Kaleidoscope: Finding God’S Beauty in Broken Places—Even Today, God Is Still Mending Brokenness and Bringing Healing and Hope to the Survivors of Childhood Abuse and Trauma

Copyright © 2014 Monica Baker.

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Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™ All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996, 2004. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

Scripture taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952 [2nd edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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ISBN: 978-1-4908-3187-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-3188-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-3186-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014906160

WestBow Press rev. date: 08/28/2014

Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Introduction

About the Author

PART ONE

DUMP THE BAGGAGE

Chapter 1 Let Go Of Your Baggage

Chapter 2 Let Go Of The Baggage Of Depression, And Let God Be God

Chapter 3 There Is A Gem In That Baggage Of Stress Or Sorrow. Every Tear Drop Is Like A Diamond!

Chapter 4 Dump The Baggage Of Guilt And Shame

Chapter 5 Now Is The Time To Dump The Baggage Of Shame

Chapter 6 Dump The Baggage Of Low Self-Esteem

Chapter 7 Dump The Baggage Of Doubts

Chapter 8 Dump Your Baggage Of Disappointments

Chapter 9 Trusting After Disappointments

Chapter 10 Dump The Baggage Of Manipulation: Control Versus Trust

Chapter 11 Dump The Baggage Of Anger

Chapter 12 Dump The Baggage Of Unforgiveness

PART TWO

FIA = FAITH IN ACTION

Chapter 13 Fear Or Fia—The Choice Is Yours

Chapter 14 Trust In God, Do Good, And Fear No Evil

Chapter 15 Fear Not The Phobia, For The Lord Is Your Shepherd

Chapter 16 Faith Counters Fear, But You Have To Disable Fear First

Chapter 17 Faith, The Gift Of Healing, And Miracles

Chapter 18 There Is A Gap In The Church

PART THREE

LIFE TODAY

Chapter 19 Efil Or Life: Where Do You Belong?

Chapter 20 The Evil Efil Of Addiction Takes Life Out Of Living

Chapter 21 Abraham’s Blessings Are Life, Not Efil, And In Christ There Is Life

Chapter 22 An Attitude Of Praise Releases An Altitude Of Peace

PART FOUR

Chapter 23 Be Virtuous. Be Beautiful

Chapter 24 I Care Project—Virtuous Beauty From Within

PART FIVE

THE WORD

Chapter 25 In The Beginning, There Was The Problem, And The Problem Was In The Past

Appendix

Dedication

This Book Is Dedicated to the following: Every fatherless person including myself, and my own children. Every widow including myself. Every lonely and rejected person all over the world! To the generations of survivors of traumas now and to those yet to come, know this that God is: A Father to the fatherless, defender of widows-this is God, whose dwelling is holy. God places the lonely in families; he sets the prisoners free and gives them joy… (Psalms 68: 5 & 6; NLT)

Acknowledgments

Tears rolled down my face as I stood amid thousands of people who were worshipping the Lord with magnificent sounds of adoration. I stood there feeling aggrieved in the midst of joyful people; then I heard the voice of Pastor Biodun Fatoyinbo coming delicately through the speakers. I knew there and then that the book Kaleidoscope had to be completed. I remember Pastor Biodun saying, You really should be praising the Lord if for nothing but because you are in the Lord, and so your brother or your sister won’t die without salvation. God has answered your salvation prayers for your family.

My immediate younger brother had just died that morning of August the 30th, 2011. After living a life that mimicked and replayed the story of Lazarus, whose wound was licked at the rich man’s gate, my brother left this world. He left behind the pain and sorrows of addiction, to a world that kept refusing the only One Who can save: Jesus Christ. Pastor Biodun explicated that God will only allow anything He has completed to start, because He has already finished it Thank you for the eternal word from God Who had already finished this book-KALEIDOSCOPE before He mandated me to write it.

Romans 13: 7b stipulates that honor must be given to whoever honors is due; accordingly, I must give honor to my spiritual father, Pastor, and mentor Pastor Ade Oyeyemi the General Overseer of BOJ Los Angeles. My fondest gratitude goes to him for believing in the call of God for my life, and for mentoring me through my life’s journey over the years! You brought me the word that moved Kaleidoscope from stagnation to publication! I will never forget how my spirit encountered revival during the Pentecostal Encounter program in LA, you led the church to avidly pray against the spirit of limitation, and unknown to you there was self-limiting spirit that has been bombarding me with lies such as you can’t publish a book in the USA… I belief that the fervent prayer of that day broke the chain that was anchoring this book from being published! Thank you Pastor Ade, for allowing the Holy Spirit to speak through you!

