I M Perfect lady

Category: Examples of an Imperfect woman

  • A False Appearance Called You.

    Between the comments, a conversation and reading, it came to me that this isn’t unusual this indirect conversations. And in fact, the bigger the ‘secret’ or point the bigger the fear and the consequences or fall out will be.

    There is a payoff for not talking directly, it allows you to be in a pretend safe zone. Get that, a pretend safe zone or a pretend friendship, or a pretend relationship, a pretend love.

    A pretend love. What is that?

    And how is it that we are more comfortable being a pretend self, than being a truthful one.

    I know I was fricking inept when it came to being myself. I had no clue. I was frustrated, anxious, nervous, a mess, a total basket case, BEING me.

    How is that possible, that we wear the mask of pretend with ease even if it doesn’t cover up the resentment and fear that lies beneath?

    What I know for sure is that we fear a big fall out equal to the level of fear we have IF we were to be ourselves and REALLY say what is on our minds…as well as the size or the extent of the secret.

    In my family it was gigantic, earth shattering big.

    In other families it is huge and life changing for sure.

    But we fail to realize is that it will change the pretend fearful weird exchanges we have with each other to truthful ones.

    I recall my sister asking to be my friend on face book (after a four year silence and vast differences)…and being this new frank self…I asked, “why do you want to be my friend and told her she may not like the new me and that she best to go to my blog and read.” She came back and said, “Nope, not that interested”.

    While that hurt, it also set us both free from pretending. I didn’t want to begin a second time around with her and leave my frankness behind.

    Now it seems quite silly and childish or immature to even entertain the idea of pretending to get along…And that whole sentence is wrong for little children are known for their frankness.

    So, maybe it is not silly or childish, but just lingering on junior high, where we will do anything to get along, to be liked, to be part of a group. We pretend to get along and in doing so live a pretend life.

    That to me is so tragic, that many many people live their whole lives as somebody else…or for somebody else.

    Self loving is not ever having to pretend. I LOVE that.

    I used to pretend to have no fear of my father.

    I used to pretend that I had no resentment against my mother.

    I pretended that she made wise choices or that they didn’t bother me.

    I pretended and pretended and pretended, until I lost complete sight of who I was.

    I looked up the definition of pretend. “To give a false appearance.”

    Yes, I was afraid of my father and I acted like I wasn’t.

    Each and every time we pretend or cover up a feeling or not speak our truth, we lose a little bit more of ourselves…and gain more and more of a false appearance.

    Who knew that by sparing another you would create a false appearance or false self. And here is the deal, you are only fooling your self that if you don’t address each issue, that they fade away and disappear.

    They don’t.

    They are with you always.

    For your feelings can’t be erased by pretending.

    Love can’t be formed by pretending. Friendships are not bonded deeply in pretending. All pretending does is pretend that it isn’t so…when it is.

    Isn’t it funny, you thought you were fooling another when indeed you were fooling your self, creating a false appearance called you.

  • Point of Conversation

    Martha Beck writes (In Leaving the Saints) about the way she was taught to communicate in the Mormon Church, “through continuous indirect communication, I learned that a good Mormon girl doesn’t travel in the dimension of direct communication.”

    This is how I believe most of us are taught and then call people who do talk directly and succinctly… bold, brash, cold and even bitter.

     Direct communication is scary after talking indirectly and around most sensitive issues, to just say what it is you need to say… feels terrifying.

    What I know is that there are reasons we are taught indirectness in our speaking. We are told either by words or actions ‘not to go there’ and we don’t, we learn to talk in a pretend roundabout way.

    We say things we don’t mean or feel…and instead say things that are not true…out of fear of getting in trouble if we don’t. Mostly we are taught to shut off our feelings and not to be so sassy and say what is on our minds. We are taught that indirect conversations are best for all concerned, it isn’t good to go to the heart of any issue.

    What I know for sure, is that I went along with the indirect conversations in my home and it costs me greatly in the end.

    Now, direct open frank conversations are the only ones I care to engage in, the others seem like disconnected words. Words that are not attached to the person or their truths.

