It Happened

There comes a time when speaking in circles and metaphors don’t serve the purpose of the story. This is the point where the beauty of words intersects with harsh reality. The point in space and time where there is no more cover and in order for the story to move on to its delightful end, the nasty inciting incident has to occur.

This is that point. It is a point I very rarely come to. There are so many fears and failures that happen after and because of this point. But, the important thing to remember is that this point is only the inciting incident. This point is not the climax. It is simply (but only after all these years) the place where I began to step off the path.

Hot summer nights wrapped themselves around my brothers and I. Record heat cut through the lazy boredom of summer. We couldn’t go out much so we stayed inside and watched the new tv with the amazing colors. It was too hot to sleep in my attic room. Mom was working out of town. Dad didn’t have as many rules. We fell asleep in the living room with the tv blaring. I was the oldest so I got the couch. The boys slept in the pallets on the floor.

I woke up deep in the night. I could hear the 700 club in the background. My nose filled with the smell of old cigars. I realized I couldn’t breath. Then I realized the hand over my mouth and nose was preventing my breath. I felt his weight and could hear his voice.

Even now, thirty years later the memory causes my heart to race. Evil and fear and in the background I heard “Praise the Lord”. He left without accomplishing his full mission but the impact was permanent. An assault on the physical self creates the beginning of a crack in the soul. The crack would grow wider and wider and I would fall deeper and deeper into it.

I couldn’t tell anyone. I didn’t know how to string those words together. I just knew that now I was alone. I was alone and so very afraid. I wandered through the next year in a daze that blocked out everything. Somehow we moved. I left behind the back yard with its snakes and trees. I left behind the magical world. I took the night gown I had worn that night and buried it behind the asparagus plant. I buried the evil done to me with it. Buried it and moved away to a new city.

We moved into an ordinary suburban neighborhood. We moved into an ordinary house. We went to an ordinary school with no library with windows that opened into a vision-filled blue sky. For some reason, we quit going to church. I started reading. I read and I read and I read. I filled my head with the stories. I lost the path to my Jesus. I started to forget the Bible stories. I started to forget the comfort I had found in them. I read more and more about witches and vampires and dark magic.

And yet, sometimes in the deep of night, when I woke up covered in sweat with that smell in my nose, I could see my Jesus. I could see Him telling me I was His.

This is not the climax and it is not the end. This is still only the beginning. This does not define who I am or what I do. It did for awhile like it does for most victims. Trying to decide how to take the pieces and put them back together was harder than I ever imagined. Of course, what need does anyone have to imagine such a thing.

I don’t know all the theological answers to the “once saved, always saved” question but I know this-despite my every effort to separate myself from my God, He never left me. Even in the bits that follow this incident when I walked a million miles away, He never left me. The crack in my soul that swallowed me, that blocked out every other light, did not remove me from Him. What greater proof of the Word is there than the testimony of a girl who divorced God but could still feel His gentle hand in her time of greatest need. This incident was not my time of greatest need. It was just the beginning.

And, if any others who have been hurt like this feel it is, I offer this word. You are loved. There is nothing, no one who can separate you from the Love of the Father. Jesus will make you whole again. Jesus will make you pure again. This incident is not the end. It is just a step in your journey.