I've been doodling

Heading out to war, My Battle Songs

Therapy update

It's been a year in therapy and so far I've manged to stop dissociating so much. We also just figured out a giant turn of direction in my healing. I'm learning a lot about how a rapist chose a victim and changes their thought pattern. I learned I was conditioned for his perfect approach and it worked leaving me a victim in his wake. I have always worked on hating this person and struggling with strange feelings of desire for him because of what he conditioned me for at such a young and innocent age. This was my first sexual experience and because of it I'm having serious difficulties in my marriage. I'm angry at him. I'm so angry he did this to me. How was I to know though that I would only be used and thrown away? God made sex good and for a purpose and love. It was a gift for marriage and procreation. Now, I'm feeling a strange way towards it. Instead of arousal and excitement I get the bad butterflies and I just try to push through. I hate feeling vulnerable and the image of that first time creeps into my head. I want it gone. I want to know how to love my husband completely and thoroughly the way God intended. I am not a bad wife. I keep repeating this to myself. I will have a break through sometime. I will find healing. God is healer of all things. He can make sex better with my husband. He can heal my heart from this. I trust. It hurts so badly. It hurts me in a place so close to my soul. I ache in the bedroom longing for that excitement to be vulnerable and taken. I don't want to think it's been ruined. My therapist seemed excited that we figured this out. She even said "Oh my goodness we have been working on the wrong thing". She wants to see me more often. I can't help but feel that I'm in therapy over drive. I need it and crave it someone who understands. Someone who doesn't just shove bible verses down my throat and lets me know on a psychological level what has happened to my brain and body response.This is not too big for God to help me through. It's not enough though to wake up and say okay God lets do this. I'm on a mission to seek his healing. Some how through therapy and bible therapy and study I will find healing. I feel as though I am starting over. It's a lonely place.

To all the people who say 12 year old girls don't know what love is

Let's start with something here about 12 year old infatuations. I see it all of the time, try to google "can a 12 year old girl be in love or know what love is". It pisses me off to the inth degree. 2 year old babies know what love is. They know when mom kisses and hugs them they are loved. As we age we experience love in our parents relationship, in our gal pals, or other people on the street expressing love. 12 year old girls get periods now. That means they are emotional and eager to find out what sex and love is. When someone tells a child who asks about sex, "sex is for married people in love". They hear oh to have sex is to have love. What happens if the person explaining this to them is not a believer in waiting until marriage and they say "it is for someone in a committed relationship much older than you are now". Great, they are even more confused. What happens when that 12 year old finds another person who is interested in them in a loving sort of way and they start talking, going out together to after school activities, parties, holding hands, kissing.

Yes, kissing. In my middle school it was a regular after lunch activity to be involved in a kissing circle. What is a kissing circle you might say? Oh, just a bunch of friends laughing and talking in a circle to block two people in the middle making out. When the group decided it went too far they would call for the next two people to start making out. MIDDLE SCHOOL 12, 13, 14, 15 year old kids. I saw a lot of people encourage shy couples to do more than just kiss. Several girls had their nipples sucked on for the first time in a kissing circle. I was one of them and it wasn't even a guy I barely knew. I didn't really even know him at all. It's like an adult version of spin the bottle with no bottle. This was back in like 1999-2003, I can't even fathom what kids are experiencing out there in 2012 and we are nearing 2013. Parents seriously need to keep open communication and instead of telling a kid how it is, listen to what the kid thinks. I'm not entirely sure I was ever asked what my thoughts on all this were at the time. I vividly remember being told I am too young to know what love is or how to express it.

I'm a firm believer that  a 12 year old Christian girl would be able to explain what true love is in Jesus. Also, pretty sure my 4 year old niece knows what Jesus' love is. How can society and parents be telling these young women they can't be feeling something they feel. Long lasting and marital love is definitely different than a 12 year old's preteen obsession but there is a lot more innocence to love that we lose as we age and I believe these young kids feel something raw and powerful that adults try to stifle and remove. Instead of telling kids no so much how about parents or mentors, friends, teachers help a 12 year old learn to express what they feel in a healthy safer way. Get creative people because these kids have to grow up to have healthy relationships eventually and as soon as they come to you expressing the signs that they need help expressing love let's not say "oh you don't know what love is you are too young".

A Commemorative mug for your rape... perhaps a T-shirt?

Procrastination. Ugh. I go to bed before a day off thinking of all the things I could write about only to wake up the next morning completely UN-motivated. As I sigh and fiddle around in the bathroom I even notice the cat box is full and how desperately it needs attention. "Not gonna do it", I tell myself. Poor some cereal and find all the dying electronics to plug in. Here I am, blog open and ready and nothing to write about?

Last night my Husby convinced me to watch The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Before you delve into this on your Netflix, I suggest you try reading it first. If your own imagination doesn't steer you away, then I'd take it as a go ahead to watch the film as a rape victim. There were definitly moments where I ripped off my perfectly manicured nails from my fingers with my teeth. I also, had two glasses of wine and between watching and subtitles I could keep emotionally distant to get through it.

After, my Husby looked it up on IMDB to explain to me that there were supposed to be 10 books but the guy died at age 50 or something. My heart sank for him. Why would he write so many horrific things down? Then, that's when Husby says "He witnessed a gang rape when he was 15 and could never forgive himself for doing nothing to help". "Oh! Good!" I thought and pondered that in silence. We went to bed. I put the covers up over my head to dilly dally on my free game apps. I was trying to woo those horrifying rapey scenes out of my head for fear of night terrors and waking my poor Husby before his work day.

Now I'm awake and confused. I've been wondering what I'm supposed to be doing with this blog and it's supposed to be whatever the damn well I please. No Idea how this fits into the bigger picture of my testimony of finding God. I feel a huge knocking at my heart to write more. Just as Steig Larsson has done so well, I to want to capture the horrifying childhood abuse I witnessed in some sort of commemorative way. How? NO IDEA. I thought, just write them all down and make a list. Then, I thought well that is boring where's the drama and the horror in a list? I've already written a few short blips of things from my perspective but then again, not sure how to use it to glorify God. Does everything I do have to glorify him? Yes I decided a long time ago.
                      " So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God." 1 Corinthians 10:31

Where does this put me? There are so many questions. How can my downfall and that of others bring light into what happened during my salvation? God uses terrible stories all the time to help make a point in his book. Steig used horrifying stories in his as well to make a point. What's my point?

My point is, no matter how much darkness someone stumbles into on purpose or accident there is a all loving God (I've met him) that will forgive all and cover them with light. 1 John 1:5 "God is light and in him there is no darkness at all."
 I feel an overwhelming urge to explain to someone where I have been in hopes that they too can see the light I have found to cover the pitch blackness of what was my death before Jesus.