I was especially impressed with how Kriss handled a very difficult subject. No one wants to talk about child abuse but so many have been abused and won't ask for help. Maybe this message will be source of encouragement. Larry
The
Four-Letter Word That Saves
by Kriss Erickson
My
father smiled blissfully as he ran his hands over parts of my body that no
father of a 13 year-old girl should touch.
I wanted to pull away but I was so scared.
Not of what he’d do. He’d
beaten me nearly unconscious more times than I could remember.
But this touch was gentle. It
was a close to love as I could get from him.
And I was afraid to lose that tiny shred of love.
“What
are you doing?” my mother shrieked. My
father pulled his hands from beneath my blouse and I ran to Mom for comfort. I
tried to wrap my shaking arms around her for a hug but she pushed me away.
As tears of disbelief coursed down my cheeks, I stammered, “Mom,
he--”
“Not
one more word!” she yelled. “How
dare you speak against your father? You little slut!”
I
ran to the back yard and hid under our huge hydrangea bush, twiddling with the
tiny flower heads until they coursed like blue rain faster than my tears.
I
wanted to die. The cycle of
beatings and fondling started when I was a baby and there was no end in sight. I
felt a touch on my shoulder. I
flinched but only the bush was behind me. Gentle energy coursed through my
trembling body and I sensed more than heard a single word.
“Live!”
I
didn’t want to live. Yet, the gentle energy and the single word of
encouragement gave me enough strength to go back into the house and accept my
dad’s mumbled apology. After
dinner crawled back under the bush to think.
I twiddled a blue flower bud and daydreamed.
I
was a princess, locked in a cruel cage, waiting for my Prince to rescue me. I
dreamed of a great Prince who was ready to marry.
His Kingdom was vast and his resources unlimited.
Surely he could choose the most beautiful, talented and virtuous woman in
the world to be His bride. But no
matter how many wonderful young maidens he saw, he didn’t fall in love with
any of them.
One
day, His royal coach was passing through a nearby city when the Prince told the
driver to stop. In a dark alley the Prince’s sharp eyes had spotted what
looked like a pile of rags. He
jumped from the carriage and ran into the alley.
Gently, he lifted the bundle of stinking rags and carried it to the royal
coach.
Wrapped
in the rags was a girl. From the
bruises on her body and the blood streaked across her legs and torso, it looked
like she’d been beaten and left for dead.
The black line of mascara dripping down her cheek, smeared rouge and
lipstick, plaited hair and lack of underclothing, marked her as a prostitute.
“Why
did you stop the carriage, sire?” asked the driver. When he saw the girl, he pulled a handkerchief from his
pocket and held it over his nose. “She’s just a worthless tramp!
The city is full of them. Surely you didn’t stop for her.”
The
Prince frowned, then sighed. What
he said next shocked the man so much he nearly fell over. “Yes, I did stop for
her. This girl will return to the
palace. There we will clean and
dress her and bind her wounds.”
“You
can’t be serious!” the driver sputtered.
“What could you possibly want with that--that--creature?”
The
Prince’s face grew stern and his eyes flashed with anger.
“This is no creature. This is the young woman I have chosen to be my
bride!”
I
smiled from my grassy hideaway and knew Who had urged me to live.
And I knew I could, and would, live, no matter how many more cycles of
abuse I had to endure.
Because
my Prince has already come. You’ve heard of Him. He also goes by the King of
Kings: The Everlasting Father…
The Prince of Peace. His goal in all of human history has been and continues to
be, to have an intimate, personal relationship with each of us. No matter what
we do or how many times we slap Him in the face.
He
reaches out to us in our most unlovable condition. We’ve become a picky and
petty race. We howl if someone
dings our car door. We spend hundreds on cleaning products, thousands on cars
and sign petitions for animal rights. Yet our sense of community has faded so
much over the past 40 years that often we don’t know who works at the local
grocery store or who delivers our
We
see our neighbors on Saturdays when we mow our grass and then only at a
distance. “Quality time” is a
buzzword and only includes those in our immediate family who we absolutely must
talk to. No wonder so many fall
through the cracks, and so many feel lost.
