Scripture of the day:
·
Pearl of Great Price
Wherefore, because that Satan rebelled against
me, and sought to destroy the agency of man, which I, the Lord
God, had given him, and also, that I should give unto him mine own power; by
the power of mine Only Begotten, I caused that he should be cast down;
I have not written a blog in a while. I have been personally going through some
stuff and I really needed to work it through.
I think I have made some break through recently where I feel like the
light is shining amidst the clouds.
I apologize to the people who are not Mormons and don’t follow LDS
scriptures but this scripture fits what I am writing about so well that I had
to use it.
Here is the topic of the day: abuse.
I was abused as a child, not grievously so but enough to have
lasting effects. Being abused affects
the person in that it convinces the person to have a lower self-esteem. Low enough that they allow themselves to be
abused again and again. They leave
abusive situations only to fall prey to another one. UNTIL they realize that is what is happening.
Being abused as a child warps the child’s sense of what should be
and what should not be. They don’t
recognize love in the true form as God intended it. They don’t understand the way one should act.
These are not absolutes. An
abused person may realize in certain situations the appropriate way to act but
not in others. For myself in a
professional realm I was pretty good at knowing the appropriate and not
appropriate but in my personal life and very personal relationships I struggled
with appropriate versus non-appropriate.
I knew the absolute incorrect way to act but not the stuff in between.
Then in the fall of October of 2015 I had a professional
experience that changed me. My boss at
the time was pushing and pushing, not just me but all the teachers at the
school but mostly the core teachers (math, English, and science). After one day I realized he had pushed too
far but for me it was more than that. I
realized that I needed to take a stand in general. I had one of those Scarlett O’Hara (Gone with
the Wind movie moment where Scarlett stands tall and says “As God is my
witness…”) moments where I stood in my living room and stated quite emphatically
I would not allow anyone to treat me that way EVER again. My husband was a witness to this and it
actually scared him a little as I was so emphatic. At the end of the school year I hemmed and
hawed about staying at the school. The boss had left mid-year so that wasn’t a
factor anymore. I wasn’t sure why I wasn’t quite happy. They offered me more money. No, that didn’t do it. I told them I wanted the ability to have a
say and help bring about change if it was needed. I was told I had missed the opportunity to be
in that position. That did it. I left.
Since that time I have struggled to find a good full-time job. I am not happy about teaching but I wasn’t
sure what I wanted to do.
As I was coming to work to my part-time teaching interventionist job I was thinking about my sister. She, too, had been abused. (Different people than me). Her husband recently passed away. It is coming out that he abused her. Now she has someone pressuring her to marry him. My sister had mentioned to me that she liked her freedom. I was thinking of how to talk with her about not getting into another relationship. I worry it is another abusive one.
These thoughts led me to think about being abused. Why does it happen? People have their agency and they don’t
always use it for good. God cannot
interfere with our agency so bad things happen to good people. How does one recover from abuse? Prayer, using the atonement, receiving
revelation and many times counseling are all ways I have worked on this
one. It has been more than 40 years
since I was abused and I still have things pop up, hence this blog post. The hardest part for me now is not recognizing
the potential for abuse but standing up for myself. That moment in 2015 was a big step. Now I just need the courage and strength to
keep that declaration.
