Sexual Abuse

Well, that last topic was hard. This next one is harder but it’s also pivotal.

The speaker came with three framed canvasses sitting on easels. The first canvas, covered with a yellow cloth, represented the ideal family; the second, covered with a red cloth, represented sexual abuse and its effects and the third, covered with blue, represented healing.

First Canvas:
Primary colours can’t be made. They have to be received. Babies come with an empty palate. The speaker uncovered the first canvas which was completely white. Yellow represents “being”. Who I am is acceptable. She painted a broad, vertical stripe of yellow on the canvas. Red is “receiving”. Infants have needs. They can’t do anything for themselves. All they can do is receive. A broad, vertical stripe of red was placed beside the yellow. Blue is giving. This represents our connectedness and our ability to express our will. Blue is painted beside the red. God’s intention was that we would receive so we could go out into a place of safety and well-being. White is the presence of all colour. Black is the absence of all colour.

Second Canvas:
She spoke of the different forms of sexual abuse. It isn’t limited to physical contact but can be visual and verbal as well. Much of this part of her talk (and maybe all, I don’t know), came from a book which has been highly recommended to me and which I have purchased but not yet read is The Wounded Heart by Dan Allendar. But what happens to the soul when one is wounded in this way? It affects how we see God and others.

Powerlessness: We were created to have the power to choose. Being able to choose allows us to create boundaries and helps in our identity. But the abused is stripped of her ability to choose. She’s powerless to stop the relentlessness in her soul. She believes that who she is isn’t enough.

Betrayal: Betrayal happens because the abuse occurs in the context of relationship. Not only is she betrayed by her abuser but she betrays herself by casting the blame on herself. She is betrayed by the non-offending parent for not rescuing her and her body betrays her.

Ambivalence: I want it, I like it but it hurts. There becomes a hatred of pleasure and longing. I know that for me, ambivalence was a huge thing and perhaps it’s that ambivalence in the victim that feeds the abuser’s lie that “she really did like it”.

The speaker unveils the second canvas which is a copy of the first canvas. She covers over the primary colours and, indeed, the entire canvas with black paint. The victim is forced to receive and give what she doesn’t want but kids need to know that they have some control. Control = boundaries. With poor boundaries, everything mixes together, resulting in shame, fear, despair, anger, self-hatred and guilt. If and when the child discloses but isn’t believed, the shame, fear, despair, anger, self-hatred and guilt increases and a new belief system develops: “sex is love,” “people can’t be trusted,” etc.

It’s hard to stay in this place. There are coping ways but these stunt our growth as we continue to use them. The abused puts on colour to cover over the pain but God meant the colour to come from within. She takes pieces of cloth with dull, muted colours and slaps them over the black paint.

We cope in various ways: by denial—pretending nothing happened; minimizing—it isn’t as bad as someone else’s abuse; rationalizing—he didn’t mean it, he was drunk; repressing—the events are too painful so they’re buried; splitting—something is either all good or all bad which leads to black and white thinking; living behind a wall; using control; hating, despising and even mutilating our bodies or making our body an idol; covering up with weight; addictions; perfectionism; overachieving; isolation; shutting ourselves off; avoiding sex or compulsively seeking it; going to sex to fulfill non-sexual needs; passivity—not trusting our feelings; generalized guilt and low self-esteem; the beliefs we adopt such as believing we have no choice, that life is unpredictable, sex is love, men only want one thing, I am not enough, etc.; detached from all feeling and can’t cry; revictimizing of ourselves—I’ll just put up with it, it will be over soon; and not living, just existing, trying to find life outside ourselves.

Third Canvas:
The third canvas is uncovered. All we see is blackness on this canvas. To appropriate the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, we need to invite Jesus into our brokenness. Can we trust him? We can ask the question (which is often asked during prayer time in small group), “Where were you Jesus?” He answers, “I was there. I have the pieces you left behind and I want to give them back to you.”

We need to look honestly at the pain and our self-protective ways. We think we have to look good for God but God wants us to come to him in our dirty clothes, put our coping ways onto the cross and come to him.

We need to forgive those who didn’t help us.

We need the truth to penetrate our hears and allow the Spirit to reveal the lies. For instance, we may have been taught and believe that anger is wrong. But anger is important, self-respecting and part of the grief. Jesus was angry at people using the temple for ways it was not intended. We are God’s temple. Other lies we may need revealled are things like, “Sex is dirty and wrong.” The truth is, sex is good! Another lie is, “I am powerless.” The truth is that I do have a choice now.

We need to heal the memories by inviting Jesus into those places and let him speak to us in the memories.

We need to restore relationships by both giving and receiving. It’s important to reach out in risk and vulnerability. As I control, I take away choice.

As we invite Jesus into our pain, he gives us pure yellow, red and blue. On the black canvas she paints a white cross. She goes to the second canvas with the pieces of dull-coloured cloth, snips bits off, presses them onto the cross and paints a black line on the white cross—the wrong done to us is put onto the cross. She paints a stream of yellow, red and blue coming from the centre of the cross. Then she grabs pieces of the black and rips them away to reveal bright colours beneath. Satan came to steal, kill and destroy. Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil, to give life and light. No one who believes in him should stay in darkness.

It was a powerful illustration of how we’ve used false ways of living to cover over the blackness within and what Jesus does to change us. The third canvas drew me. There was a beauty in it as I looked at all the pieces of it. Such symbolism! It pictured my life perfectly. An idea began to form in my mind and later that night I approached the speaker and asked if there was some way I could obtain the third canvas, the painting of the cross. She wasn’t sure. She apparently reuses the canvasses each time she gives this talk and the conference pays for materials so they’re not really hers to dispose of. But she was willing to talk to the director and the next day she came to me and said that I could buy it. I wrote her a cheque that very minute.

I was so excited I could hardly be kept down. It was so hard to restrain myself and not tell everyone that that beautiful painting was now mine (it had to stay at the front till the end of the conference though). I eventually did tell a few people I was closest too and they were very excited for me too. Really, I was rather shocked at my audacity in asking but I felt almost a push to do it and an urgency as well. I’ve been wanting a cross for the wall above the altar in my prayer room, and I didn’t want anything that was glitzy or meaningless. I wanted something that had layers of meaning. I had thought of some sort of quilted wall hanging but I knew I’d never make the time. As I looked at the painting from where I sat, I knew that it was exactly what I’ve been wanting—showing all my spiritual messiness and exactly what Jesus has done for me.

She came to me the next day and told me that others, since, had been asking if they could buy it. And then she came to me again, this time stating that since so many others had been asking for it but I had gotten it first, she was convinced that I was the one who was meant to have it and asked if I’d like her to write something on the back. Yes! Please! And so my prayer room has a new addition.

(The painting really is much more vibrant than the photo shows but this was the best the camera in my palmtop could do.)