We
may be connected to the internet, but we’re less and less connected to each
other. Sometimes life hits us again and again until the hundred percent of
potential God put into us from the day of our birth falls to seventy-five, then
fifty, then twenty, then zero. Then
we have only ourselves left, and nowhere to turn.
Then
He comes. “. . .on the day you were born your naval cord was not cut, nor were
you washed in water to cleanse you: you were not rubbed with salt nor swathed in
swaddling cloths. No eye pitied
you, to do any of these things for you, to have compassion on you; but you were
thrown out into the open field, when you yourself were loathed on the day you
were born. And when I passed by you
and saw you struggling in your own blood, I said to you in your blood,
“Live!”
Yes,
I said to you in your blood, “Live!” (Ezekiel 16 : 4b - 6, NKJ)
I
had felt so lost, so hopeless, before the Lord sent His Spirit into me and gave
me His breath of life. That one
word from Him changed everything. From
the time I was six months old, my parents, through neglect and abuse, said over
and over, “Die!”
God
erased it all, every time I lay trembling after a beating. He simply said, “Live!”
There
are people all around us living without hope.
People we may be ashamed or afraid to associate with.
The kid down the street who siphons our gas. The lady pushing all her
belongings in a grocery cart. The man standing with his dog at the side of the
road with the sign that says, “Will Work For Food”.
Do
I turn away? Do you? Or do we let the hope within us reach toward them and say
“Live!”
What
about the friend who always, always twists what you say into gossip? The
control-freak boss? The driver with
road rage whipping around traffic on the freeway?
God
did not say, “Live!” to only one person.
He says “Live!” to each of us. “ ‘When I passed by you again and
looked upon you; indeed your time was the time of love; so I spread my wing over
you and covered your nakedness into a covenant with you and you became Mine’,
says the Lord God. ‘Then I washed
you with water; yes I thoroughly washed off your blood, and I anointed you
How
great is God’s love for us? So
great He can see every thought, yet still draw us into his presence.
How can we do less?
When
I go to a friend’s messy house, how can I be uncomfortable?
God lives in my mind and heart no matter how cluttered I allow it to
become. We have the idea the people who are “together” walk around with cell
phones dressed in business suits and that others aren’t worth our time.
Time has become a commodity with us but not with God.
“Who
shall separate us from the love of Christ?
Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness,
or peril, or sword?” (Romans 8 : 35 NKJ)
All
those things may cause us to pull away from each other, but not God! “I’m
absolutely convinced that nothing--nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic,
today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable--absolutely nothing can
get between us and God’s love because of the was that Jesus our Master has
embraced us.” (Romans 8: 38 - 39
Message)
At
the end of my daydream, I would finally see my Prince coming to meet me, riding
a white horse. All the years of
pain and longing gathered up inside me and erupted in a shout of joy, relief and
utter happiness as I flung myself into His arms.
But His shout upon seeing me and all of His beloveds will split the
heavens and shake the earth. His
longing to be one with us has lasted millennia and He has seen not one love but
millions, deferred.
“For
the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout. . .”
(I Thessalonians 4 : 15 NKJ)
Have
you ever thought about that? Why
does He shout? Is He angry?
No. He shouts a call of such
longing, fulfillment and joy that the heavens will split and the earth will
shake. “Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them
in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.
And thus shall we always be with the Lord.”
(I Thessalonians 4 : 17 NKJ)
That’s
the moment of truth for all of God’s beloveds throughout the ages, and the
moment of triumph for God. When we
know that this is Jesus’ goal, that this is why He inspired the Bible to be
written as it was, to show how much He loves us, how He will never give up and
how He will wait through millions of lifetimes until we are His, it puts into
perspective anything we have gone
If
He isn’t afraid to touch me when I’ve stricken another with lies, when He
still embraces me when I push others away, how can I not reach back?
“The
Spirit and the Bride say, “Come!” And
let him who thirsts come. And
whoever desires, let him take the water of life freely.” Revelation 22 : 17 NKJ)
When
God told me, “Live!” I realized no matter what my dad did, and no matter
what my mom believed about me, I still had something I could give.
The four-letter word that is the difference of life and death.
The love that wills them: “Live!”
send encouragement to: slverkriss@aol.com