Grief. Anguish. Sorrow.

Grieving

I’ve had only a glimpse of suffering, just a taste of violation, betrayal, and rejection. Yet the intensity of the pain left me in shock.

From the very moment, when it seemed that my entire life crumbled, I felt the Lord’s presence sheltering me. I was not rescued from the pain of this event, but I know I did not walk through it alone.

It is normal after abuse to feel confused, disillusioned, guilty, and angry. The extreme emotions in this phase can be very unsettling. The feelings of emptiness were overwhelming at times. It all seemed so unfair and so unbelievable.

I struggled with the fact that evil seemed to prevail. This was so disillusioning. I held my breath, waiting for God to smite them. I truly believed that sooner or later that truth would win and crookedness would fail. That isn’t what happened.

I spent over a year railing against the injustice of what happened, trying to push the reality of it away, to deny its existence, to just get over it. My attempts to forgive and heal seemed fruitless at times. The reminders of what happened kept me in a perpetual cycle of forgiving repeatedly.

I longed for a short cut, an easy path to healing, but I couldn’t find my way around the pain I was going through. Accepting the grieving process helped. There would be no quick cure for the grief, confusion, and pain.

My losses were many, and I acknowledged how much that it hurt. I accepted that I would have to simply experience the pain as part of the healing. This writing expresses those feelings