Testimony Part III

This is part three of my testimony.  Parts I and II can be viewed below.

Wow, there is so much to say, and so much to pass over!  I pray once again, as I relay former events that there is, well, a point.  My story is just a story without the grace of God and His powerful salvation, both as I look back, and also reaching forward into all eternity.  Jesus makes every life worth living.  I can say that with all conviction, and pray that my readers will look inward and see how great a salvation He truly offers.  If my humbled life was lived for this moment in time - to point even one wounded person toward the Father, then I do not regret a day of it.

Jesus said, "I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." John 16:33

We are never promised that we will avoid trouble in this life, but knowing that He has overcome the world had changed my entire perspective!

Time alone at my dad's was tough, but the day finally came when my father told me I would be moving in with Gram and Grampy.  Just as when my stepmother moved out, I could show no joy to him over this.  I had learned my lesson before.  When Lisa was still with us, Dad told us one day that we would be moving to Meredith and Paul's home "until we were 18".  Paul was Gram and Grampy's son, and Meredith - well, Meredith had been a part of us since the day we moved into The Home years ago.  I'm not even sure how old I was then, but I do remember repeatedly asking Dad, "Until we're 18?"  I couldn't believe my ears!  He had let us visit since we began living with him, but now we really never had to go back!  We could be with people we loved so much, and who loved us, too!  We would finally be a part of an honest-to-goodness family for the first time in our lives!

We weren't there long.  Dad's birthday came and went, and I didn't send him a card.  Lisa did.  I saw her making it, but I just wanted him to be a character in some bad dream I had finally awakened from.  It never occurred to me that I should wish him a happy birthday.  Suddenly, he swooped down into our new, wonderful family and snatched us away in all his rage and anger.  I hated myself for years for breaking up our family.  The worst part was, we never spoke of it.  Lisa and I whispered to each other to cry in our pillows on the way home so Dad wouldn't get more mad at us for crying. And so we once again lived out our isolated existence, with the memory of true love, a real mom and dad, and our secret desires unfulfilled..

Now, here was Dad again telling me I had to move out.  I think I was eleven, and I moved into my haven of love once again.  Gram and Grampy had been called "Mr. and Mrs. Beal" by me until that time.  One day, Grampy took me aside and asked me if I would like to call them Grammy and Grampy, like their grandchildren.  I eagerly said YES, and ran and told some of their grandchildren.  The secret joy of belonging remained in my heart, even as the kids told me, "You can call them that, but you're not really their grandchild."  I don't think kids ever really know how much they can hurt with their words.  But now here I was -  part of family holidays, get-togethers and their grandkids became my best friends and playmates.  When we see each other now, we often talk of those days, with all the goofy and ridiculous circumstances we found ourselves in.  I'm always so thankful to have had them in my life.  The memories are wonderful!

Life was filled with school, friends, sweet slumber, and growing pains.  I would go downstairs to Grampy's bookstore and listen to Christian kids' albums on the record player, and listen to Grampy talk about the Lord with his customers. In the evenings, the kids and I would play hide-and -seek or softball.  I spent time in my room again - by choice.  I was a voracious reader, and read everything I could get my hands on.  Slowly, I was turning into a young woman, with my body changing faster than my years.  I went to summer camp at the age of twelve, and everyone thought I was a counselor.  I looked more like sixteen or seventeen then.

I even got to see my mother for the second or third time in my entire childhood.  Lisa and Robyn had each gone to live with her eventually, and she came to New England to give a presentation for her job.  She brought me with her, and I got to know her a little with Lisa right there.  My father had previously said so many frightening things to me about her, that I got hives the one time she visited me at his home.  He told me she would try to kidnap me, so I was always fearful whenever I was out alone.  Now, seeing her as something less than a monster for the first time, and with much encouragement from Lisa, I agreed to give her a chance.  My mother flew back to Virginia, and Lisa and I came back to Gram and Grampy's home until Lisa had to leave.

I guess my fahter began to stew about me having that visit with my mother, and he arrived one night with a State Trooper, telling me to get my things and that we were leaving that night to go live in New York. Somehow I was able, with Grampy supporting me, to tell my father I didn't want to go with him.  It was the first of only two times I would ever stand up to him in my life.  Dad called me a pig, and Grampy jumped up from his chair to stand toe-to-toe with him, telling him I was a girl, not a barnyard animal.  Dear, peaceful Grampy.  My hero.  The trooper talked Dad into leaving that night, with the promise that he could go to the courts to get an order for Grampy to release me the next day.  Lisa and I went to bed, and I listened to her soft breathing after I cried myself to sleep.  I was so afraid. My faint heart just cried out, "Not again.  Oh, please, not again!"

The next morning, a wonderful lady from our church came to pick me up to swim at her house.  Her son was there.  I thought he was the cutest boy in the world.  He was three years older than me, and was somehow shy, yet "cool".  I would find out years later that she had been hiding me at her house so my dad wouldn't find me as my mother hopped on a plane to come get me.   When I got home, I was told my mother was taking me with her to live in Virginia.  Lisa was there, so I was happy to go, though I looked back at Gram and Grampy with tears in my eyes.  They were still my very own mother and father, and at twelve years old, I choked back the good-bye.  I loved them so.

