and deeds. He will execute justice one day on behalf of all victims. And woe to those who will face the judgment of God, who sees all and knows all! Nothing is hidden from Him.

“Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight.
Everything is uncovered and laid bare
before the eyes of him to whom we must give account”

(H
EBREWS
4:13).

Be assured…

•
God hears the cry of the battered and abused. “You hear, O L
ORD
, the desire of the afflicted; you encourage them, and you listen to their cry” (Psalm 10:17).

•
God holds the victim of abuse in the palm of His hand. “Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand” (Isaiah 41:10).

•
God will rescue the victim of abuse and violence. “He will rescue them from oppression and violence, for precious is their blood in His sight” (Psalm 72:14).

•
God confirms the victim’s value and worth. “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows” (Luke 12:6-7).

•
God brings good out of the evil deeds of others. “The L
ORD
works out everything for his own ends—even the wicked for a day of disaster” (Proverbs 16:4).

From Victim to Victor: The Stormie Omartian Story

In the second year of our young ministry, I had the privilege of interviewing a lovely guest—one who had experienced the extraordinary freedom of moving from hopelessness to genuine hope for her heart.

Her story begins as a little girl who spent much of her early life locked in a little closet under a stairway—a closet where the family laundry was stored. In that small space Stormie had to sit cramped and cross-legged on a large pile of soiled clothes overflowing from a laundry basket. Musty smells, darkness, and the sounds of mice scampering around were all a regular part of Stormie’s daytime world, which was spent largely in that closet.

Stormie never knew what trigger would prompt her mother to banish her to the bleak prison of fearful isolation. On this particular day she had simply asked for a glass of water. “Get in the closet until I can stand to see your face!” her mother yelled with disdain.
⁹
At least Stormie knew she would be released in the evening when her father returned from work, for her mother kept Stormie’s closet captivity a complete secret from him.

Stormie always envisioned her father one day “coming to her rescue”—sweeping her up and forever freeing her from her mother’s verbal, emotional, and physical abuse. But he never came. Always “dead tired”—as he described it—from another hard day’s work, he was blind to the disturbing behavior in his own home that resulted in horrific abuse of his little girl.
¹⁰

Compounding Stormie’s desperate situation was the family’s secluded living environment—a Wyoming farm 20 miles from the closest town. There were no neighbors nearby and no playmates available to help Stormie build her social skills. Long-term isolation and limited social interaction led to speech impediments and relationship difficulties that, later in life, required major help for Stormie to overcome.
¹¹

The need to attend school eventually freed Stormie from her small, dark prison, but it didn’t stop her mother’s verbal, emotional, and physical abuse. One day after returning home from school, Stormie’s mother grabbed her by the hair, slammed her against a door, and slapped her wildly as she screamed: “You murderer! You murderer!
You’ve killed an innocent child! I hope you’re happy with yourself, you [expletive]!”

What could possibly have triggered such an outburst? A friend’s mother had miscarried a baby, and for some reason Stormie’s mother blamed it on her. A week earlier, Stormie had stayed overnight at her friend’s house and the next day, the friend’s mom drove Stormie home. Realize that the drive home happened a week before the miscarriage. What bizarre reasoning for such horrid brutality!
¹²

That terrifying incident occurred during Stormie’s last year of junior high. She was preparing to accept full responsibility for what had happened when her friend assured her that the miscarriage was in no way her fault. From that day forward, Stormie was engulfed with hatred toward her mother.

Stormie’s mother continually told Stormie she was crazy. The painful environment at home prompted so much anxiety, fear, and self-loathing that one day, at age 14, Stormie decided to swallow pills from a bathroom medicine cabinet in an attempt to permanently end her agony. To this day, Stormie remembers what was going through her mind. “My intention was to die…not to attract attention.”
¹³

Ironically, Stormie’s mother rescued her from the overdose—forcing her to throw up—but never sought help for her emotionally distraught daughter. Stormie’s suicide attempt was never again discussed.

In the years that followed, alcohol, drugs, the occult, and promiscuous relationships provided temporary diversions from her emotional pain, but despair and depression were ever-present. Two unplanned pregnancies ending with abortions only compounded Stormie’s guilt and heartache.
¹⁴
Desperation for affection and a deathly fear of being alone set Stormie up for an inability to say no to wrong relationships.

Although Stormie achieved considerable success as an actress, model, and singer, the emotional fallout from the abuse she suffered as a child still hung like a dark storm cloud over her life.

When Stormie was 28 years old, she accepted Christ as her Savior. Two years later, she married Christian singer and songwriter Michael Omartian at their Los Angeles-area church. Though sincere and steadily growing in her faith, Stormie knew something was still
terribly wrong. Depression, panic attacks, and even thoughts of suicide continued to torment her.

