This process of self discovery has been amazing.    I have seen many miracles happen on my behalf.  It has also given me cause to look into those dark places that have been hidden for all of these years.  This process is  a little painful, but I am learning to deal with the pain and then let it go.  As a child, I eventually stopped crying because the tears did not make people stop hurting me.  As a matter of fact, they would make fun of me more because I was crying.  So, I just learned to choke the pain down and hide it away.  As I am going through this process, and each time I am able to let something go, and give it over to the Lord, I feel peace.  His peace is helping me to heal.

This evening, I was chatting with a good friend of mine from my home town.  We were talking about things from our neighborhood when I was younger.  This conversation was amazing because it gave me reason to scan back through my memories, and fortunately the memories that I had to scan through were some of those that I had hidden away for various reasons.  I realized tonight that I have patches of my memory that are missing, or rather, hidden away.  This particular conversation helped me uncover a lot of stuff. 

I realized tonight that I have been hiding behind my flesh since I was a young girl about the age of 5 or 6 years old.  My torment started when my parents divorced.  As a child, I could not process the fact that my parents were splitting up.  I did not understand what was going on.  I did not understand that there were some deep fractures in their relationship.  I just knew that my world was crumbling around me.  So, I did the only thing that I could do, and that was to try and keep my family together, so I told my mom that I did not want to go.  As a child, I also did not understand that adults sometimes say things out of fear, anger or hurt that they don’t really mean.  So after I told my mom that I did not want to go, she turned around, looked at me and said: “WELL STAY HERE THEN!!!”  Her words were cold and hurtful.  I remember being shocked at her response.  I now had to make the decision of whether I should go with her, or stay with my dad.  (Of course, there really was no decision to make.  My mom had obtained custody of us, so I would have gone with her that day no matter what, but obviously my parents did not sit down and explain that to us.)  I stood there on the grass, for what seemed like hours and pondered my decision, and with head held low, I decided to go with my mother.  Choosing between my parents was one of the hardest decisions that I have ever had to make, and it has haunted me my whole life.  I now know why I held onto those hurt feelings for so long.  You see, in my minds eye, maybe, just maybe if I had chosen to stay with my dad, I would not have been molested.  I would not have come into contact with my uncle in that way.  So, with that in mind, the molestation was my fault.  I chose wrong so I caused it.  I was to blame.  As an adult now, I realize that these feelings are irrational, but as I child, they made perfect sense.

The relationship I had with my uncle was very strange because on the one hand, he was my uncle and I loved him, and I also loved the attention that he was giving me.  But on the other hand, he was doing something to me that I knew was wrong, but I couldn’t do anything about it.  I was afraid to tell anyone.  My mom was re-married, and her new husband did not like my brother and I, and two of his daughters were living with us, and they did not like me either.  They picked on me all of the time.  They were in high school and I was in elementary school, but they picked on me, a little girl, someone much weaker than they were who could not defend herself.  Living in that house was lonely and miserable. 

I realized tonight that putting the weight on was a defense mechanism.  If I got fat, my uncle would no longer find me attractive, and he would leave me alone.  Unfortunately it didn’t happen that way.  Instead, he and my brother would mock me and make fun of my weight and make me cry.  A few minutes later, he would turn right around and molest me.  How does one process that?????   I processed it the only way I knew how, and that was to eat.  The more I ate, the bigger I got, the more he, my brother and my school mates started to make fun of me, the more I cried, the more I ate…..Thus, the vicious cycle began for me.  When I was in third grade, we had PE in school.  We had to change clothes.  I wasn’t wearing a bra yet.  Because of my size, I started to develop breasts early.  The girls at school saw them, and they made fun of me and told me that my breasts were big because I was fat, and then they did the worst thing ever.  They told all of the boys that made fun of me about my fat breasts.  They all started laughing at me, and mocking me, and from that moment on, I always covered my body.  I was ashamed of my body.  I hated it.  I hated my life.  I wasn’t safe at home.  I wasn’t safe at my grandma’s house.  I wasn’t safe at school, as a matter of fact, I started stuttering around that same time, and of course kids are cruel, so they started mocking me for that too.  Nobody looked out for Rechel.  I was alone in my torment with no help in sight…..so I thought.  Help would come in the most unusual way.  My Father in Heaven was looking out for me, I just didn’t know it yet.