    I had lived for years believing that words alone were powerful that they had this great impact upon the land, until I learned that unless words are with reality and truth, they are simply just words…meaningless.

    Minus meaning or meaning less than what needs to be said.

    There is no difference between what I say and what I do, they match.

    In the past, what I felt and what I said were worlds apart, like the polar opposites in life. I never felt that I could actually say what I feel, let alone act according to my feelings. I was taught to act against my feelings for the sake and happiness of others, out of love.

    If you love someone ‘you spare them your true feelings’ is the gist of what I was taught.

    And now I have learned if you love someone they above all deserve your truth.

    In the end it boils down to you either have a direct meaningful relationship or you have an indirect one.

    Indirect, do you care to guess its meaning? “Indirect, diverging from the direct course, roundabout. Not proceeding straight and to the point or object.”

    What I have learned in the past six years is that very few speak directly to the point…most are speaking in roundabout ways, they are trying to skirt the mountain of truths, to spare their feelings and the feelings of others.

    In fact, when speaking indirectly you will avoid feelings and miss the point of the conversation. 

     

  • Feeling the Unbounded Heart.

    In Martha Beck's book, "Leaving the Saints" she writes,

    " I recall its horror and beauty, the enormity of the things I have lost and the incalculable preciousness of the things I have gained. I wouldn't give up the journey – not a moment of it. On the other hand I have no desire to live it again."

    My journey from not knowing to knowing has equal parts horror and beauty, for it seemed with each new glimpse into the vestiges of evil sprang a new wondrous insight and freedom…

    The dichotomy of the polar opposites and how you are plunged into the horrors that you failed to see and or acknowledge to your self, and then the beautiful release from them into the wide-open space of freedom leaves me breathless.

    We somehow believe if we sit smack dab in the middle of the horrors of our lives, we will get left there, that you will sink as if in quick sand, but that isn’t so.

    If you don’t go into what frightens and scares you, you will live in the space between.

    No terror and then no beauty.

    You are in the middle land, the purgatory space, neither heaven nor hell…

    When you leave the comfortable space of no feelings and dare to walk fearlessly into the emotions and truths you were too frightened to see as a child, it feels alive, electric and the enormity of it all leaves you overwhelmed.

    Fear keeps us out of those dark corridors where our unexpressed, unexamined life lives. And by leaving that door closed you live a life that isn’t alive…in its truest sense.

    You are forced to live without feelings and free expressions.

    Martha is so right…for I too recall the horror and the beauty, the enormity of the things I have lost and the incalculable preciousness of the things I have gained.

    You truly lose the world as you have known it, but you gain a self you have never met.

    I lived in this the middle ground for 46 years, where fear kept me motionless, frozen and lifeless. I followed life, but I did not live it freely.

    I never wavered from the path of least resistance, I had no individual thoughts and I was not connected to my body and its feelings.

    The middle ground certainly will not allow you to see the horrors, but it also keeps from you the intimate beauty of love and freedom.

    Stretched into the zone of nothingness…but keeping the static going so you never dip into the terror that lurk at the sidelines of your life… your life’s goal is to remain numb.

    You are frozen in place and have no conditions.

    No rules of your own, in fact I see this as being a lump, where the dark murky waters can wash over you and you feel not its affect, nor do you try and get out of the way…and sun is shining just above the surface, but you make no move to reach toward it.

    It is living and letting all manner of things happen and you don’t move…and the delights of life await and you are unable to reach.

    Waking up in this state left me horrified of what I had allowed and how I had not been aware…and as Martha writes about the Lion stage of awakening.

    “When we have discovered the hearts capacity to face any situation, the joys and sorrows of existence as they are, we awaken to freedom. Then the Golden Lion speaks with a roar. Out of the mouth of the lion comes the undaunted voice of truth, the liberation of the unbounded heart.”

    It is the liberation of the unbounded heart…whereas before it was wrapped up like a mummy unfeeling anything.

