There are deep dark secrets no one wants to talk about. We’ve all had them and may have believed sharing was forbidden. Shame says we are to blame. Peace takes a back seat to shame and has us wearing our feelings on soul’s edge, always there ready to direct us, keep us in bondage. After all, strong black women have to keep it together even if we’re in prison. Well, I know prison was never meant for me so I let my secrets out. They ran from me and into the arms of those who needed to embrace my story to help them release theirs. When I let my secrets loose so too went my soul, and others’, free from the enemy’s lies about who I am and what I’ll never be.
Freedom is sweet when you can speak the truth and not allow what happened define you in a negative light. The future is always bright for believers in Christ, for faith stands and provides penetrating light for needed transparency. This is the case, I believe, with my latest EEW column that begins below on protecting our children from sexual abuse. Please read, glean and offer your insights and questions in the magazine comment section. As always, please feel free to comment here on the blog, too.
She didn’t think anyone would believe her. He told her this, said they would believe it was her fault, that she wanted to play their game, that she would shame her name. So she shrunk in silence, only the tears crying out her pain during their touching game. Maybe the abuse occurred a few times, but she was forever changed.
We have heard this before. Some sexual predator targets a child, our child, and we find out about the abuse long after it stops. Our once outgoing child now seems nervous and scared. Perhaps she doesn’t want to visit with a certain relative, is acting out in school, is sexually active or is chronically depressed. We don’t understand the behavior, then the child finally reveals the unmentionable happened to her. Maybe it was her father, stepfather, uncle, cousin, pastor or his neighbor. Little girls and boys are being sexually abused right in our midst. Somehow some of us don’t think it’s supposed to happen to us. We’re good church folks and this doesn’t happen, shouldn’t be happening, to us. So when the abuse occurs some of us perpetuate the cover up. We don’t want it said that it happened to our family. Then some of us are unknowingly complicit; we sit in silence because we just don’t know what to do. Read the rest at EEW Magazine.
My One Thousand Gifts List
#461-470
Showering and dressing the boys without stress
A meeting that provided much-needed revelation
Having a breakthrough moment with a friend who challenged me to interrupt her to talk about me when she is talking incessantly about herself
Folding all and putting away most of the laundry
A shower before Justus awoke and without interruption from Nate
Devotion time early with Nathaniel
Visiting my grandfather and giving him water and reading John 1 to him
Attending Science Night at Joshua’s school and hearing him say, “I wish we could stay here. I’m loving this.”
All the boys competing then taking turns to kiss Flynn
Carla calling to check on me