Counselors at Stormie’s church suggested they attack the problem through prayer and fasting. She made a list of her every known sin. Then on an appointed day, Stormie specifically renounced each one from her long list. Her prayer partners then addressed spirits of futility, despair, fear, rejection, suicide, and torment. “I was not demon-possessed,” she said, “but these spirits had oppressed me at points where I had given them place through my sins of unforgiveness and disobedience to God.”
¹⁵

“The next morning I awoke without any feelings of depression whatever—no thoughts of suicide, no heaviness in my chest, no fearful anticipation of the future…Day after day it was the same. I never again experienced those feelings, nor the paralysis that accompanied them. I had gone into that counseling office knowing Jesus as Savior, but I came out knowing Him also as my Deliverer.”
¹⁶

In 1976, Stormie and Michael joyfully welcomed their first child into the world—Christopher Scott. “I will never be like my mother,” she assured herself confidently upon his arrival. “My child will have the best care I can give him.”
¹⁷

Christopher’s relentless crying, however, soon triggered powerful emotions Stormie could hardly comprehend. “The frustration built until I finally snapped,” she recalls. “I slapped my baby on the back, the shoulder and the head…I was out of control.”
¹⁸

To her horror, God begin to reveal her own latent abusive tendencies. “It was shocking to discover that I had all the potential in me to be an abuser. It was built in me from childhood. I had seen that violent, out-of-control behavior before—in my mother. I knew it wasn’t my child I hated. It was
me
. And now I also saw that it wasn’t
me
that my mother hated; it was herself.”
¹⁹

Unlike her earlier deliverance, which was immediate, Stormie’s deliverance from child-abusing tendencies was “long and slow”—a gradual process of recovery as God gently and lovingly peeled back layer after layer of pain and wrong thinking.

Through the years since her conversion, God continued to faithfully heal the many wounds in Stormie’s life. But one wound remained painfully raw—her strained relationship with her mother. Stormie
begged God for a redeemed mother-daughter bond, and He assured her that He would provide—through the birth of a daughter! Contemplating a second pregnancy at nearly 40 years of age frightened Stormie, but she did, indeed, conceive.

“From the moment of Amanda’s birth, the healing began. Just like an open wound heals slowly day by day, I felt a wound in my emotions, in my heart somewhere, begin to heal. Every day with Amanda brought more wholeness and more fulfillment.”
²⁰

Through it all, Stormie says, “I learned about the power of prayer… and the transformation that takes place when it becomes our priority. I learned that the more I obeyed God, the more I changed.

“In fact, God changed me and my life so much over the years that today I hardly recognize myself from the person I used to be. And the best part is…I know that what He did in me, He can do in anyone.”
²¹

Stormie Omartian, one of America’s most beloved authors with well over 13 million books sold,
²²
was transformed from a cowering
victim
to a confident
voice
now heard around the world—a compassionate, compelling voice that communicates the help and healing of Jesus to all who need hope. And who doesn’t need hope!

They were a nation of victims brutalized by the insecurities of a powerful leader and empire. The Israelite population exploded in the land of Egypt, and a new Egyptian king feared the people would make a formidable alliance with his country’s enemies. Proposing to “deal shrewdly with them” (Exodus 1:10), he subjected the entire nation to slavery, establishing taskmasters “over them to oppress them with forced labor…and worked them ruthlessly. They made their lives bitter with hard labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their hard labor the Egyptians used them ruthlessly” (verses 11-14).

At the heart of a victim’s wounded emotions is the feeling of powerlessness, a feeling that one is unable to make healthy choices in circumstances and relationships. Left with a damaged sense of self-worth, unhealed victims of abuse develop unhealthy beliefs and behaviors. And because of a past lack
of control, some victims have a hidden fear of being controlled in the present. Therefore, they themselves may become overcontrolling.

Other victims resign themselves to not being in control and have a hidden fear of not being controlled. Therefore, they may become codependent. Both types of unhealthy fear and responses can produce negative spiritual and physical side effects because of the victims’ unresolved emotional difficulties. The cry of a victim’s heart is often…

“be merciful to me, L
ORD
, for I am faint;
O L
ORD
, heal me, for my bones are in agony”

(P
SALM
6:2).

False guilt brings death of the soul. Victimizers leave their innocent victims with abiding feelings of rejection and personal defectiveness. The constant fear that their “stains” will be exposed causes victims to develop destructive ways of relating to others. These self-protective patterns of behavior are pitfalls to healthy adult relationships and decrease the ability to know God intimately, as explained by righteous Job in the Bible:

“If I am guilty—woe to me!
Even if I am innocent, I cannot lift my head,
for I am full of shame and drowned in my affliction”

(J
OB
10:15).