The Walking Wounded: March 2008

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Feel Free to share

Please feel free to share any experience where God has healed you. You can share experiences where you have been ministered to. I would love to hear from you.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

The Walking Wounded- A Story of God's Healing Love!

Let me take you on a journey of the soul.
You will see the snares and traps of the enemy of God and witness
the weeping tears of pain, shame and guilt that were not mine to have.
Stand back and witness the victory when I stood delivered through
the mercy and the love of God.

CHAPTER ONE

Preface

We walk among you, silent as a still night. We walk with the pain, shame, wounds, and scars that no one can see. These wounds of ours are very deep. Deep in our minds, buried within our souls, and sometimes hidden even from us. We are housewives, doctors, lawyers and laborers. We come from all walks of life. We are adults and children. We carry these wounds wrapped around us, like an invisible shroud, covering us from head to toe. We hide them and do it very well, even from those who know us best. Although we have tried, we cannot hide our wounds from the One who knows us best of all, God.
These wounds represent our shame, fears, pains, and scars that we share with no one. They are with us always, shimmering there right beneath the surface, threatening to overtake us. The pains and wounds that have tried to steal our joy and many times have even stolen lives. The choices that we have made in our lives all stem from these wounds and scars. Only One can heal us and set us free to live as we were meant to live. Free! Free to be able to remember the pain, but not to embrace it. A life with smiles instead of tears.
God sees and knows everything about us. He is our healer, our provider and our comforter. For the many who are scarred from pains, shame and the wounds of life, I write this book, The Walking Wounded. For those who walk among us with scars on their souls, that only God can see and heal, this is a book about victory through the healing love of God.
What you are about to read is based upon true events from my life. It is an autobiography of the path I have walked. There are also stories and poems about the lives of others whom God has healed. God does exist and in reading this book, I pray that you will learn to feel His love, know that no matter what you have done in life, God will always be there for you, if you ask Him. He is a loving, forgiving God who wants us to be happy. He seeks only the best for us. Miracles do exist. I know because I am one!
By reading this book, I hope you will be a changed person and become a believer in knowing that the miraculous things written about here can and do come true. I hope you will believe that you can be victorious and live a life free from the pains, scars, and wounds that you have carried within your mind, body and soul.
God Bless,
Donna Anne Bowman