    And she goes on to say about the third stage of awakening, “In the last stage the lion gives way to the child, to an original innocence. This is the child of the Spirit for who all things are new. For this Divine child there is wonder, ease and a playful heart. The child is at home in reality of the present, able to enjoy, to respond, to forgive, and to share the blessings of being alive.”

    (I best give you the first stage as well…”In the camel stage of awakening, we make ourselves available to the Spirit through humility, prayer, repetition, and manual labor)

    The first stage was where I spent most of my life, ‘repetition and manual labor…not so much humility or prayer.

    The tumultuous unwrapping of going from living life bound up in the beliefs and thoughts and affects of abuse etc, to undoing it all is extremely horrifying and beautiful in equal parts.

    Isn’t there a saying from the bible, about ‘what is bound on earth is bound in heaven…? I believe that it is talking about the heart.

    There is truly an incalculable preciousness of feeling the unbounded heart.

  • We are denied our truth.

    Yesterday I listened to the end of The 19th Wife
    and heard the ponderings of Brigham Young as he had to explain his marriages to the outside world. The 19th wife was suing for alimony after she left the faith…And it came down to either denying this faith and what he believed or paying the fees to his wife.

    In order to stand straight with the law, he had to admit that he only had one ‘real’ wife, and that the rest were ‘spiritual wives’.

    What was so telling is how he couldn’t take his ‘Faith’ outside of the confines of the church, for it wasn’t recognized there…and how it greatly affected the wives by how he spoke of them.

    When he denounced his 19th wife in the laws of the land, they all felt the space open up in their promised spot on his celestial planet…it all evaporated like the marriages did when he walked into the court of the land.

    They married him for the sole reason of the afterlife promise.

    This poignantly showed the vast contrast to our ‘beliefs’ and how they actually walk in life or when taken outside of the churches environment, how others perceive what we have been taught to believe.

    Whether you are talking about polygamy or forgiveness of sins, it is the Belief in them and how they are carriages into the afterlife that steer your world today.

    And what is even more striking is the way the Faith has to be left behind in order to comply with the law…

    It almost seems like there were two Brigham Youngs, when it came down to the ‘crime’ against women. Inside he was heralded as being a great celestial planet populator, and then in the eyes of the law…he is practicing adultery.

    What sat with me for the rest of the afternoon, is how Faith oftentimes isn’t supported by the law and this is why there is the separation of church and state.

    But when the practices of Faith harm children or women, you certainly have to question just what is your belief?

    In the FALC, the forgiveness of sins equals the belief of polygamy for its ultimate goal is a place in the afterlife.

    In order to get to heaven you have to overlook lots of things in the present.

    My experience with the forgiveness of sins is that it is the delete button for truth and in order for you to be a good Christian; you have to Believe that it (the sin) is no longer there.

    So, in the face of reporting abuse…it is impossible to report something you believe is no longer there.

    This twisted concept of changing the truth to serve your afterlife, leave the present in quite a mess.

    My father’s abusive ways were seen, and then they were Believed to no longer be there. Only a poor Christian would dare drag up the sins and bring them into the authorities.

    It is my humble belief that the ministers and church boards main goal is to keep the system going, in fact they will tell you point blank, if you bring up abuse, “their business is the forgiveness of sins.”

    As they practice this ‘Belief’ it leaves the abused child in an awkward state. Abused, but can’t be seen as such.

    We walk around with the affects of the abuse, while the ‘abuse’ was deleted.

    I am not certain I can again, make this point for it is slippery and fluid, the sleight of hands, the magical waving and distorting the truth….

    What I had mistakenly focused on was how others couldn’t seem to see the truth, but they can. In order to bless it you have to see it first. But once you see it, bless it, it then disappears.

    How can you bring to authorities what You BELIEVE is no longer there?

    Their faith would be tried if they went to authorities…they would be challenging the practice of forgiveness if they stepped forth.

    This isn’t about delivering the truth, it is about denying their faith.

    The main thrust underneath, the fear or pushing them away from speaking out is all about their afterlife promise…and has nothing to do with the affect that has on the children.

    They need to see the children as innocent IF their Faith works. If they see abused children, that will mean their Faith didn’t work.

