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Happy 30th Anniversary, My Love

Splsh4Ripls2 Comments

On this day, 30 years ago, we said “I do,” and the officiating bishop, who had known me much longer than Tim, presented us to our guests as, “Mr. And Mrs. Tim Harder.” We had just started to walk out, but stopped and, in sync, swung around in surprise. The bishop corrected himself, and everyone erupted in laughter.

And so began the adventures of a lifetime.

Tim and I are different as day and night. The following pics illustrate this well. In the first pic we are both smiling and normal. Well, he’s outdoing himself a little for the pic. But you get the idea. In the second we are both being silly. you will note that his silly is less obvious than mine. That’s been life from the start.

Thirty years later, how does a person sum up what it means to do life with someone like Tim? His kindness. His gentleness. His complete acceptance of who I am. So much of my life, outside of this relationship, I have been “too much, too loud, too outspoken, too rebellious, too religious, too liberal, too too much.” With him, I am accepted. I am enough. I am honoured. I am cherished. So, so cherished. I am embraced. I am completely loved and graciously supported.

The past 4.5 years have thrown things at us that have tested every part of who we are individually and as a couple; emotionally, physically and spiritually. But, if it has accomplished anything at all in us, relationally, it has solidified our love even more. When the concussion changed my personality, he leaned in and got to know the new me and my new needs, adjusting to all the changes. Though I welcomed him into every part of my life and heart before the accident, and we made decisions together, I was also fiercely independent by nature, with his blessing. Suddenly I felt lost and uncertain. Before, physical touch was a strong love language and I was very affectionate. He knew me so well that he opened his arms to welcome me in his embrace before I made a move toward him. Somehow he just knew. Suddenly, physical affection wasn’t even on my radar. It didn’t occur to me to hug or kiss him, or to welcome him home. I had to retrain myself, and consciously remind myself of the importance of affection. He stepped out of character — physical touch is not his love language; acts of service is — and helped me learn again, initiating affection for my sake. Where I instinctively spoke encouragement and sincere admiration, I became wordless. He did not let his ego rule or take it personal. He walked gently with me and awakened that part of who I was, never commenting that he noticed. As I processed with my therapist the ways the concussion and the accident had changed me, I realized that it had been a long time since I told him how much I value him. This part of me is awakening again. Before that professional help in processing, it got pretty hard before it got better.

The day I told him that I feel lost in our relationship, but didn’t know how to put into words what it was. I acknowledge how kind he was and how much I appreciate it, but that I feel like nothing is normal and we are so far apart. He assured me his love had not changed; that he loved me just the same, and is in it with me. That began the process of unravelling the losses. When finally I was able to piece together what was happening, he went to the doctor with me to see what we can do. Soon after this is when I got the therapist to help process the accident and the aftermath. As they helped me walk through it, he supported me and learned with me.

As the harm to my spine invaded every part of our marriage, he took on things I can no longer do. When the pain leaves me shivering, and the tension is unbearable, he gets lotion and works out the tension and the knots so I can sleep. Sometimes night after night, and in between. When I cannot move myself in bed because of pain, he moves me. When I cannot walk alone, he takes my arm and supports my shoulder. When I lost much of my vision and especially the peripheral, he warned me when there was a step or elevation change. When we are in a new space, he still does this because I can’t always see (or process) elevation changes or things (like walls) in my peripheral.

Tim is not perfect. But he is perfect for me. Life with him is more than I ever dreamed marriage could be. He rolls with the punches and always holds me so that the punch lands on him.

*****

Tim, my Love,
I am so grateful God brought you into my life. Today, I honour you. And I thank you publicly for loving me so well. Life is hard at the moment, with many limitations, many unexpected changes, losses and expenses. We are not celebrating 30 years the way we hoped and dreamed. Still, I would rather suffer and be with you, than to be pain free anywhere else in the world without you. There is no one I would rather do life with. And there is no one whose life I would rather live than ours.

We have us. We have a loving and beautiful family; our children and grandchildren, and our unofficially adopted children and grandchildren. That is more than many will ever have. More than pain-free living can offer. Sometimes I lose sight of that when pain is at its worst and it all feels too hard. But I always come home to that truth. My heart is yours. Always. And in all ways.