And so the next three years of my life had begun in Virginia.  I was just out of sixth grade, and now began attending school at a progressive, new-age school which encompassed both junior high and high school,  in Arlington.  The teachers were called by their first names, we could smoke, walk around barefoot, and were never reprimanded for not attending class.  I got a job in the school cafeteria, but began to skip work because my teachers would come through the line and ask where I had been.  I didn't even see one of my report cards, and now my mother was shut up in her room after work.  If she was told I was truant, she never said anything to me about it.

My sisters and I would walk a mile to a fabulous youth group at a local Baptist church.  There were a ton of teens and youth leaders, and we went on field trips in the summer.  While I was resentful of my mother, and still aching from a rocky childhood, I loved going to church.  I was in the junior high group, and began to get rides from some of my youth leaders on late nights after church.  Wayne, one leader in particular, began offering rides all the time.  He talked of love and played music for me.  He was in his early twenties.  We had an all-nighter for New Years, and by morning, I was lying on the couch, with other kids draped exhaustedly around the room.  I felt Wayne behind the arm of the couch, and he began stroking my hair.  On the way home, he kissed me.  Frightened, yet somehow thrilled, I pretended I knew what I was doing.  The little child in me cried out in fear, but just as I could never stand up to the other adults from my past, I did not stand up for myself with Wayne.

As time went on, Wayne got closer and closer, asking me to skip school to be with him, and telling me dirty jokes, asking if I knew what he meant.  I pretended I did.  There was no attention at home, and Wayne used to take photos of me, telling me how pretty I was.  The day finally came when Wayne made his move.  It took me many years to call it what it was - rape.  As he began to try to get intimate, I told him he was hurting me.  He warned me that girls who don't go through with it the first time, never will again.  He told me I would become a lesbian, so I allowed him to do what he wanted, and then curled up in pain later that night.  After that, Wayne and I practically lived together.  I went to school in eighth grade a total of only a few weeks.  He dropped out of Bible college and became a security guard.  I felt that I should marry him because I knew only married people were allowed to do what we were doing.  I still thank God that I never became pregnant during that time.

Soon, he began hitting me when he was angry with me, telling me that I was so stubborn, I made him "lose it".  I was fourteen and he was twenty-two.  Abuse became part of my life once again, and I sank deeper into a state of black hate and rebellion.  When I was fifteen and basically a jr. high school drop-out, he joined the Army, and came home for me after basic training.  He was moving to California and wanted me to run away with him.  My mother protested a little, but I went anyway.  She never tried to get me back.

We brought an immunization record with us to Las Vegas and tried to get married.  I didn't look old enough, so Wayne found a call-girl, falsified the immunization records, and they brought the marriage license back with them to the motel I was waiting in.  The call-girl's name was Jessica, and kept saying, "Praise the Lord" over and over again.  We drove to the Little Chapel of the Flowers on July 19th, 1982, and got married with the fake license.  Then we drove down the street to the A&W for a root beer float.  I tried to make him some eggs for our first "married" breakfast, and he tipped the plate onto the rug and said, "You know I hate runny eggs."

Wayne was stationed in Monterey, California and I would sit outside his classes as he learned the Russian Language.  He was a Russian linguist with a top secret security clearance and a teenage bride.  When I wasn't waiting outside his classes up to eight hours a day, I was alone in our apartment, or getting beat up when he was home.  I began secretly trying to figure out what I could sell so I could get a ticket out of there.  This went on for two years, with me leaving a few times.  Once, his parents came to visit and saw my black eye.  They bought me a plane ticket to go live with my sister, Robyn, who was in the Marines in Chicago by then.  He sent me a bus ticket back to him.  Finally, when I was seventeen, on New Years' eve, I made a collect call to Paul and Meredith from an airport.  He had just left me there.  They brought me home, and once again, I was with my family, back where the love of God always brought me when things fell apart.

Are you beginning to see a pattern?  I just look back in awe sometimes when I think of how God always brought me back from the brink.  How His love was working my life out to be brought into His presence, His peace, His secure, everlasting arms.  How do I know there is a God?  I look at my life, and how could I not know?  Yes, I was becoming a callous, angry young woman, but I was also that quaking little child who needed Jesus to hold my hand and draw me up into His lap.  He did that through the powerful love of my Gram and Grampy, and Paul and Meredith.  If not for them, I would have never known that I was worth anything.  I would never have known love.  I wouldn't be here today with a lump in my throat, remembering how they prayed for me and allowed Jesus, through them, to embrace me.

Dear Heavenly, Holy Father,
How can I say thank you for bringing me out of the darkness?  How can I worship you for all You have done?  Why did I reject you so much in my life?  How deep and perfect Your compassion truly is!  May You guide me as I write about You, and may people read this and glorify You in their own lives.  I know we can all look back and see You everywhere if we're willing.  Let us not focus on the pain, but rather on the theme of Your love through it all!  Please help me as I continue on.  In Jesus' name...