Lord, please heal the abused

The Lord has been moving in my heart to collect the many prayers I have written and will write and make them into a book. A possible title is “Prayer Poems from the Garden.” The garden reference is to the Garden of Gethsemane, where Christ prayed for the dark and impending hour of His crucifixion to pass. Then, He said the Father’s will was more important.. When I think of the Garden of Gethsemane, images of healing come to mind.. In each of us there lies a wounded healer. This will be one of the prayers.

Almighty God, as I come to Your throne of grace, I plead with you to heal the abused. Father, remember how You saw me beaten and battered as a child, not just in body, but also in spirit? I lived in a private hell. I was afraid to go to sleep at night. The darkness was filled with terror.I must not go to sleep. I must stay awake. Dad could come in and kill me.

Tears would soak my pillow as a boy of five. I would cry out to You, Oh, God, where did my kind and loving father go? Where did that sweet man go, who would carry me piggy back on his shoulders with the drops of ice-cream falling from my face to his shirt? Father, remember how dad would tell everyone he met how much he loved me and how proud he was to have a son like me?

Where did that man go, who would wake me up at 3:00 a.m. to have a hearty country breakfast before going smelt fishing? The smell of bacon flavoured with maple syrrup, the sound of the bacon sizzling in the pan, the enticing aroma of the eggs and the bacon wafting through the air. Memories of love, of time out of time when for brief flashes I would see the man You had created, filled with love for my mom, me, my brother and two sisters.

It was like living with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. One moment, Lord, dad was the kindest man in the world. The next moment he was mean, nasty, and cruel.

I recall those hurting and haunting thoughts dad spoke over me as if I was that wounded child once again. “You’re so stupid. You’re lazy. You disappoint me. June, Kevin can tie his own shoes! You’re a mamma’s boy. Your brother is smarter than you’ll ever be. Can’t you do anything right?”

Under the willow tree by our home in the hot wind of July, as a boy of five, I would pray to be rescued from this living nightmare of horror. The branches danced with the wind. I felt the sweet caress of Your love, hearing and feeling every tear. You spoke to me then that one day You would free us from the prison of our abuse. I was hurting too much inside to believe it then.

Father, six years later in the dawn of morning’s light we escaped to a new life away from our dungeon of pain. You heard and answered my prayer.

As I look back upon that time, I know that even at the age of five, You were calling me to be a missionary of the heart. You allowed the abuse that I might seek to understand those who are abused in body, mind and spirit. I would be a wounded healer.

You spoke to my heart today to write these thoughts. You want all to be freed from their prison of abuse. You want them to have a life of happiness.

Lord, I am thankful that after 48 years of ignoring the deep wounds, counseling for over two years now is showing me that I can use the heartache I experienced, to reach out to those who are abused. I am finally on the road to it becoming a story.

I renounced the vow I had made at age 11 as I saw my mom cowering in the darkness of the basement storage room bloodied, terrorized, that I would find a way to kill my father. It took until I was in my late thirties to finally forgive him and renounce the vow I had spoken out in hatred and my own inner rage.

I do not know your pain. I am risking being vulnerable that all abused people even if they can’t forgive their abuser, would forgive themselves. You did nothing wrong. My prayer is that you would be healed.

That is not just my prayer. It is the prayer of all of us, who are people of love. Amen

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