Stirrings

Several issues are being moved to the front burner and God is stirring the pot.

The most exciting is that my new online friend, Sandy, is looking at flying down for a long weekend in February. Sandy was a victim of sexual misconduct at the age of 17 and during the same year that I was. We are the same ages. Our stories are eerily similar. Emailing has been a wonderful experience but the thought of connecting for 3 or 4 days face to face sounds like a dream. We are even talking about combining forces on some issues that we think need viewing from a victim's standpoint.

Another issue that is being stirred is not so exciting. The second pastoral relationship in which I was involved seems to still have its claws in me. As my husband and Dan and I sat and talked this evening about some of my issues with sex, I realized that some undealt with shame was still lingering around the relationship with Minton. When I think about Bob I don't feel the same shame. I have dismantled so much shame in the past few years that I can usually spot it in an instance and voila there it is.

I have told of my relationship with Bob on the blog in much more detail than mine with Minton. That is because I cringe still to share about that one. Why? I have some ideas as to why...... I was two years older at the time and I think I still blame myself more fully. I felt a lot of guilt and shame during this relationship while during the one with Bob, while shame and guilt were there, they were deeply buried under the ideology of a 17 year old. I still believed nothing could hurt me. My brain was not fully fuctioning as an adult. I never really connected mentally with how bizarre and wrong the situation was with Bob. With Minton, I knew from the start.

Also, I was caught alone with him one time by my mom very early in the relationship and before anything of any magnitude had occured in the sexual realm. She reacted and thought something wasn't right. Having been raised to believe that life revolved around "what was done" and "what was not done" I had no reference to the fact that sin was sin because it would HURT me. All I picked up on when my mom tried to talk with me about it, was that it embarrassed her. I denied anything being wrong and that was the last time she mentioned it. She just spent a lot of time freaking over stuff that was stupid to freak over. I don't think I mattered as much as "what was done" and "what the neighbors would think." I am still angry about that..... hmm.

This is not going to be fun digging back through this stuff but I know the freedom that has come from dealing with the baggage over Bob so I won't avoid it. I don't guess.

God do I have to do this, again?

I don't think He will push me. He doesn't have to. The overachiever in me pushes. If I don't deal with it voluntarily it will spew out of places I am unaware and at people that don't deserve it.

It is a lot harder to see the power issue and the abuse in the relationship when I was an adult.

Di