Chapter 1
Silence

A friend once told me in order to have a successful book the writer must "grab" the reader on the first page or so. Although that may be true, I don't know if I'm that kind of a writer. This book is a true story. Although fiction is sometimes more exciting than truth, I pray this truthful book touches and inspires those who read it. I hope those who read this book will do so, because they are either led to by God, or just out of plain curiosity. (NIV) Isaiah 30:8 "Go now, write it on a tablet for them, and inscribe it on a scroll, that for the days to come it may be an everlasting witness." I pray that the reader does not focus solely on what happened to me when I was a child, as I did not write this to be vindictive or to hurt anyone. Rather, I want people to focus on what God did for me during this tragedy and how He revealed His wondrous love, mercy, healing, and grace in my life.
Many people will tell you that they met Jesus and started a relationship with Him at the time of their awakening to His presence in their lives. Usually this is at the moment of their salvation when they accepted Jesus as their personal Savior. I am not one of those people. I have been at odds with life since the very beginning, but as I look back now, I see God was with me always. Let me begin at the time that I believe God first entered my life on earth.
In 1951 I was born three months premature (yes I am a mature woman), and the doctors informed my parents that I would not make it. They said that, if per chance I did make it, I would have major health and mental problems. Well, God had other plans for me. Not only did I make it, there were no lasting effects from my early birth. In 1961 the medicine and the neonatal care was not as advanced as it is today. Surviving such a traumatic and dangerous birth was the first of many miracles that God would perform in my life and the lives of those around me.
I weighed only three pounds when I was born. That was a scary thing for my parents at the time. My mother told me how scared she was, and how she did not want to leave me behind at the hospital. She said I was so little that she didn't think I would survive. Her next month was filled with many tears and much prayer. I was to stay at the hospital for a little over thirty days before I weighed the required five pounds necessary so that my parents could take me home. It is by God's mercy and grace that I survived to tell the story that I am about to tell.
Even though three-pound babies rarely made it back in that time period, God had a plan and purpose for my life and nothing was going to stop that! The Bible states in Jeremiah 1:5 "God knew me when I was formed in my mother's womb." Well, I am here to tell you that no truer statement has ever been made, because without God in my life from the very beginning, I would have not survived. To understand how far God has brought me, you have to understand where I have been. This is my story.
I came from a home with three brothers and two sisters. I was the eldest. We all know that when there are that many children, the blame has got to go to someone for all the mischief; trust me, I got my share of that blame. Although I considered myself to be a little angel, my parents knew better. I was raised in a time when discipline was pretty harsh. After that you never thought about repeating those actions. Unfortunately many parents cross the line between discipline and abuse.
When I was growing up, the way to discipline back then was either to get daddy’s belt or a switch. We had to go out and pick our own switch (a small limb off of a bush or tree) to give to our parents to use to whip us with. There was a lot of mental anguish involved with the switch, because after you delivered the whipping stick, you had to go to your room and wait for the whipping to happen. There was no such thing as a time-out, unless you consider going to your room to wait for the inevitable whipping you were going to get. My parents were only repeating what had been done to them while growing up. Their parents had used either a switch or a belt for discipline and now my parents were doing the same. We are all products of our childhood and whether or not we choose a different way of life when we become adults is up to us. We have to be ready to grow as a person and become what God wants us to be. It is a wonderful thing to walk towards God and the purpose that He has for us.
My mother was a strong disciplinarian, but usually she was very fair in how she dealt with us. She never beat us but believed that spanking was all right, if it were done properly. After all, she had six children and could not allow us to get the better of her. If she had, by the time we had become teenagers, we would have walked all over her.
We could always tell, though, that it hurt our mother to correct us physically. We were everything to her and never once did we doubt her love for us. This was not the case with my daddy. I use the term "daddy" with reservation. It takes much more than a sperm donor to make a good father and ours was not the great role model that he presented to the outside world. Somewhere deep within him there was a darkness that no one saw, not even those who loved him and were very close to him. Something was not quite right about him, but he hid it very well from others.