Thank you for being my safe place.

Thank you to all who celebrated our wedding day with us 30 years ago. A special thank you to Florence Sauder who stepped into a ‘mom’/wedding organizer’ role and coordinated most of the wedding for us. We couldn’t have done it without you. (My event planning skills had not yet been discovered). And to all who have walked with us and supported, counselled and challenged us on the way, helping us to be the best that we can be.

As always…
Love,
~ T ~

© Trudy Metzger 2024

JAMES’ STORY OF CHILDHOOD ABUSE AND RECOVERY

Splsh4Ripls

In this blog, I share the story James sent to me. He is from an entirely different culture than my upbringing, and what I generally share here; stories from within Anabaptist community. James, who served in the military, reached out via my blog to ask if I would share what he has experienced, and the abuse he has had to overcome. Abuse is in every culture, religion and country. None excluded. I share James’s story because it deserves to be told. And because abuse is not only ‘among us’ in the Anabaptist culture. To verify his identity the best I could, I found some articles online that tell parts of his story. (Read here: Mental Camauflage I especially like what he writes at the end. It will resonate with survivors of trauma who have been called crazy, bitter, holding on to the past, etc.)

Since it seems to be happening more frequently, that individuals send me their stories to read and share, I want to address this for others interested in sharing. I welcome your story. Stories of overcoming. Stories of struggle. Stories of the impact of the abuse, or the trauma after. Your stories are welcome here, as long as my blog is up and running. I cannot write much right now, due to my spine injuries, but am happy to give you that opportunity. The amount of detail you share is yours to decide. However, before I post, I do need to be able to validate your identity, ideally in the form of some kind of ID. That is true whether your story is anonymous or you choose to identify yourself. Since it seems to be happening more frequently, that individuals send me their stories to read and share, I want to address this for others interested in sharing. I welcome your story. Stories of overcoming. Stories of struggle. Stories of the impact of the abuse, or the trauma after. Your stories are welcome here, as long as my blog is up and running. I cannot write much right now, due to my spine injuries, but am happy to give you that opportunity. The amount of detail you share is yours to decide. However, before I post, I do need to be able to validate your identity, ideally in the form of some kind of ID. That information will be deleted upon validation. That is true whether your story is anonymous or you choose to identify yourself. Everyone who suffers abuse should have a safe place to tell their story. I offer that place.

It is a terrible thing when a child has to choose between being with their best friend, and being abused, or give up their best friend. At an age where there is little to no understanding of what that abuse really is, and there is only the anxiety and fear — or other feelings — telling the child something is wrong, options aren’t even on the table. Some children will withdraw from their friends, others look back years later and see what it all really was. This is the story James shares with us.

*****

I was born in a beautiful little town in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The first nine years of my life were wonderful. However, in beginning in 1967, my childhood was abruptly changed forever.

Often, when I would go to play at my best friend’s house, his older brother would be home hiding in the shadows waiting for his opportunity to abuse me. I remember being there and hearing a door locking, knowing I was in trouble. I would get this sinking feeling in my gut, dreading what was in store for me. My friend would hold me down while his brother attacked me. 

At the time, I did not know if my friend’s brother held power over him too, forcing him to cooperate, or whether my friend willingly participated. All I knew was that it was wrong, and it made me feel sick. Afterwards, I would run home to shower, desperate to wash off this filthy feeling of utter guilt and shame. 

Experiencing this abuse from him for nearly three years — and wondering why my friend did not come to my defense and stop the abuse — made an impact on me and my mental health. Decades later, I think back, wondering how I could possibly have considered this boy to be my best friend. 

Sexual abuse is a kind of trauma that carries intense feelings of shame and fear. I remember that I just wanted to hide. 

My mental health deteriorated; the shame was eating me away inside. I felt obligated to keep this secret — to hide this terrible knowledge from everyone around me. The ever-present shame convinced me that I deserved to suffer from the hurt I felt. 