I am overwhelmed with joy at the completion of this book, Kaleidoscope. The stories in this book would never have been completed without the help of the following people: First, my children, particularly my daughters, who taught me how to start living, so that I lived a teenage life in my forties! Thank you, guys. You’ve made me into a perfect mother and grandmother!

I would like to express my profound gratitude to Ms. Shelly Baker, whom God has used to make my story a blessing to many people. Ms. Shelly is the façade of Christ’s love. During the final stage of writing this book, she showed me that love is an action word for giving! Thank you so much, Ms. Shelly, for all your support. I am grateful to all my Asbury Theological Seminary friends and lecturers, particularly my world religion professor, Robert Danielson. I can only imagine the look on his face as he struggled to read through the first draft, a much disorganized manuscript version of this book! Thank you, sir, for encouraging me and for making the book Kaleidoscope a reality!

Many thanks to Ms. Cynthia MacGregor, my book editor; I am very grateful for all your input. I remember telling you, Ms. Cynthia, English is my fifth language, and I am afraid I haven’t done a good job with this book. However, after editing Kaleidoscope, you boosted my confidence with the following comment: You have done a great job considering your background! That was all I needed, someone to understand that I can never be perfect because I have been challenged with the imperfection of the baggage of life for most of my life! Thank you, Ms. Cynthia.

I would like to thank the Westbow Press staff members who worked to bring this book to publication. Without your expertise, there would be no Kaleidoscope book out there! Heartfelt thanks to Katie Diamond my Publishing Services Associate (PSA) and the design team. Like Jesus performing the miracle at the wedding; we understand that the sweetest wine came after all others had finished! Your service is the best and smoothest of all the process! Thank you! Many thanks go to the following people: Kayla Stobaugh, Tadd Butler, and Lisa Worman, a very special thanks to all of you for allowing the word of God in Phillipians 1 verse 6 to come to pass: He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. (NIV). Amen! Jesus has completed and brings together the broken pieces of the book called Kaleidoscope!

THANK YOU, LORD JESUS!

Foreword

The Christian world is changing in our time. As Philip Jenkins has pointed out in his writings, along with other mission scholars of our day, If you want to think of the average Christian in the world today, then think of, perhaps, a woman living in an African village…¹ With the shift in Christianity moving to the Global South, there are corresponding shifts in theology and the theological focus of the church. Unfortunately, most of the Western world is unaware of this shift because western Christian publishers do not seek out and publish the works of African theologians, unless their ideas align with a more traditional western understanding of theology.

This book offers the reader a tremendous insight into the theology of the Global South through the voice of an African woman, Monica Baker. This is an almost unique opportunity to read how the Christian faith has impacted an average Christian in the world today. From views of African animism and folk magic to the deep spirituality of African Christianity, Monica takes the reader on a theological journey unlike any typically experienced in Western theology. This cultural experience reveals the similarities of human experience, while at the same time providing unique theological insights from the African cultural context. There may be areas of disagreement in the interpretation of scripture and theology, but that is part of the vital dialogue process, which needs to occur in modern global Christian theology.

Monica aims to bring African Christian theology to a practical level for the global church today. She reaches out to people, especially women, who have suffered from childhood abuse and other forms of trauma. She teaches in her own African narrative style from her own experience about the spiritual life lessons she has learned through reading scripture and prayer. Her professional training also allows her to balance personal and cultural wisdom with knowledge gleaned from her profession. Her book calls for the church to pay attention to people who hurt, and at the same time recognize that Jesus Christ provides real answers for people who survive painful life experiences.

Monica speaks from the heart and from a deep connection to the Holy Spirit. She speaks through the African cultural view that closely connects the spiritual world with our daily life. The power of the Holy Spirit to bring freedom from pain and redemption from traumatic experiences is clearly a dominant theme in her theology. It is from learning and listening to voices like Monica’s that the western church will become more aware of how the Global South is impacting the future theology of the Christian faith. It is hoped that this book will be only the beginning of many more works that expose Christians in the United States to the depth of wisdom found in the Global Church in other parts of the world today.

Robert Danielson, Ph.D.

