Letters from the Other Side

13. There is no testimony without a test or message without a mess

Another 2018 Social Media post

Dear friends

For someone out there who needs encouragement

This is my testimony: I come from a broken home and a dysfunctional childhood background. The enemy tried to murder me in the womb, as well as later in a car accident.

In my late teenage years (the late 1990s) I became very angry with God. Why did He allow all those bad things to happen to me?

I started clubbing and messing around with the New Age because the pain was unbearable and I just wanted a semblance of control over my own life. I was deeply depressed, had suicidal thoughts and I wanted to die. The Alternative Rock music I listened to back then seemed to soothe the ache and longing. Kurt Cobain was my brother in pain.

I went out to clubs and pubs trying to fill the void in my soul but I'd come back home and feel even emptier. Drinking was stupid. Dancing was fun, until it wasn't anymore and making out with strangers didn't make me feel any better.

I was angry at God. I felt alone. There was something else. I could sense something dark brooding just under the surface of my consciousness. Something I could hardly even admit to myself.

God came for me like the Father in the prodigal son story. He was relentless in His pursuit, sending Christians to me wherever I turned. I would hear the song "Adam, Adam, Where Are You?" by Don Francisco playing over and over in my head. Literally. Like a non-stop record playing from the gramophone of my heart. I felt God pulling me. Literally. Like a physical, magnetic force reeling me in until I eventually gave way.

After my rebellion, in the year 2000, I returned to my Heavenly Father. I started to get flashbacks and underlying memories rose to the surface of sexual abuse and rape incidents. Nobody believed me. It was so horrendous, I could hardly believe it myself. They were the vague, hazy, indistinct memories of a child. 

Most people said I was making it up to get attention. Others said I was deceived by the devil and had a mental illness. The last group, and this is my personal favourite, said I was being controlled by the one person who actually did believe me, and this one, kind person was executing their personal vendetta of revenge on the accused. The final verdict: the abuser was a helpless, innocent lamb and I was a calculating, malicious, little liar.

I was in my second year at Bible College at the time and though the church leaders initially believed me, a Jezebel and an Ahab convinced them I was lying. I was treated like a pariah and accused of tarnishing the church's reputation. One female leader even came up to me in the corridor, confronted me, in front of my friends and fellow classmates and asked me how I could do it? How could I live with myself?! I was completely taken aback and devastated.

So it is safe to say, that I understand what most women face when they do decide to come forward with the truth. I understand even better why the majority decide not to. It gets ugly. The mud-slinging smear campaign gets real ugly. "Dis Ek, Anna"("It's Me, Anna"), is a very good Afrikaans book and film about this phenomenon.

The pain of the abuse and rape was excruciating but the way people treated me after I spoke up was something I never expected in my wildest nightmares. Like a sucker punch to the pit of the stomach. Or a punch in the face with a knuckleduster. It was horrifying and it stung like hell. In many ways it shattered me. It was the final nail to the coffin. It was almost just as traumatising as the actual sexual violence even if they hadn't raised a hand to me.