    Again, it sounds insane as I speak of this, of the tragedy and incredible twisted and warped sense of living with this every turning of
    reality, but it is so.

    I lived in this circuitous religion, where nothing was
    concrete except the magical Forgiveness of Sins, and the afterlife spot that
    this would ensure.

    It isn’t that truth and reality isn’t present today, it is there, but their belief is stronger in believing that it can be wiped away.

    The child then gets left being untreated.

    No longer innocent, for it has suffered abuse.

    No place to go.

    You are either bad for speaking of it…or bad for no longer
    having faith, love and trust, in your parents.

    You are hung in between, in the land of flipping realities
    and in both places you are damned, for neither place accepts the truth.

    And the truth is, you are abused, and someone abused you
    and no one will see it for that will mean no heaven for them when they die, so
    meanwhile you are unable to be your truth.

    The people or very few from the FALC will ever go to the
    authorities for it will mean they will have to deny their faith, and in doing
    so, give up their spot in heaven. It isn't about abuse, but Heaven.

    In the polygamist religions there are “Lost Boys” for they are the residual affect of the plural marriage, if one old man needs to have
    many wives, they certainly can’t have young men around.

    In the FALC, there are Lost Children.

    Children who get left hanging between truth and a deleting
    reality…swinging between both poles never fitting in on either end.

    The religion needs the truth wiped clean.

    The abuse lives within us, and we are unable to get rid of
    its grip it now has.

    Lost children hang in the balance when they will not deny
    their faith…we are denied our truth.

  • Freedom isn’t gained by doing Nothing.

    We do not err because truth is difficult to see. It is
    visible at a glance. We err because this is more comfortable.     ~Alexander
    Solzhenitsyn

    While I have known that it takes folks with great courage
    to speak out, I didn’t realize ALL can see, but only a few will give up their
    comfortable seat and do so.

    It isn’t that they can’t see, IT is because they don’t want
    to be uncomfortable.

    Isn’t that odd? We see the truth, but err in acting so not to be uncomfortable.

    We don’t want to experience perhaps the rage or dislike
    another may send our way, if we dare to mention the unmentionables.

    The truth sits there in its uncomfortable glory, shining
    forth and many will glance away so they will not feel uncomfortable.

    What happens when a few good folk don’t want to feel
    uncomfortable? What do you all believe happens to the pedophiles, while you are choosing comfort over speaking out?

    As I wrote on my brother’s blog, “It takes great courage
    to 'tell the authorities' but if you don't, your truth and words get stuck in a loop within the structure of abuse. You are the one who needs to bust out and speak their names. Until then your silence cements the structure in place, the bars on the cage    .” www.messyguru.typepad.com

    Do the people sitting in their ‘comfortable’ spot really
    know what they are doing by not speaking out and feeling uncomfortable?

    I see it as either you are relaxing in the cage with the
    abusers or you are outside of the cage speaking out. To me neither seems comfortable, but only one is constructive or actively shutting down the cycle of abuse.

    Even if you only have hearsay and you are keeping that
    quiet, you have no idea which part of the puzzle piece you carry, which part of the big machine you are keeping in place.

    Each of us holds part of the cage together, and if one by
    one we start speaking out, the cage begins to fall apart.

    All it takes to get the ball rolling and to open the cage
    and let the flood of victims come forth is one voice. One voice will carry the others forth.

    The word has to get out that it is okay and normal to feel fear and terror as you break the silence, as you rattle the cage of abuse…It is the only way it will end.

    Someone has to bend the bars of silence by talking to the
    authorities.

    The reporting voices are the heroes and the heroines. They walked in fear and terror, but take the step anyway.

    They speak of fathers, brothers, grandfathers, uncles,
    neighbors and friends. They share their stories of abuse…letting go of the shame and guilt, ridding them of the load they carry.

    They are willing to be uncomfortable to save a child from following in their footprints. Until and unless the abuser’s names are brought to the authorities, abuse will continue forth.

    Silence locks the cage.

