“You have no right to look with contempt upon yourself when God has taken such an interest in you.”

I am a survivor. I am a survivor of sexual abuse. But that is not all I am.

Some days I feeling like I’m failing, like I’m letting him violate all over again. It is hard to be happy and cheerful and confident while working through all this garbage. I want to move on. I want to be happy. I want to be content. But it is just so hard. I want to be able to forget again. I want to be able to wake up and think of something else. I want to stop focusing on everything that has been taken from me. I want to see the good in life instead of the bad. I want to be able to live life unafraid of what is lurking in the darkness.

 I feel violated. I feel defeated. I don’t want to do it anymore. I want to move on. Surely this cannot be all my life has to offer. I know this is not true. Yet, often times, this is how I feel. I wake up and look in the mirror and see a big sign stamped on my forehead, “Victim: Violated, Wounded, Defeated, Dirty, Disgusting, Ugly, Weak, Vulnerable, Failure”.

Needless to say, I have a bit of a self-esteem problem today. Days like today, I want to stay in bed. I want to avoid the world. I want to erase everything in my brain and just go blank. I want to forget. But, the devil won’t let me. He keeps creeping into my thoughts, making me doubt, making me focus on all the negatives in my life, making me forget who I really am: a dearly loved child of God. Peace.

“You have no right to look with contempt upon yourself when God has taken such an interest in you.”

Who am I to feel disgusting, ugly, weak, wounded, defeated, failing or vulnerable? When God looks at me, he doesn’t see that, he doesn’t see some disgusting lump of wasted life. He sees his dearly love child.

 “What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us?  He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.” Romans 8:31-34

Though on my own, because of sin, I AM defeated, wounded, violated, dirty, disgusting, ugly, weak, vulnerable, and a failure, because of JESUS I am victorious, strong, beautiful, pure, safe and loved.  

Selected verses from Lamentations 3:

7-26 ^“ He has walled me in so I cannot escape;
he has weighed me down with chains.
 Even when I call out or cry for help,
he shuts out my prayer.
 He has barred my way with blocks of stone;
he has made my paths crooked.

 Like a bear lying in wait,
like a lion in hiding,
 he dragged me from the path and mangled me
and left me without help.
He drew his bow
and made me the target for his arrows.

 He pierced my heart
with arrows from his quiver.
I became the laughingstock of all my people;
they mock me in song all day long.
He has filled me with bitter herbs
and sated me with gall.

 He has broken my teeth with gravel;
he has trampled me in the dust.
I have been deprived of peace;
I have forgotten what prosperity is.
So I say, “My splendor is gone
and all that I had hoped from the Lord.”

I remember my affliction and my wandering,
the bitterness and the gall.
I well remember them,
and my soul is downcast within me.
Yet this I call to mind
and therefore I have hope:

Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion;
therefore I will wait for him.”

The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him,
to the one who seeks him;
it is good to wait quietly
for the salvation of the Lord.”

 

49-58 ^“ My eyes will flow unceasingly,
without relief,
until the Lord looks down
from heaven and sees.
What I see brings grief to my soul
because of all the women of my city.

Those who were my enemies without cause
hunted me like a bird.
They tried to end my life in a pit
and threw stones at me;
 the waters closed over my head,
and I thought I was about to be cut off.I called on your name, O Lord,
from the depths of the pit.
You heard my plea: “Do not close your ears
to my cry for relief.”
You came near when I called you,
and you said, “Do not fear.”

 O Lord, you took up my case;
you redeemed my life.”

Romans 8:37 “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”