CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENT RECOVERING FROM CHILD ABUSE (PART 3)

PRACTICAL STRATEGIES FOR CHANGE

Perhaps when you think about your new identity as God’s child and read about Joann, you desire to move forward too. But you feel stuck. Here are some ways that those who have been abused as children sometimes struggle as adults:

• Trusting others. It can feel impossible to trust anyone after your trust has been shattered by your childhood experiences.
• Having a healthy sexual relationship with your spouse. If you were sexually abused, sex for you has been maimed and twisted by darkness.
• Being filled with bitterness. How do you avoid being filled with bitterness when terrible evils have occurred? How can you learn to forgive such a great wrong?
• Disciplining your own children. How do you learn to discipline your children in love when you were attacked by your own parents?
• Dealing with any conflict or confrontation. How do you confront a problem with family, friends, or co-workers when anger and confrontation was brutally distorted in your life?

You might have even more things to add to this list. Is God able to work in these areas in your life and change your automatic responses to people and situations? Yes he is. God can and will change you, not all at once, but gradually over your lifetime. I have seen God do this many times in those I’ve counseled. Change begins as you face what happened to you with God in view.

CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENT RECOVERING FROM CHILD ABUSE (PART 2)

REDEEMING YOUR STORY

The abuse you suffered is part of the stage upon which your life choices will now take place. It’s out of the choices you are facing right now that great good can come.  That doesn’t mean that you will forget the evil done to you. Martin Luther King never forgot the evils of racism. It was the reason he started a movement that changed our country. Candy Lightner did not forget that her thirteen year old daughter was killed by a drunk driver. Her daughter’s death became the impetus for forming MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving), an organization that works to stop drunk driving.

You also can choose how to respond to the evil that was done to you. You can grow in gratitude, joy, purpose, and the ability to help others and live your life with courage and conscious intent. A few years ago I counseled a thirty-five year old woman named Joann. She had suffered terrible physical and sexual abuse at the hands of many male relatives from the age of three to fourteen. She was finally rescued by a social worker and placed in foster care. When I met her she was married, had two children, and had become a social worker herself who counseled abused children.

Joann hadn’t forgotten her suffering and was still working through its effects, but her life story was about more than her abuse. She was creating a loving home for her husband and children and reaching out to others who were suffering as she had. Her suffering wasn’t forgotten, it was redeemed.

The gospel of John closes with this verse, “And there are also many other things which Jesus did, which if they were written in detail, I suppose that even the world itself would not contain the books that would be written” (John 21:25). Your life is one of those books that John was talking about. You’re continuing the story of what “Jesus did.” It’s a story where terrible evils happened to you, but Jesus showed up and did something—he redeemed you and is still redeeming you so that you can love, forgive, and do good to those around you. Your story is not only about the pain of betrayal, it’s about Jesus taking what others meant for evil and redeeming it for a good purpose.

CULLED FROM DAVIDSON POWLISON

YOUR IDENTITY IS BIGGER THAN YOUR ABUSE

Abuse feels like an experience that has stamped you and has the final word on your identity. But the truth is that God gives you a different identity. No matter what terrible atrocities happened to you, they are not your identity. Your identity as God’s child is far deeper than the abuse you suffered.

When you come to God through trusting in Jesus, he gives you a new identity. You become part of the family of God. You are his dearly loved child. Listen to what the apostle John says about your identity, “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” (1 John 3:1). You have a perfect Father in heaven who loves you and wants to fill your life with the good gift of himself (Luke 11:13).

Because you are God’s child, you are not alone in a nightmare of pointless suffering. It’s true that “the heart knows its own bitterness” (Proverbs 14:10), and even your dearest friend can’t fully understand the terror, the aloneness, the pain, and the horror you experienced. But Jesus does understand, and he is with you.

Jesus experienced every form of suffering when he was in the world. “He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3). He was betrayed and tortured. He is well acquainted with your grief, and he will never leave you (John 14:18).

A LETTER TO FELLOW NIGERIANS ON CHILD ABUSE

Every child deserve the opportunity to grow up healthy and safe, and we should have no greater responsibility than the protection of our children against abuse and victimization.

Abuse makes victims of all of us , but for a child , especially, it steals the blessing of innocence, replacing it with fear and hurt that can damage young lives and takes a lifetime from which to recover.

I implore Nigeria Government to make law against child  abuse which is going to make sure people know what to do when they suspect it has occurred.

Your responsibilities are dear under the law, but this is about more than statutory  protections, this is about doing what is right. please join with all of us in doing all we can to save young lives from abuse.

BREAK THE CYCLE OF SILENCE

The burden of prevention has been resting for years on the smallest shoulders in our society, the children who are most vulnerable, least likely to be able to protect themselves from a powerful adult. This is especially true when considering that the majority of sexual abuse happens at the hands of an adult well known to the child.When children are abused by adults they are also confused by the fact that this person is supposed to be a protector, a care taker, and worthy of trust simply by being an adult ,( after all, we also teach children to obey adults, which can be very confusing) , child abusers are very often experts at emotional manipulation of children, gaining their trust well in advance of the of the actual abuse, in light of these fact(and many others),  it is clear that the time has come for adults to assume responsibility for protecting children.

BREAK THE CYCLE OF SILENCE .

CHILDREN AND ADOLESENT RECOVERING FROM CHILD ABUSE

You have been victimized by a terrible wrong. During your childhood, the time you were most vulnerable, instead of being protected, helped, and comforted you were abused. Most likely you were abused by someone who should have been trustworthy a family member, a teacher, a neighbor, a coach, a pastor, a friend. Instead of being protected you were violated. You were treated with malice. Someone used, misused, and took advantage of you. Now you are wondering if recovery is possible.

The simple answer to that question is yes, recovery is possible. But you already know you can’t just snap your fingers and make everything all better. And you know that pat answers won’t help you. But here are two important truths to keep in mind: You are not alone, and there is hope.

Your recovery will be a process of learning and remembering those two truths, not just once, but over and over. Think about how bread gets made. It must be kneaded so that the yeast goes through the whole loaf. These two truths must be kneaded into who you are until they work through every part of you. The working of these truths into the deepest part of you takes time. The damage you suffered may have been done in one or more terrible moments; the healing and the restoration unfolds at a human pace. It unfolds at your pace. It unfolds as part of your story, and it unfolds over time.

There are three broad categories of child abuse: verbal abuse, physical abuse, and sexual abuse. If you were verbally abused, someone whose words should have been helpful and kind instead demeaned you and assaulted you. If you were physically abused, someone (perhaps a parent or another authority figure) attacked you and hurt you. If you were sexually abused, someone used you and violated an intimate part of who you are.

However you were abused, what happened to you was evil—you were sinned against. And now you are suffering. God is mindful of your suffering, and he hears your cries. He heard the cry of a child dying of thirst in the desert (Genesis 21:17–18); he heard the cries of the Israelites suffering as slaves (Exodus 2:23–24); and he hears you. God has much to say to those who have experienced evil at the hands of others. So he has much to say to you.

CULLED FROM DAVID POWLISON