Affiliate Faculty

Asbury Theological Seminary

Wilmore, Kentucky

1 Jenkins, Philip. The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, The Religious Educator 8(3): 117, 2007.

Introduction

Monica Baker is a woman with a mission. She has a close, personal relationship with God and Jesus, which has saved her from despair, self-doubts, and the other effects of childhood emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. Now she wants to deliver, through this book, her message of hope to the world.

Although she speaks primarily to fellow survivors of childhood abuse, her message, like God’s love, is all-encompassing and speaks to the world at large, regardless of the reader’s past experience. And although Monica grew up in Africa, she is cognizant that abuse, doubt in God, a desire to live a better life, poor self-esteem, and the struggle against Satan’s wiles are all common themes the world over, regardless of where a person lives now or spent his or her formative years.

Monica’s faith is stronger than a sequoia, and she conveys her belief and her love of God and Jesus in strong, declarative language. She invites the reader to join her in welcoming God and Jesus into his or her heart and placing trust in the One Who will never fail you.

Liberally seeded with biblical quotes, this book just may save a few lives and turn many other lives around from the path of despair to the path of righteousness and hope. Join Monica Baker on her journey of hope, recovery, love, and faith. Your life may never be the same.

Cynthia MacGregor, author of Everybody’s Little Book of Everyday Prayers and over 100 other books

About the Author

The author’s true identity, places, profession, and other details have been changed or withheld in order to provide anonymity for other people in this book.

Monica Baker was born into a royal family in Africa. It would have been expected that someone born into a large and famous family would enjoy the privileges of a good, sound, and normal life of bliss. But for Monica, much of her early life was filled with trauma and pain. Little joy existed. The child of an alcoholic mother, who would often roam naked in their little town center eating garbage and decaying animals sacrificed to idols, Monica, along with her siblings, was rejected by her family and much of the community. Sold into slavery at the age of seven, Monica was raped and abused. She was denied a formal education because the culture believed women were created for the kitchen and not worthy of educational investment. While enslaved, she worked to raise money to pay for her education but was horrified when the wages she had earned were spent to pay for her stepbrother’s education!

As a child, she vowed to do anything she could to save the lives of her siblings from destruction, but she was helpless herself. She was taken to the city to live with her uncle and his wife on the promise that education and stability would be provided, but the cycle of abuse and broken promises continued. In another attempt to find a home and free herself from toil and suffering, and to help her siblings, she accepted an offer of marriage at the age of sixteen. In this relationship, love remained elusive. The marriage followed the same cycle of abuse, destruction, and betrayal that had filled most of her early life.

Monica matured into adulthood with serious emotional damage. She yearned for love and human acceptance, but the more she chased after these, the more pain she experienced. She did anything and everything within her own ability to keep the people in her life happy, even when it meant she had no joy or happiness in her own life! She became confused and disoriented and grew into adulthood with feelings of guilt and shame. She blamed herself for her mother’s alcoholism and disgrace. She blamed herself for her siblings’ wrong turns. She blamed herself for the people who abused her life. She felt like trash heading for the garbage dump. Questions about life, her existence, and the church pervaded her mind: Why was there so much evil happening all around? How could it be that many of her influential and wealthy family members, who professed that they were Christians and that they knew this great God, act so malevolently? How could they attend worship service in the church and yet be so scurrilous?

Her understanding of the church was challenged, and she believed God was not much of what the catechist said He is. God was not real, and Jesus was simply a story told. God and the catechist were liars! In spite of this immature thinking, the angel of the Lord kept visiting her with promises. But she could not bring herself to love Jesus. She shifted her beliefs from the various religious traditions of paganism, Islam, agnosticism, and Buddhism, always trying to find love and acceptance, but she failed in her quest. She couldn’t find love. These religious belief systems were not unconditionally accepting.

Monica came to feel that the best way to end her life’s misery was to end her own life. Accordingly, she attempted suicide with pills. Twice she overdosed, but her brush with death failed. Someone, something, somehow was anchoring her to life. His name is Jesus. He would not let her die. Then Monica realized that she had been placed here in this world for a purpose. In her most vulnerable period she remembered the small, still voice that came to her as a child in suffering. The voice said, I will help you! On her bed as she lay near dying from her suicide attempt, Monica begged God to give her a chance to hear that voice once again. God granted her request, and she heard the voice say, "Return to me, and I will help you." The voice was that of Jesus Christ, the Lord of lords and the King of kings.