Using the term "spanked" would be an inadequate term to describe how he actually did correct us physically. Daddy just whipped you and he did it very hard. The smallest infraction was punishable by the belt. I remember dreading coming home if I had gotten into trouble at school for something. I could feel the pain from that belt before I even got home. My daddy had been raised to discipline with a belt, so this was normal to him. It was a cycle of physical abuse that needed to be broken.
I did not realize, until years later, that this was abuse and not the proper way to discipline a child. Beatings never do anything for a child except hurt them, both inside and out. My youngest sister never received any spankings at all. I used to think it was because, by the time she had come along, my parents had gotten tired out, but that was not true. My little sister was just a good kid and had seen the consequences of what could happen if you misbehaved. So she never did. She was a good child who turned out to be a good woman.
Also, my youngest brother got disciplined very little. But the first four of us suffered the harsh beatings that daddy had given out. I have been whipped so badly and with such fury that I even passed out at times. Although I was very young, I remember the many times that my three siblings and I were corrected with that belt. I’ve watched my mother put butter on my eldest brother's back, so that she could gently pull his shirt off without hurting him further. There was blood all over the back of his shirt from daddy’s disciplining. I swore that when I got to be an adult that I would never beat my children. But those whippings were nothing compared to what daddy was going to do to me later.
I was six years old when things started to change in my life. The change was very dramatic and I was traumatized so badly that it would take years for God to heal my heart and mind. I was going to experience a life-altering horrific event that would start me on the road to self-destruction, shame, guilt, pain, anger and self-loathing. This was the day that I lost my innocence. There is nothing more precious than the innocence of a child. It is a time when we still believe in Santa Claus and fairies. We make wishes upon the stars, see animals in the clouds, make mud pies and have imaginary friends. It's a time when all things are a wonder to us. There is nothing in the world that is more pure and innocent than children. Nothing should interfere with their innocence.
At six, I started to be touched in a way that was unacceptable. Of course being that young, I didn't think too much about it. I mean, who talked about sex in the fifties and early sixties? Who talked about inappropriate touches? During that time any kind of subjects about abuse or sex were taboo, let alone incest. We lived in a different world then. These topics were not openly discussed on TV or radio as they are today. There were no talk shows where people confronted their abusers. Yet out of the public eye there were many, many victims and perpetrators. Hidden skeletons in the closets of many families.
In my family there lurked an evil. This person, who should have been my protector, and who was my hero, committed the worst atrocity that anyone can inflict upon a child. This was my daddy. No one knew he was a pedophile. Incest! The word creates a note of unrest within my spirit even today. (NIV) Matthew 15:19 "For out of the heart came evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony and slander."
I have often asked myself, "Why me?" I never received an answer to that question until I was much older and came to know Jesus as Lord and Savior of my life. People react to abuse in many different ways. I buried mine deeply within me. I put it aside, as I would go on to do concerning many other bad things that were happening in my life. It became a way for me to survive in the moment. Although I consciously knew it had happened to me, I chose not to deal with it until I was much older; by then my life was a wreck. I had really messed it up. I don't use the abuse inflicted upon me as an excuse for the things that I later did, but I can say with all honestly that this one horrendous act was the crumbling building block of my relationships with men. It would follow me until God revealed to me what the problem was, and then go on to heal me.
Pedophiles condition the children they are abusing by brainwashing them to accept the abuse without a second thought. At first, I thought that it was normal for daddies to bathe their children and to touch them in intimate places. What he was doing to me was much more than just bathing, although as a 6-year-old child, I did not interpret it that way. I thought he was just washing me well. This was my daddy, so I saw nothing dirty or bad about it. If you get a child at an early enough age, you can make them believe anything.
I was also told by my daddy that if I said anything to anyone, about what he was doing, that the police would come and get my loved ones, and I would never see any of them again. I was told that I would never see my beloved daddy again either. At the age of six, I believed everything he told me to be the truth. I thought my daddy could do no wrong. He used my love for him against me. I kept silent. He told me they would come and take all my brothers and sisters away. I kept silent. He told me that my mother would leave. I kept silent. He said people would not love me anymore. I kept silent. I would continue to be silent for many years; never dreaming that what was being perpetrated on me was also being embedded upon my soul and would have an everlasting effect on my life. An effect that only God could heal because I did not even realize that it was there. I was so conditioned by my daddy's ways, that I accepted this as a natural part of my life. Children who are sexually abused, those who are coerced into sexual activity before they are mentally, emotionally, or physically able to understand the experience, carry scars within them and many of them do not even know it.