    What I still find hard to believe is that it is more comfortable in a cage with a monster…than it is to leave and break the silence, yet I do understand.

    We get comfortable or numb to the fear we know…and are more
    frightened of a new fear.

    However, this new fear and terror of speaking out will free you from the cage of abuse…it is the only way out is doing what makes you uncomfortable.

    Freedom isn’t gained by doing nothing.

     

  • Sooner or Later

    I had made a comment that sounds like an oxymoron, “Prisoners of Faith”. 

    The two don’t seem to mix, and churches seem a far cry from prisons, but in my experience, if you are not free to live, you are in a prison of your mind…and even deeper, in your subconscious beliefs.

    What most fail to consider is that the way religion is oftentimes presented is with the Fear of God, not with the Love of God.

    They frame the confines of religion with fear.  

    Fear of dying and going to Hell.

    Fear of a Judging God.

    Fear of the Un-Believers.

    We were held together by what we feared, not by what we loved.  Fear kept us there, not love. 

    And still today, millions are prisoners of their ‘Faith’.

    In listening to The 19th Wife, fear is the common denominator in what stops you from straying, from going out beyond the confines of your ‘Faith’.

    Fear.

    Fear is the main ingredient of religion.

    Fear that if you don’t obey you will not make it to heaven one day.  They live in hell today for a promised Heaven.

    Women having a dozen of babies out of fear.

    Raised in an environment where fear is the main motivation, you can’t learn how to govern your own life based upon love.

    Love is freedom. You fear freedom. 

    The way the church rules is not based upon love and certainly not with freedom to the masses.  The main figurehead or Prophet needs to control and in order to gain control he uses fear.

    If he didn’t fear losing control, he would not have any rules.

    Rules are only for those who fear losing control.

    No one calls these fear-based religions.  But clearly they are not based upon love and freedom to be and express and to live.

     Prisoners of faith…living in fear, without control of their own lives, sentenced to eternity in hell if they don’t submit to the rules of the Prophet. 

    The Prophet or the seer of the future is stealing them blind by controlling their lives today.  

    And they didn’t even see it happen, they lost control of their worlds today, by worrying about what will happen after they die.  “Let me have your life…or when you die you will suffer greatly.”

    Convincing you that suffering for God today will ensure you a spot in Heaven when you die. Bear this cross today…

    Either they rule you by fear of hell or convince you that suffering will bring you to Heaven someday.  Either way, today, right now, you have no control or freedom.  You are damned no matter which way you turn. 

    Free today only to die and go to hell.

    Live in Hell today for a promised Heaven.

    Either way you get hell, it just depends either living or dead.

    Guess you’re a prisoner of hell sooner or later.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Unconditionally loving the Abuser.

    As human beings we are used to riding along and adjusting to change, but we are not used to being “the change you want to see in your world” as Gandhi put it.

    We want change and we want it now, but we don’t want the change to start with us.

    Most of us change only when forced, when death or tragedy impacts our lives, but rarely do we actively make changes.

    Besides the lack of being a self-starter, we find it impossible to see the enemies that walk among us, for we have called them friends and family.  (This of course is only for those of us who suffered abuse within our family homes, in our friendly neighborhoods, and churches.)

    Since 90% of the abuse happens with someone we know, and 50% with family members, that leaves only 10% to be strangers.

    The changes that need to happen are folks need to start treating family and friends like strangers.

    I know this seems backwards, but so is abuse.

    The legacy of abuse will continue to flow in your family unless and until you start treating folks who abuse like enemies of family and love, for they are.

    They are not there to instill a safe secure environment, nor sowing love and kindness, they are inside infesting the core values of what family means.

    Abusers can’t be treated the same as members of the family who mean no harm.

    In order to stop abuse, you all have to stop treating abusers like constructive members of your family, but rather the destructive people they are.

    They need to get help, be taken out of the family, isolated…in order to preserve the family’s integrity.

     However, in my experience, the child (grown adult child) must leave in order to feel safe, for the perpetrator was not made to go. 

    He was cared for and protected within the family unit.

    This is the sole reason that abuse continues.  The family refuses to treat him like a stranger who came in and abused the girls.