Monica answered Christ’s call for her life and made a 360 degree turnaround for the best. God required only that she dwell in the presence of the Lord all the days of her life. This one thing she now does, living in God’s presence daily, learning to reclaim everything the enemy had stolen from her life. She went from disgrace to grace, and now Monica appreciates Jesus, who saved her from destruction and death. It is little wonder that she bubbles with so much joy, and she teaches other people the principle that everyone can have joy after sorrow. She brings hope to the hopeless; when you ask Monica how she survived all the torments she endured, she has one sentence for an answer: It’s only Jesus! Having been denied formal education in her childhood, with much pain and determination, Monica worked her way up the educational ladder. From primary school education in a remote town in Africa, to earning a graduate degree in the United States of America, what we see in this woman’s life story is truly the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes. (Psalm 118:23 NKJV)

Monica is a mother and a grandmother, a professional woman, currently based in the USA. She nurtures the ambition to continue in her research toward a PhD in her profession. She is a woman of virtue and has worked tirelessly to bring good news to her own children and to all people. Though a prominent evangelist, Monica actively participates in her country’s politics. She desires to someday represent at the national level the deprived constituency living where she was born. Her passion to bring justice to the poor and the underprivileged members of her constituency is her motivation. Her political involvement and experience brings Monica to a realization that not much has changed in the governance of her country since her childhood. She recognizes similarities in the challenges being faced by many families today: illness, poverty, homelessness, and addictions, all forms of human abuse, eco-destruction, corruption, and lack of human sanctity. Little or no support is given to the poor and the underprivileged sectors of society. The poverty gap continues to widen as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

Sadly, the worldview of survivors of childhood abuse and trauma is different from that of everyone else. Survivors are very sensitive to pain or trauma and can easily misjudge global calamities. Survivors carry around their past emotional baggage from early age into adulthood. Sadly, the chaos in their personal life and in our world tends to cause much more confusion in the thought processing of survivors of childhood abuse and traumas. Sadly, survivors of childhood trauma often lack capacity to fluently express their internal pain, and so they develop certain characteristics that minimize them through self-limitation.

Thus survivors can become the dumping ground for social evil, even in their adulthood. Monica Baker believes with the help of the Holy Spirit, we can overcome trauma and transform even the broken pieces of our life into a kaleidoscope of God’s beauty! If we change the way we respond to inner pain, we will all enjoy a blissful life. If individuals take responsibility for changing and transforming themselves, we all will enjoy a blissful world until Jesus returns. Monica’s vision is to reach out with Christ’s love, and her heart is open to respect the poor, the marginalized and underprivileged people. This vision was driven by her own traumatic childhood experiences.

In December of 2004, during Sunday worship at the New Life Church in New Zealand, Monica received a message from the Holy Spirit, telling her to write this book, Kaleidoscope. She has nurtured that vision until now. Her prayer is that all people will be blessed with the word of God contained in the book.

PART ONE

DUMP THE BAGGAGE

CHAPTER 1

LET GO OF YOUR BAGGAGE

LET US PRAY:

Father I come before Your throne of grace. I lay down all baggage from my past trauma. I ask that You comfort me from now on,

in Jesus name. Amen.

There are certain things in life that we must carry from birth to death. Such is our unique DNA. Our genotype is our heredity and cannot be altered or dumped. To cite an example, I carry sickle cell trait, a rare hemoglobin genotype known as A.S., meaning I carry normal hemoglobin-A, and half of the sickle-S. I can only thank God that I do not carry the full sickle cells in my blood, and I continue to pray for the carriers of full sickle cell in their blood (S.S.). Sadly, neither the trait nor the fully blown sickle cells in our body can be changed, and many people will suffer from this debilitating genetic blood disorder until end of their lives—whenever it comes, and with this disease they may not live long. Every one of us sickle cell carriers must carry on living with our genotype, whether we like our genes or not.

As part of the baggage of life that I must deal with, I have come to terms with the sickle cell trait in me. Nevertheless, there has been other life baggage that I have learned to dump over the years. These are the sorts of baggage that must never be carried. This baggage is what I describe in this section of the book as the baggage of life. This baggage is composed of emotional torments, whether from childhood trauma or any other type of trauma. This baggage is not like that undesirable DNA that cannot easily be removed, yet we carry it, and this perturbing baggage impedes our normal flow of life.

We don’t need it!

When we travel, our luggage is weighed by airline check-in staff. They are very strict with us when we go over the weight allowed by the airline. There are two options available to travelers: One is to pay for the excess; the other is to reduce the excess weight by whatever means possible. I remember how we used to throw away, at the international airports, whatever became excess luggage. Funny as it may sound, we often pack junk that we don’t need when we go on vacation or business trips. There are losses incurred by travelers who have packed more than the allowed baggage. But people learn to throw away non-vital baggage without any qualms. I have done this many times. When I was charged for excess baggage and couldn’t pay, I would be forced to dump the baggage even though it had cost me time and money.

