My Canary is Still Singing!

Good morning, and a beautiful one it is! Here I am again, and I must say that I got much feedback from my last entry. When you talk to me, it let's me know if what I am writing is of any help to you. And I really do write this in an attempt to help someone, anyone who may be in the middle of a traumatic situation. Thanks to those of you who gave your encouragement, you'll never know how much that means to us. If I needed to write for therapy, it wouldn't be for the world to see!!! The world's seen enough of my stuff!!! And to answer many of your questions, I hope I have made it clear that the abuser was not someone in my immediate family. Since my Dad was a great leader and did so much good, I need to clarify this. And there are many other great men of God who are related to us who have been there to help us through this. So I hope whatever you are going through can be eased by knowing others have been there. And once again, I love you all.

I said I would write a continuation of my last entry, and I will. I hope it will continue to loose your inner canary, so you can sing freely!! It may not be what most of you expected, but it will be what is the most helpful. If you need to know what I refer to in the rest of this entry, just go back and read the previous one, I won't try to recap.

I left off where my family was in the middle of helping my then, 24 year old daughter overcome the memory and revelation of a horrible traumatic childhood abuse. Because we were a close knit family, this affected us all very deeply, and my two Grandchildren, who were just little babies, were also being negatively impacted. The first thing my family wanted to do was find out who had done this, but to this I say, that doesn't really matter. You may think I'm crazy, but when someone you love is in the middle of a traumatic situation, and if it is an act perpetrated against them, the focus needs to be helping your loved one. You cannot help someone else in your own anger and revenge mode. I am in no way saying that you shouldn't eventually find this out just for the protection of others and to continue to protect your family. But, for purposes of this article, I want to focus on the steps we took in order to get on a road to recovery.

We are all in some form of recovery whether you like it or not. But I wanted to see our recovery lead somewhere. If your recovery is not leading to wellness, then you are not recovering, you are just continuing to play the victim. Jesus said in John 10:10, "The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they (you) may have life and that they (you) may have it more abundantly." Since my family follows the teachings of Christ, we understood this scripture to say that to stay in a victim's role defeats our purpose for living. So, even though it was difficult to carry on, life had to go on. We knew that Sunday was coming and our family was responsible for the service. I remember how proud I was that my son was able to carry on leading worship and ministering that Sunday. But we still had to deal with our own pain and the pain my daughter was experiencing. And kudos to her husband for being so good in this. In the long run, however, no one could be healed for her, she had to receive her own healing. And as her Mother I had to receive mine. It was hard not to take this personally, I did, but I also had to stay objective so that my pain didn't give more ground for growth to the pain of my other family members.

Here are some of the steps we took as a family, and as a disclaimer, may I say that even though we try to follow these steps, there has still been fall out. We lost our church, which is still a pain in my heart. But there were other circumstances that could have contributed to this as well. And I don't think a true church can be lost. We just had to close the doors of our fellowship but those who are the "church", who took seriously the teachings of the church we led, they have moved on to bring their own life to other fellowships, this makes me glad.

But, first we prayed for the right thinking. Like I said, if your thoughts and emotions are negative towards others, you cannot be a help. And we decided to keep it as quiet as we could and only share this with very trusted people. Your intention for sharing your problems maybe pure, but others can make you miserable by their interpretation of it. Even though we tried to keep it quiet, eventually people started guessing at what had happened in our family. The guessing can hurt more than the truth. Sometimes people love to hear that those in leadership have problems because they are looking for a reason to cast doubt upon them. Sometimes, others who mean well, may share your problem with someone who doesn't understand, then there will be many other victims. Yes, of course, the knee jerk reaction is to tell everyone!! But when you let it cool down for a while, you realize, first you don't have the right to share other people's pain with anyone. It is up to them who they share it with. And if you are the one in pain, the first one you need to share with, other than your closest family, is a professional. Please talk, but talk to the right people. Believe me, this one thing will spare you so much trouble! And I'll say this, don't expect the people you do share this with to be as appalled as you are, if it is a really bad situation, sometimes they won't even believe you, therefore they can't be a support for you anyway. Telling them will become a liability. This is only the first step, don't give up on me, there's still good things to come!

Well, that's all for today. I'll continue this later, It's too pretty out today to be sitting here reading my blog, or anyone's blog!! Go out and enjoy the day and take time to hug someone you love, life can throw curves at you. Thank goodness we have a Higher Power who is alive and well and who cares!

P.S. My canary is still singing!

Until then, my love,

Roma Beth