I M Perfect lady

Mostly I blog or write on here to sort out my mind, and to place unanswered questions, I write to unscramble frustrations.  I am doing this mostly for me.  And, most often by the end of the blog, I have a new awareness.

Sometimes, I just want the record of the days news or history or to keep a new understanding written down.

I want evidence, if you will, how prevalent sexual abuse is within church communities, how I am NOT the anomaly that many accused me of being.

Perhaps I too, want my voice to be heard, in my voice.

To write what most won't listen to.

I write about my experiences, and my insights, and my viewpoint.

I write to bring to light to an area that has been in the dark.

That operates in the dark.

That needs there to be silence and no one talking about it.

Where no one challenges the faithful.

I am willing to get the flack for speaking out.

Which is why so many are silent.

I want to be the prod to make others think differently.

For I could have used a prod years ago.

Someone has to be the one to speak up.

To ask the tough questions.

To be willing to be seen as 'short sighted' or how little I know.

I deleted a Facebook post, which I should have kept.

It is amazing how they will come full guns upon me, instead of going where the real trouble is.

That church isn't about Man.

Really?

It is about God.

Yet, the man is who is in the churches sexually abusing.

You have to put your God down for a moment and deal with this.

God isn't going anywhere.

What I am trying to tell you all, is that while you are worshiping your God, Man is running around abusing the children. 

What can we do about this?

What can you do?

The sheer frustration to me, is that you will continue to worship and go and see God, regardless of what is going on underneath.

The underneath needs attention.

It needs you to stop and refocus your attention.

God can take care of himself, the children cannot.

 

I can't even begin to remember my old faith, the way I was unwilling to place anything before it. I can't know what would have shook me out of that faithfulness. Well, what did was my niece saying Grandpa touched me.

It was abuse within my family.

And, perhaps the closeness that echoed in me.

But, what will it literally take.

Hollering back at me is not the answer.

Belittling me isn't going to work neither.

 

What do I know.

I know, that if you the truly faithful continue on being faithful, it doesn't affect the lives of the abused.

What I needed as a child, were church members to be horrified.

To not keep up the image of the goodness of the church.

I needed them to get rid of the darkness it operated within.

I needed light upon what was making us all traumatized.

I needed the good christians to have been more concerned about the children than their relationship with God.

 

There has to be a way for you all to keep your God and to protect the children.

There has to be answers.

A new way.

As I have said a thousand times before, you can't keep doing what the generations before you did, and expect things to change.

Abuse isn't going to stop itself.

Abusers will not decide one day to stop abusing.

Children are being molested and we have to find ways to not be co-conspirators by our inactions.

 

I walked out of my church.

I walked out of my family.

I didn't do these things because I hated God.

I didn't leave God, I left due to the fact that abuse wasn't being dealt with, at all.

In fact, the very nature of the church's business was to forgive the 'sins' abuse that the perpetrators did upon the children.

This was too much for me to handle.

I didn't leave my family cause I stopped loving them.

I left because their actions were not going to stop abuse from happening again.

 

I needed to change what I was doing, in order to be the end of the abuse cycle in my life.

 

I can't see how doing the same thing you did prior to knowing of the abuse, will affect change.

I can't, and I can't not speak out to women who are perplexed and outraged at the volume of abuse, and YET, they are not making life changes in their own lives.

I get it.

Change is hard.

Looking deeply into what is going on and how your actions may or may not be a contributing factor is hard. But, WHO IS GOING TO STOP ABUSE?

It feels like the apathy is winning.

The faithful are remaining faithful.

How is it going to be stopped?

I have been told repeatedly to keep speaking out, keep being brave, keep having the courage and to keep this blog going.

Really?

To what end?

What changes have others made in their lives that will stop the cycles from picking up speed.

The numbers in the catholic church that have been exposed, by a few States doing the investigating, are the tip of the iceberg in that religion.

That religion.

That one religion.

What about the others.

What about the church you attend?

What about within the circle of your friends and community?

What are you willing to give up to save a child from having to experience trauma?

Go ahead and blast me, I don't care.

I have had more wrath than I ever expected to be sent my way for speaking up.

But, at the end of the day, you all sit with your actions, your God and your religion.

You get to see how your life is preventing abuse or enabling it.

I am not mad, I am frustrated more at the non-abusing folks than at the abusers almost.

It takes a village to keep the darkness dark.

My one blog isn't loud enough to shake the foundations upon which you all stand.

What will topple the cycles of abuse?

What will make it harder for abusers to abuse?

Will it matter to them if you are diligently worshiping your God?

Will it matter to them if you are keeping the family close and unchallenged?

Will it matter to them if they see how you forgive and forget?

Know, that the abusers are watching you.

 

And more, the children are watching you too.

What will they see you doing?

I can't know, if I have done enough to stop abuse in my family's tree, from my life. From the lives of my children and grandchildren.

I can't know if what I have done is enough.

Or, what more can I do.

I can know is that I am trying

I am sharing how abuse is seen from the eyes of a victim.

What is helpful and then not helpful.

I can be outspoken in my life and hope that at the very least, there are no dark places.

Will my new pattern be enough?

Will there be more generations beneath me who is still abused?

Will what I have done, matter?

I believe, based on what I needed my mother to do, that it is a start in the right direction.

I am doing what I wished would have been done for me.

At the very least, look at your pattern, your cycle and see if there are changes from when you were a child. 

As I sit here today, as I sit here with myself, I am at peace that I have tried.

I have done what I can to change the pattern in the cycle of abuse within my life span.

I can only affect my life.

Each of you will have to do the same within your own life cycles.

This blog has not been for naught.

It has allowed me the space to unravel and old pattern and reconstruct a new one.

The me who began this blog was not the me who is sitting here today.

 I M perfect, and it is impossible not to be.

This is my rendition of trying to stop the cycle of abuse.

Certainly there were places I could have done better, but at least I am in the arena trying to wrestle this beast.  

Only those in the arena with me have the right to criticize me.

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. Theodore Roosevelt