Those of you in the western countries may not understand the stress and strain of those of us from developing countries in Africa. When we African travelers go home, we are required by our extended families and communities to bring many goods and precious gifts from overseas. Failure to do so will bring penalties from our community and families. Usually we become ashamed and feel the guilt of not meeting people’s expectations. It’s quite difficult for people from the West to understand our excess luggage problems. Western culture is individualistic by standard, and people don’t have to worry about others. No wonder the Westerners look at us with amazement at the airports, rummaging through our baggage and scattering the contents when we struggle to reduce or adjust our excess luggage. But for us, bringing all these items with us is a responsibility we owe to our extended families.

People back home see those of us in Diaspora as wealthy and successful, so they expect to benefit from the Oyinbo land. The people back home believe we pick money from the trees in the West, so as Diaspora people, we are constantly under pressure to take more stuff back to our people back home. That’s why we are constantly pressured and heavily laden with excess traveling baggage. In the past, whenever I traveled to my home country, I could never get my baggage across without paying a hefty fee. Often, after paying for my ticket and other necessities, I didn’t have enough money left with which to pay the excess fee, but no amount of begging will change the mind of the airline counter staff, let alone change the airline’s policy on excess luggage.

Such is the case when we carry unpleasant emotional baggage in life. We often add other people’s baggage or problems to our own problems. This is a contributing factor to many people’s unhappiness, and excess baggage will definitely cost us our peace and happiness. Carrying excess life baggage impedes our ability to live a fulfilled life. This section of the book is about some emotional baggage that we carry around in our lives, whether knowingly or unknowingly. I want to appeal to you to rid yourself of all the baggage that has been anchoring you to your past. It is burdensome, heavy—heavier than words can ever express, and I know this because I have been there.

If you are holding this book and you are thanking God because you have not suffered childhood trauma, I advise you to search your inner self. Are you carrying any other hurting matter in your emotions? How finely tuned are your emotions? And if you are reading this book because of your past history of childhood trauma, and you have been weighed down by the enormity of the negative emotions from your past experiences, now is the time to say goodbye, and dump the baggage! The baggage of your life must not be allowed to control your existence or define who you are in life. Therefore it is necessary to dump it. Yes, you can dump it all, one by one, through the power of the Holy Spirit. I am talking about the baggage that has for so long been destroying your peace of mind, the baggage that troubles your harmonious existence. It must be dumped just like those excess baggage items we throw away at the airports. Now is the time to live a life full of God’s glory. Now is the time to move over from pain to gain, and now is the time to give up your burden and turn it over to Christ. The Lord said to the children of Israel in Deuteronomy 1:6, ‘You have stayed at this mountain long enough." (NLT) This is the point I am making: Come out of pain zone. You really have been there for too long.

I believe if we can search the heart of God the Father and grasp the love of His Son, we will understand that every negative piece of baggage of life’s problems is designed to shape us into the image that fits God’s plan for our lives. Nevertheless, we must allow the Spirit of God to help us turn every heavy burden around, and then we shall see the beauty contained in those unpleasant events of our life. As one famous evangelist once said in her radio teaching, we must give God our ashes in order for Him to turn them to beauty. No more burdens, no more sorrow! Take the Y (as in Yoke) out of Your life’s challenges, and what you get is Our blessings and beauty! That’s precisely Gods plan, turning your yoke, which stands for problems, into our blessings, a blessed life, giving joy to all. We need not carry yokes around, and yet unfortunately that is what many people do when they see their life challenges as individual problem that they must bear. However, when you let go of that egoistic, overly self-sufficient attitude, it is like taking away the Y from Your. What you get is Our.

YOUR – Y = OUR Y = Yoke of doing it alone

Be it traumatic pains from childhood abuse, neglect, or other traumas of life, letting go of our excess baggage is not an option. Rather it is the only way out of life’s pain and misery. Doing this allows us to find beauty in the kaleidoscope of brokenness and find joy in our life challenges. The problematic baggage of life is more likely than not to contain traumas from childhood abuse and neglect. This baggage might have become like a mental stronghold weighing you down. No matter what it contains or how the baggage was packed, it has to be dumped.