This "only" touching went on and off until I turned ten. Daddy was in and out of the house by then. He was either going off in hiding for something illegal he had done, or he was spending time in a jail cell somewhere. What he had prepared me for over the past years came to pass the summer I was to turn ten. I was raped one day while he was supposed to be taking me to the store with him. (NIV) Leviticus 18:6 "No one is to approach any close relative to have sexual relations with them."
When I think of that summer of 1961, before the rape changed my whole world, I can still smell the honeysuckle. Even now, when I close my eyes, that fragrance is as sweet, rich, and clinging as it was when I was ten years old. The month of May had just come around and that was the start of one of our favorite things to do as kids. Going without shoes! Mother was really particular about our wearing shoes until at least May. She believed those were, what we refer to in the South, as the dog days of summer. The dates were never the exact same time for every family, but all our mothers and grandmothers agreed that before the beginning of the dog days, we had to wear shoes. I was looking forward to going outside and walking around in the dirt. I enjoyed the feel of it as it squished beneath my feet. I imagined this must be what the hot sand feels like at the beach. Of course, I had never been to a beach, but I could always pretend. We lived in two states, Georgia and South Carolina. Daddy would move us back and forth, sometimes to stay one step ahead of the law. I sure don't remember ever staying at any one place for any long period of time. We were living in South Carolina the summer that I was ten. There were lots of pine trees with their soft, bluish-green needles and the aroma of pinesap filling the air. If you were not really careful you could accidentally step on the sap. It was so sticky, that it would take rubbing alcohol to get it off of your skin. The wind moving through the trees made a lonesome sound, but I always felt at peace there, until that summer when my whole world changed and I no longer felt safe.
That summer, I remember walking to the store, which was right down the road from our home. I had a quarter that I had been given from one of my many aunts or uncles and this was a real treat for me. Getting to buy that RC Cola and a Moon Pie was so exciting. To this day, I still love Moon Pies. Drinking RC Cola's and eating a Moon Pie with the marshmallow filling, or putting peanuts in your coke and drinking it that way. It is a favorite memory of my childhood. I still remember the delicious taste of it all.
All these things, I can remember with lots of clarity because this was the time that my whole life was turned upside down. My innocence was stolen. It was one of the hottest and most humid days that we had experienced in a long time. Daddy decided that he had to go to the store and I welcomed his invitation to come along for the ride. I was the eldest so I usually got to go along, if he had no other stops, and if he were coming straight back. On this day I noticed that he seemed distant. He acted like something was on his mind. Daddy said that he had to stop by someone's house that he knew. I thought he was probably going to one of his friends’ houses that mother did not like. He had some of those.
Daddy's car was long and dark. To me, it looked like a hearse, but its seats were big and comfortable. I sat on the passenger's side with the air blowing in my face from the open side window, and I was singing songs. The roar of the engine drowned out my voice. I looked at daddy and wondered if I could talk him into buying me a piece of candy while we were in the store. Maybe even buy a few extra so I could take some home to my two brothers and sister. Being a big sister, I liked doing that. When we got to the store, I'd smile and ask for one, two or maybe three. Yeah, that was my plan.
The car slowed down and I looked up to see that we were turning off of the road. The tires were kicking up red dust as we came to a stop at a mobile home that I was unfamiliar with. Daddy still had that strange look on his face as he told me to get out of the car and to come inside with him; that he had something he had to do. He led me inside and told me to go to the back of the house to the bedroom. Daddy came up behind me and told me to lie on the bed and close my eyes. I did exactly as he said. You did not argue with daddy. You would get a bad whipping for talking back. I laid down on the bed and shut my eyes. He said he wanted to check something on me, and I could feel my shorts being pulled down. I thought, "I don't like this one bit!" but I knew better than to say anything. Anyway, I believed that my daddy would never hurt me.
I felt a hand over my mouth and I screamed from the pain. I opened my eyes for a split second and saw the face of my daddy. His face and head were turned to the side, not able to look at me while he was holding me down. What was he doing?