    And as it stands today, I am treated like a stranger and he like a family member.

    This backwards treatment alone keeps abuse going.

    Most don’t want to speak up and act like I did, for they know the outcome.  So instead of being alone, they will be part of keeping the legacy of abuse going.

    What happens is you become a stranger to your family as you fight against abuse…and for most that is too big a price to pay, so they will settle back into the comfortable routine of being a family…unconditionally loving the abuser.

     

  • It is ill fitting in their worlds.

    What I discovered in telling my story is that people get lost in their own lives while listening…lost in trying to defend and discern if my story matches theirs.

    It isn’t being told to match yours, it is merely being told…yet while you are busy trying it on for size, you miss what I am saying…you can’t hear me as you are fitting my words into your world and tossing out the ones that don’t fit.

    As the author of this story and the one who experienced my life, I felt the desire to share what I had lived through or more importantly what I had falsely believed in and was putting it down on paper to find my truth. 

    What I had not counted on was that people would try on my truth of for size, to see if it fits their own experiences and then say it isn’t so.

    I wonder if that is how I listen, to see if it fits in my truth, do I hear others, or do I immediately feel threatened by their story if it clashes with mine?

    It leaves me to wonder, what words another could say that would threaten my world…how another’s experience would unravel my world…what could they possibly say that would start a second avalanche?

    I guess I expected questions or folks who were interested in knowing more, but I hadn’t expected others would try on my experiences and call them fake. 

    It is the resistance against what I am saying that feels so out of place. 

    The defense of the Church, the defense of the people, the defense of the family, defense of the siblings…and the defense against their practices of handing their sins over to Jesus, all the while unknowingly discounting my story as they are so busy in their defense.

    This rooting around in their defense drowns out my words and leaves me unheard. 

    It is like talking to someone who is paying attention to something else, and they are.

    They are worried about their worlds.

    I wonder if we all do that?  If we all have our very own sets of truths and protect them while not paying attention to others.

    I just hadn’t considered that in speaking out that the facts and truths of what I discovered would be tried on and then tossed out, if it didn’t match their files.

    Somehow, I naively believed that I would have the ears of listeners, and not truth fittings.

    What I feel most, is that a child who is asked to tell the truth about an abuser would face the same kind of treatment, where their words would not be brought in as sacred truths, but rather items to be tried on for size. 

    A child can discern, as I have, the ears who listen with compassion or the ones who are merely trying on their truth and kicking it to the curb in order to maintain their own lifestyle.

    Perhaps my ears have become more open the more open I am with my own truths.

    I can only gauge others by how they grab my truths and try them on, and then how quickly I am discarded…or received.

    I have been taking this personal, trying to say things more eloquently, softly, with class, trying to make the presentation prettier, kinder, nicer, more convincing and it is all for naught.  For it isn’t my truth with the issue, but their lifestyle…my truth just doesn’t fit in. It is ill fitting in their worlds.

  • Walks with me in the Dark

    While I was away on a long weekend getaway with my husband, a few comments appeared and a few emails, to the last few posts.

    Here is the deal.  I am only writing about my experience with the people of the FALC, certainly it is not all, but all I knew and each who knew acted the same.  It was like a perfect orchestrated synchronized walk.

    They scored a near perfect ten for keeping in line.

    What I write is my experience and the folks I am writing about are all of the same religion.  They are the ones acting weirdly.

    Here is the other thing, I did have friends (outside of the church) who after reading it in the paper did come up and respond completely the opposite. They did not turn away, but came towards me.

    I can’t help if the poorly acting folks, all happen to be of the same faith, but they are.

    And here is another thing, IF what I write fits you, wear it…if not please let it lie. 

    I am only here reporting things as I encountered them along my journey.  I have yet to meet a full fledge First Apostolic Member who reacted like the folks outside of the church.

    The drastic contrast stands alone…and it isn’t that I am just picking on my friends and acquaintances of that church, but they happen to be outstanding in their consistent response.