Looking back, I now know that it wasn’t even my shame to carry. What happened wasn’t my fault. But reaching this conclusion came from a long recovery process. My healing took time.

Needless to say, I never brought charges against my friend’s brother.  At one point I tried to find him in order to confront him but found it too painful to continue on that journey.  I never told my parents nor my children.  It took me over 50 years to disclose that I had been sexually abused as a child due to the mis-founded shame and guilt I carried.  By the time I did, I was just about non-functional and it was obvious that I needed proper medication and professional counseling. It was hard, and it hurt, but it’s what I needed to do — get it out in the open. It affected me so much emotionally. As time went by this trauma kept getting worse.  In order to get better I needed to seek help.  My local doctor referred me to what is now my mental health team at the UK’s National Health Service (NHS).  My problem had been building up for so many years.  Once I was diagnosed with Complex PTSD (CPTSD) and was taking the proper medication and had one-on-one appointments with my assigned psychologist I was able to open up and tell my experience of being abused as a child. 

Finally talking about it forced me to face and deal with the long-term effects of the mental trauma caused by being abused as a child. Time and help from the right people brought healing.  I am no longer at the mercy of this mental trauma and am now able to identify what happened and understand that none of this was of my own doing. I can see how I carried this trauma into adulthood, and I can identify with others who have been through similar experiences. 

Trauma needs to be dealt with, and we must prioritize our mental health for healing to begin. If you have been through childhood abuse of any kind, please, please, please seek help.  If I can go through that long, dark tunnel and reach the other side, so can you. It can make all the difference in your life.  It did mine!

My deepest desire for anyone on their healing journey — remember, you are worth it!

*****

James has done some hard healing work. Healing he was not able to do without help from professionals. Which leads me to address the common belief among Christians that “All you need is God. All you need is to trust more. All you need is to repent. Professionals will lead you astray… or they will fill your head with anti-God nonsense.” In reality, good professionals in therapy and counseling are trained NOT to do these things, the same way a heart surgeon wouldn’t go poking around the pancreas mid surgery. And I have yet to see the Christian community (broadly) tell someone fighting cancer that they should not speak to a professional. Or looking at someone having a heart attack and telling them to read their bible and pray. God is part of the healing, and He uses avenues such as professionals and medication for the mind, just as he does for heart patients and other illnesses.

Take a bit of time to research how meds work, because there’s a lot of overlap in their function, yet somehow we demonize some and embrace others. Or embrace them for one thing, but when treating the mind would demonize them. Metoprolol, for example, is a beta blocker used for heart patients. It also affects the mind and is used for stage fright and decreases anxiety, for some.. Gapapentin is used to treat seizures and nerve pain. It can also trigger severe psychological issues, or escalate pre-existing ones. The list goes on. It is either all around demonic to seek medical help and medication, or it is not demonic.

Why are we ok with professional help in every crisis except mental health? Why are so many Christians, at least in our Conservative Anabaptist community, on medications to treat depression but still advised not to get counseling. It is a mystery to me. Because I know first hand the incredible harm that medications can do to the body, having had two heart attacks due to meds. Some doctors won’t prescribe antidepressants *unless the person is also getting counseling/therapy, because both are needed. It is not that medication is evil, or that therapy is the sole solution, or that therapy is evil. It is about working with professionals to do their part, finding support within the respective community — whether Conservative Anabaptist or other community we find ourselves part of — and being treated with kindness and respect.

There are no easy answers. For the unwell individual, there is real and hard struggle. There is fear. There is anxiety. There is hopelessness. There is a sometimes a desperate cry for an end to come. (And before you judge too wildly, go read your bible; 1 Kings 19, specifically, in which Elijah asks God to kill him. Frankly, the prophets were a bunch of weeping depressed spokesmen for God).

From the community, there are a variety of responses. There is judgement. There is easy answers. There is the “God told me… and God showed me…” solutions, that sometimes include ‘enlightened’ Christians telling the depressed or struggling person what triggered the depression, such as repressed memories of abuse or Satanic Ritual Abuse and the like. The unwell mind then sometimes adopts that ‘revelation from God’ as their ‘reality’, creating a whole new set of problems. Or there is throwing more information at a fragile mind than what they can handle, escalating the unwellness.