Although the devastating penetration didn't last very long, it hurt really, really badly. I had no idea what had just happened to me, but I sure didn't like it. I could feel the tears running down my face, and they were hitting the pillow where I lay. My private area was hurting so badly. Then daddy said, "You can open your eyes now, Donna. You can't tell anyone about this. Remember, you are my special girl and, if you tell, bad people will come and get me. The bad guys will come and get daddy. I will never get to see you again. Do you understand that? They will take me away because you were bad when you told. You will lose your mother, brothers and sister. So we will keep this just between you and me, and we will never talk about it to anyone." This was nothing new to me, as he had said these same words to me while bathing me for years.
We were not in that mobile home very long. To this day, I do not know whose home it was. All I remember is that this is where my innocence was ripped from me. The house could have been family or friends. I do know that daddy had two cousins that ran whorehouses in that town, and they had a number of mobile homes that they operated their "businesses" out of. It could very well have been one of these places. Daddy still took me to the store, but my plan on asking for candy didn't happen. He bought us some anyway without my having to ask. As we drove home he kept a close eye on me the whole time. Throughout the day I noticed that he was watching me. He told mother that I had to go to bed early that night because he had to get on me (fuss at me) while we were at the store. I wondered why I had to go to bed early. I thought that I did as I was told. But I knew better than to call my daddy a liar. That would be a very bad thing to do. I kept silent.
That day is forever branded in my mind and on my heart. I remember it like it was yesterday, although it happened over forty-four years ago. Now I realize that he had it all planned out ahead of time, and then he put his plan into action. He knew exactly when and where he would be doing what he did to me. The betrayal was complete.
I had been so conditioned by him over the years to remain silent, that I did not say one word. Not one word to anyone. I wasn't going to say anything that would cause them to take my daddy away. In my child's mind, I believed that he did not mean to hurt me. I had to be a good girl and keep quiet. Yes, quiet, very quiet.
During daddy's atrocious act in the mobile home, I had closed my eyes and pretended to be somewhere else. I later learned this is called disassociation. Although this was the first time that daddy did this to me, it would not be the last. The rapes happened again and again as I grew to be a young woman. I was his "special" girl. It happened many times and in many places and always when there were no other adults around. I was not allowed outside to play when mother was gone. I even remember daddy sending my brothers and sisters out to play and telling them not to come back into the house. I was inside with a monster that would hurt my body again and again.
There were times when my daddy was not in our lives and I felt really relieved when he was gone. It was the only time in my childhood I can remember having a feeling of peace. There were periods of time when he was in jail, or on the run trying to stay one step ahead of the law, or he was driving a truck for work, when he was not home with us. He set a "fine" example for my brothers and sisters to follow. He was involved in a lot of illegal activities and had served quite a bit of time in jail. So when he was gone, I felt safe. At least that’s what I told myself when I allowed myself to even think about what had happened to me.
Most of the time, I just ignored it. I pretended these acts were not happening to me. They did not exist in my fantasy world. It is a hard thing to conceive that a father could do such a thing to his own child. A real father would never have even entertained such evil thoughts. A father, who loves their children in the pure and nurturing way God meant for them to be loved, is what makes a great daddy. One who protects their children instead of hurting them. What I did not realize is that my heart was hurting and sorrowful because of these wounds inflicted upon my soul.
I can now see that this secret and my silence caused me tremendous pain and low self-esteem. I know that Satan wanted me to believe that I was nothing; that I was worthless. But that was a lie from the very father of lies. The liar of all liars. But God had a plan for my life. He knew me because He made me. He knew I was hurting because I came from Him and I was His, even before I knew it. The Bible states in (NIV) Psalm 130:14 "I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well."
During the times of these horrendous acts of abuse over the years, I learned to have a great imagination. I lived in a world of fantasy. The times that he raped me, in my mind, I was in another country, maybe a princess in a tower or I was riding horses across lands in different countries that I had studied about in school. I was in Ireland, Scotland, France, and England. In these fantasies I was in control. I was the boss and it was up to me what happened in my life. In my mind I was everywhere except where I really was. It was my way of dealing with it the only way I knew how. But things were about to change. I was starting to grow into a young woman.