    Folks who were not from the inside of the church responded in various ways, listening, hugging, crying, talking in depth, sharing their experiences, and a few cards. 

    What I am mostly shocked about and have separated and explored are the reasons why those who knew me from inside the church turned away.

    They knew me since I was little, we had long history, and they too knew my father and his long history, and yet I immediately became a stranger.

    I didn’t expect folks who didn’t know me on the inside of the church to do anything…

    We expect more from the folks who know us, than we expect from strangers no matter what their religion.

    We have a belief somewhere inside of us about the folks we know, that when the shit hits the fan…they will stand with us.  And I am reporting this odd behavior, like birds all swerving in the same direction, without verbal warning, just an instinctive reaction…adversely to a tragedy.

    Okay, yes…the one phone call reminding me to forgive my father, that it was my job, and that the size of the sin should have no bearings on my task at hand…

    So, I am writing about MY experience with Folks I knew who happened to be members of the same religion and how they happened to respond the same way…This is my experience of the FALC. 

    And, if it fits wear it and explain to me why, and if it doesn’t use my experience as a reminder the next time you hear of the same kind of tragedy.

    And know, the more severe the tragedy, the more the need to step up, step in, bring it up, pat their back, give a hug, send a card, make that difficult phone call.  Be a friend in the dark times…

    As you stand back, they walk alone in their darkest days. 

    And you are sending a message as you turn and walk away…

    Silent is a message.

    I heard your silent message loud and clear. 

    You were a fair weather friend, a surface polite kind, a wave in the good times, a social niceties, a loose bond of similarities of faith, but when the chips were down and the lights went out in my world, the familiar hands were gone.

    What this made me do was to reach out into new areas and reach towards to new friends…and it also gave me great insights into friendships, relationships and how you measure friends more fully in the dark than you do in the light days.

    It is easy to be friends with folks in the good times, but I now know my friends by who walks with me in the dark.

     

  • The opposite of what it looks like.

    What I am continually shocked with is what lies beneath the ‘good’ Christian folks from the FALC.  How on the surface there remains a veneer of smooth carefully constructed Norman Rockwell painting and underneath lies the drawings of an insane mind.

    The juxtaposition between the two always catches me in the gut when they attack what is written by those of us who have left, their viper tongues never cease to amaze me. 

    The words and energies strike such a contrast to the ‘clean’ lifestyle that is presented to the world.

    Reminding me of the “Gates of Heaven” cult whose compound is in Texas. The women in the ‘old time’ dress, the lack of anything ‘worldly’ and yet the men are marrying girls of 12.

    It isn’t that I set out to uncover or discover that beneath the cover of nice clean living lies the devils playground, but I did.

    And each time a member comes in and makes comments to one of the blogs, it sadly affirms who they truly are. 

    Just as you can’t judge a book by its cover…so is it with the FALC.

    It isn’t how they dress or what they refrain from, but rather what lies within each person.  Their content is how they treat other folks who are not from church, or those of us who have left.

    The first public outing I had to make after my father’s Criminal Sexual Assault became public, (only to the church members) I had wondered what I would say to them, how I would be able to talk about it when they stepped forth. 

    Well it was all for naught.  For when I arrived at the school, the first person I saw who was from church turned away.  And so did the half a dozen or so more. 

    NOT one came up to me.  Where as in the past, we had a few social small chitchats, a smile and passing comments…but when my tragedy struck I became as a stranger.

    Their response to me added shame to my already fragile state…my abuse was to ugly to approach.

    They were unwilling to help me carry this burden of being abuse. 

    I had one phone call from a Christian Sister and said was, “Remember, there is no sin to great to forgive…”  Meaning my father. Her main concern was him.

    And that is the way they have continued forth…defending Him and ignoring me…or the bold ones will attack me.

    I have been left alone to carry my burden of abuse…and what I know to be true, this is exactly how they treat the children, the children are ignored and their main concern will be about the adult who did them harm.

    I am not telling lies out of school, but I am saying how I was treated…it is what it is.  I have experienced what lies beneath the clean Norman Rockwell painting…is the opposite of what it looks like.