Other times there is kindness. There is compassion. There is respect. There is support. There is giving space. There is love. These support healing. I can’t imagine anything worse than being in a fragile state and then being further pressured and beaten down, as some are. And I can’t imagine anything more healing than acknowledgement that the mind — the human brain — is part of the human body, subject to a fallen world, while supporting the journey to healing, whatever it takes. And, let me assure you, it often takes more than a few bible verses and a prayer. I have lived long enough, experienced enough, worked with enough trauma survivors to know that this mentality does more harm than good.

The best gift you can give is support. Not feeling sorry for. Not trying to fix. But honouring the individual and their journey, while supporting their path to healing, without easy answers, even if their healing looks different than yours.

As always…
Love,
~ T ~

© Trudy Metzger 2024

Sherry Showalter’s story of sexual, emotional and spiritual trauma and healing

Splsh4Ripls3 Comments

Introduction:
The following story was sent to me via Messenger, from the author, whom I had never heard of before. She asked if I might share her story, so I asked if she wanted me to share it on my blog. That’s how this post came to be.

As you read her story, parts that bring her comfort may be triggering for you. .

Over the years, victims have shared with me how hard it is to sit in church — sometimes the very building in which they were sexually abused — and listen to ‘the right words’ when they were treated so harshly. Their suffering shamed and disregarded, while their abuser was forgiven and coddled, accepted as godly, and embraced where they were rejected. Some find comfort in church again. Some never do. Both are ok. There are other ways to find fellowship without a designated building.

Many have also shared how triggering it is to hear that God will use our trauma for good. This is particularly traumatic if you are taught that the horrible things that happen to you are somehow ‘God’s will.’ What kind of god ‘wills’ for children to be raped and abused … and then ‘uses it for good’? And what kind of ‘church’ promotes this warped theology?

Children being raped is not the will of any God I would trust. These horrific acts are not his will, nor is the harm survivors suffer. They never were His will. They never will be. It is called ‘spiritual bypassing’ to avoid contending with hard reality and try to explain away harm by spiritualizing trauma and tragedy.

God’s will was that we run around naked in a garden, oblivious to all but relationship and beauty. That was God’s will. He didn’t make evil, death and trauma ‘his will’, just because that’s where we find ourselves. He redeems. He restores. But He doesn’t bring sexual abuse and violence into our lives and call it His will.

His will, to be true to His nature as shown in the bible, must always be redemption, restoration, healing and wholeness. Not the hell of life. That suffering is the tragic aftermath of human sin. And human sin never is God’s will, therefore nor is the aftermath of it. That, or He is not God at all. He cannot be both the Redeemer *and* the one whose will is that we suffer at the hands of sin..

As you read Sherry’s story, remember that ‘bringing good from evil’ doesn’t mean, ever, that the evil was designed by God or ‘God’s will.’ And if you can’t step foot in church because of the trauma and abuse you have suffered, I reckon Jesus will sit with you outside of that building. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

It wasn’t.

~ Trudy ~

*****

⚠️ TRIGGER WARNING ⚠️ sexual and spiritual abuse.

I feel like it is time to share a little piece of my story and testimony.

First, I want to say the following:

1) I want to state, that not all plain conservative churches respond to sexual abuse in the way mine was handled. I have since been a part of a conservative group that were NOTHING like how I grew up.

2) This is NOT a poor me, pity me post. This is, however, a post of how God can take the most awful things done to us by those who call themselves Christians, and use it for good. It is about God taking the ugly, the darkness and the lies I’ve been told and replacing it with His Wholeness, His Righteousness and His Truth.

I believe it was the year of 2008.

I was living in the basement of a couple from church. Over time, I came to trust them and open up to them. They gave me a lot of sound biblical advice. They cared. One night I decided it was time I tell them that I had been sexually assaulted. They had promised that they wouldn’t tell anyone. “Well, at least not right now,” he said. I went to bed that night feeling lighter in heart and spirit than I had in a long time. I no longer carried my shame and pain alone. I thought I would finally be able to heal from the trauma. Maybe the future would be okay to face after all. Little did I know the pain, the betrayal and the heart crushing trauma that lay ahead.