Around the age of thirteen, I started the ninth grade and puberty was setting in. However, my mind was still not as mature as it should have been. I think the reason behind that is because I lived in a fantasy world the majority of my young life. The real world did not hold any attraction for me. At this time, thankfully, my daddy was in jail again. I was not happy that he was in jail, but I was glad that he was not home to prey upon me. We had moved from South Carolina to Georgia to be near the jail in which he was incarcerated. I entered school that year with so many insecurities. At night I would think about everything that my daddy had been doing to me. I lay awake quite often listening to the sound of the crickets outside the window and wondered if I would ever be old enough or strong enough to run away. I thought perhaps some of it was my fault. I must have done something really wrong to be treated this way. I questioned myself quite often. I had gotten so use to lying awake at night dreading that he might come into my room, that even when he was locked up, I still could not go to sleep quickly from force of habit. Night after night I tried to go to sleep quickly, but it just never happened.
I wondered if perhaps I had been adopted because the things that daddy did to me made no sense. I once thought that maybe I was not his blood daughter. Although I never believed that my sweet mother could have done anything immoral, at least then I could have made an excuse for him and his actions. I tried every way I could think of to rationalize his behavior, and I always came up short. In my mind, I made many excuses over the years for what he did. There was some part of me, that little girl before the age of six, who still loved her daddy.
By the age of fifteen, there were lots of physical, mental and emotional changes starting to place within me. As I matured, I began to see things differently. Nowadays, ten-year-old children know more than I did when I was fifteen. We lived in different times and the world did not seem to go as fast as it does now. There were lazy days when we just enjoyed doing nothing. I remember as a youngster lying under a tree with my younger sister just looking at the sky and trying to figure out what figures the clouds formations resembled. Warm spring days flowed into longer summer days that had us playing outside most of the time. I was never inside unless it was raining, or unless mother was gone and daddy was home and I was forced to stay inside with him. I enjoyed those times with my siblings. I did not have a clue back then how much harsher my life was going to get.
By the time I was about fifteen, I did start to think about things that were going on in my life. I started to question the actions of my daddy. Other girls talked about how much they loved their daddies and how wonderful their relationships were with them. I never said anything about mine. What could I say? I had been silent all my life about my daddy. How do you tell a friend or family member about something like incest? Of course, I did not know that was what it was called. So I kept doing the same thing that I had done for the majority of my young life. I kept silent. That way I did not have to deal with it at all. I just put it in the back of my mind and kept on going.
Before the age of seventeen, I had to make all kinds of excuses about why I did not want to go anywhere with him. I got pretty inventive. I just had to make sure if mother was going somewhere, then I would find a way to invite myself along. She never knew the real reason why I always wanted to be with her when she left the house. Even if she was in another room, I was always trying to make sure that I was with her. It was not an easy thing to do. It was also very tiring and the stress was unbelievable.
I am sure that some may wonder why I did not tell on my daddy. How could I? I had been conditioned since the age of six to be silent or all kinds of bad things would happen to the ones I loved. So I stayed silent. That silence almost cost me my sanity and even my life on more than one occasion. (NIV) Proverbs 9:21 "Although I am blameless, I have no concern for myself; I despise my life." The odd thing about this was no one knew I was hurting. I hid it all and held it close to my heart so no one could see. No one knew the pain within my heart and the scars that had been inflicted upon my soul. No one knew--except God. He could see it. He was waiting for me to let Him help me. Many years would pass before this happened, because as far as I was concerned, I had no problems at all. I had no problems because "it" did not exist except when I had to think about it, like at night in my bed. It was at night that those demons arose within my mind.
So, I just didn't think about it and believed that it would go away, at least for a moment in time. As I have learned, just because people do not dwell on traumatic things that have gone on in their lives, does not make the trauma go away. The disturbance to my soul would set me on a path to a way of thinking and dealing with problems that were unrealistic and harmful. This disturbance to my soul did not go away. It was buried very deeply within me, and one day I would have to deal with all of it. But God was there, silently watching and waiting. He knew, that although I did not have a good start, I would have a great finish. I am ever so thankful for His mercy, love and grace. (NIV)II Corinthians 12:9-10 "But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong."
Let me take you on a journey of the soul. You will see the traps of the enemy of God and witness the weeping tears of pain, shame, and guilt that were not mine to have. Stand back and witness the victory when I stood delivered by the Blood of Jesus through the mercy and the love of God.

The Walking Wounded

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