Beyond Left and Right: A Kingdom Response

Why did God allow this to happen to me?

The question important to most adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse, Christian or otherwise. It may be asked following the abuse or it may take years to surface.

The question makes us uncomfortable because it feels like we are challenging God. Emotional feelings toward God including anger, disappointment, or perhaps doubt. The hardest part isn’t the question itself, but the answer because it will never be specific enough.

Survivors of childhood trauma, particularly sexual abuse, are made to feel like they did something wrong. Unfortunately, we embrace this thought with a vise-like grip, refusing to let go.

Personally, I went through my own mind battles of what I could have done to prevent my abuse.

Should I have stayed home? Should I have said no? Should I have told my grandma who was just one wall away from where my abuse was occurring?

I was a child. There was nothing I could have done, and, still, as an adult I look back on the time as if I had options I had not exercised.

I, like many other abuse survivors, played the game of self blame.

I'm suffering from pandemic brain.

Are you wondering what that is? Pandemic brain describes the change in our cognitive function due to the prolonged stress and anxiety of the pandemic. When the brain spends an extended amount of time under stress, it adjusts to protect itself.

This got me thinking about the trauma of childhood sexual abuse survivors, like myself, and the different levels of healing. Survivors are managing the impact of their childhood experience in addition to the fear, anxiety, isolation, depression, and brain fog of a pandemic. It seems like too much. I had to stop and remind myself of the tools I had as a Christian.

Everybody has or knows a love story. The love story in this article required an unusual assignment with timeless impact. What was this unusual assignment?

Why did God allow this to happen to me?

The question important to most adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse, Christian or otherwise. It may be asked following the abuse or it may take years to surface.

The question makes us uncomfortable because it feels like we are challenging God. Emotional feelings toward God including anger, disappointment, or perhaps doubt. The hardest part isn’t the question itself, but the answer because it will never be specific enough.

Survivors of childhood trauma, particularly sexual abuse, are made to feel like they did something wrong. Unfortunately, we embrace this thought with a vise-like grip, refusing to let go.

Personally, I went through my own mind battles of what I could have done to prevent my abuse.

Should I have stayed home? Should I have said no? Should I have told my grandma who was just one wall away from where my abuse was occurring?

I was a child. There was nothing I could have done, and, still, as an adult I look back on the time as if I had options I had not exercised.

I, like many other abuse survivors, played the game of self blame.

I'm suffering from pandemic brain.

Are you wondering what that is? Pandemic brain describes the change in our cognitive function due to the prolonged stress and anxiety of the pandemic. When the brain spends an extended amount of time under stress, it adjusts to protect itself.

This got me thinking about the trauma of childhood sexual abuse survivors, like myself, and the different levels of healing. Survivors are managing the impact of their childhood experience in addition to the fear, anxiety, isolation, depression, and brain fog of a pandemic. It seems like too much. I had to stop and remind myself of the tools I had as a Christian.

Something is missing from my life. Maybe you’ve said these words. Maybe you’ve heard someone say them. In either situation, the words sound familiar to us.

I’m not alone. We’ve all done it. Left one place and ended up in another with no recollection of how you got to the destination. You barely recall street signs or lights. You don’t remember passing familiar landmarks. Dazed and confused you ask, “How did I get here?”

It might be difficult to know what it looks like not to have God as your first love. This article includes a list of indicators that your priority of love may not be for God.

Everyone has a hole within it’s a longing for something to fill thing, to complete them. Where did this hole come from?.

Think back to your first love and focus on how it made you feel to love someone this way. Although, today you know you should not have given so much of yourself, recall that you did. Do you remember the feeling?