The next morning, I was informed, at the breakfast table, that one of the ministers and his wife were coming over any minute to talk to me. I asked him, “you didn’t tell them what I shared did you?” Yes, he said, I did. I felt my heart leave my chest and drop to my stomach with a gut wrenching nausea. I wasn’t ready to talk to anyone else about it yet! I used up all the courage I had the night before! They arrived and I had to talk about something I wasn’t ready to share with anyone else at that point. As we talked, I was informed that I would need to make a confession in church because it had happened even after I was a member of the church! I was horrified and tried to tell them it wasn’t my fault, I didn’t want it! I plead with them while tears streamed down my face and my whole body shook from the inside out. It didn’t change their minds. They said, by confessing it to the whole church I would find healing and forgiveness.

On the night that the church gathered, I sat there and made a decision. I would wall off another piece of my heart. I would bury it where not even God could find it. Anger boiled inside me as my trauma, shame and ugliness was told to the whole church. I was re-traumatized that night. I felt assaulted all over again in front of the whole church. I felt even dirtier and more shame than before. I walked to the back of the church where I stood as each member came and shook my hand. Most of the members said, “we forgive you.” A few said nothing at all. 5 ladies whispered in my ear, as they pulled me in to embrace me, “I am so sorry this happened to you, or you didn’t deserve this.” (Those 5 ladies will forever have a place in my heart ❤️) But to each person who said “we forgive you” I wanted to punch them and scream at them, “THIS WASNT MY FAULT!” By them saying, we forgive you, they were telling me that it was my fault, that I had some dirty sin that needed to be forgiven! (Or, that is what it felt to me they were saying)

Something happened to me that night that changed me in ways they will never know. Only after much counseling have I been able to heal and forgive them for the pain, trauma, and the spiritual abuse they caused me. After many years I am finally at a place of wholeness enough to share.

A few people who have heard my story have asked, “how are you even still a Christian and go to chruch?” I answer them with a question, “How can I not?” How can I not be a Christian and worship God in a church house? It wasn’t Jesus who failed me or hurt me, it was people.”

Jesus found that piece of my heart that I buried away. He nurtured it, He held it and when I finally let Him, He healed it. He put it back in place. My heart is whole, but it has many scars on it and that is okay, because you want to know something? Jesus has scars too and He bears those scars for me and for you.

To anyone who has experienced this trauma and pain, or any other, you are not alone. I care about your pain. I understand if and why you may not have the courage to set foot in a church right now. And that is okay. Your heart needs time and space to process and heal. I know God will bring to you healing from the darkest of darkness in your heart. One day you will be able to go back to church and realize that it’s okay to be there, it doesn’t hurt anymore because of what Jesus will do in your life.

‭‭Philippians‬ ‭1:6‬ ‭TPT‬‬

I pray with great faith for you, because I’m fully convinced that the One who began this gracious work in you will faithfully continue the process of maturing you until the unveiling of our Lord Jesus Christ.

– Sherry Showarlter –
Bio: Sherry is married with a son who is a miracle. She loves singing, animals, being a mom, gardening, and making food for other people.

****

If you find yourself in a state of trauma and suffering as a result of sexual, spiritual or other abuse, there is support available. Finding a trauma informed counsellor who understands the harm abuse does, and helps you move beyond the harm to healing, is a powerful gift. I’ve heard horror stories of ‘counsellors’ — some licensed, some not — who have escalated the harm through ignorance, or who have no clue how to invite survivors to healing. If you have a counsellor and you are still stuck in the same place 6 months, 1 year, 2 years or — as in one case — almost 20 years later, I might suggest finding a different counsellor. If they urge you not to report or speak of the abuse, run for the hills. If they do not support you in what *you* need for healing, run for the hills. There are sincere and effective counsellors. Don’t give up until you find one, if that is what you need.

Above all, I wish you healing and hope. Life is hard enough with hope, to walk through this suffering with no hope is harder.

As always….

Love,
~ T ~

© Trudy Metzger 2024