I am aware that letting go of our pain and hurt is not easy, but we have no better option to choose from but to let go. I know, too, that some of us don’t want to let go. After all, that pain and hurt have become the hiding place. Asking a person to let go of traumatic experiences from childhood abuse is often asking for too much. For many people, the only control they have is to take control of the baggage containing their childhood abuse. For forty-five years, I struggled to overcome the pain of childhood abuse. This pain and these sorrows scraped deep through my body, mind, and soul. I can only wonder how I had survived the many years I lived in anguish and sorrow because I wouldn’t let go of my past pain and hurt. Though the pain and suffering of childhood abuse was great in magnitude and challenging, they had become my hiding place, where no one could find me.

Those who suffer from asthma or diabetes are easily diagnosed and treated. Sufferers of physical illnesses are widely accepted as needing help. In comparison, diagnosing and treating the pain sustained by survivors of childhood abuse is very difficult and requires an emotional assessment of the person struggling with childhood abuse and the related emotional pain. Most survivors of childhood abuse learn to conceal their pain, shame, and guilt from their early days, not because they want to but because secrecy is their hiding place. From the onset of the abuse, many were warned never to tell anyone and so have kept their abuse a secret. Perhaps for many people, the secret of their childhood sexual abuse is kept even into adulthood. Often the culprit threatens the victim, silencing him or her during the abusive period. What pain to endure! The concealment of this sad experience becomes a way of life for the victim, who later on in life may manifest somatic disorders of various natures.

In my own case I started experiencing depression at the age of fourteen. As the abuse continued, my soul went deeper into depression. Of course, I never knew what was happening, but I remember the dark alley where I tended to hide myself. It was a very harrowing place. I remember years and years of not knowing inner joy. I just did not know what it felt like to be happy.

Through all those years, I endured mockery from members of my own family. It was very painful when my aunt, whose husband was sexually abusing me, would slap my face with all her might and scream out loud, Stop behaving like someone caught up in apartheid. No one could stop my suffering, and the baggage became heavier and heavier as I endured. My depression went on for so long, and I sank in and out of it, unable to control my emotions. The emotional pain was too much to bear—I cried at every little thing, confused and fearful of nearly everything in life. But the worst was that my abusers, who happened to be my uncle and his wife, could not have cared less about how I was feeling. It was very painful. All I wanted was to be free of them, to get away from all the sexual abuse my uncle was subjecting me to. But the baggage of life was already packed, and even if I had escaped, I would still have had to run with the burden of that baggage.

During those early dark years, I was always depressed, but who wouldn’t be? My mother was dead after living on the streets for many years as a madwoman and a drunkard. My father had rejected me, and so had the rest of the family. The only family member who came to my rescue was my uncle, but unknown to me he had his own hidden agenda and a secondary goal that he was pursuing. He repeatedly raped me as required by the voodoo money rituals he was engaging in. It’s a dark hole, a very sad and disturbing place to be. My childhood experiences of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse can never be fully expressed. Thank God for the healing power of Jesus and for God’s word that reigns supreme! The word of God is able to go deeper into any spirit. It is the Balm of Gilead and a blessing for us in the twentieth century. Let us see what the scripture says concerning the word having power to penetrate our entire being: "For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." (Hebrews 4:12, NKJV)

Studies have shown the relationship between childhood abuse and some somatic illness. The worst aspect of the silencing is that it impedes victims from expressing themselves later on in life, even to the point of being unable to pray or speak to God about their pain. Some victims feel embarrassed to talk to God about their childhood sexual abuse due to guilt and shame. The truth is you cannot hide your nakedness from the funeral directors who will bury you when you die, can you? If you have experienced childhood abuses of any type, it’s not your fault. God certainly had no hand in this evil act. So you might as well get on your knees and start to tell God in the presence of our Lord Jesus all about your pains. Jesus is waiting with His arms stretched out to embrace you and show you how much He loves you. Is there any reason for you to refuse this valuable love? What have you got to lose by yielding your shattered life to Jesus? Nothing at all except the loss of those burdens and several pieces of emotional baggage of your life.

Your Baggage Is Not Too Heavy for God to Bear

In order to let go of the unwanted baggage in our life, we need to understand the principles of being set free by the redeeming power of our Kinsman Redeemer, Jesus Christ. While it may be true that you are not responsible for causing the burdens and the baggage you carry about, it is also true that you are responsible for accepting God’s grace and redemptive plan to free you. God is able to deliver you completely from the weight and burden of emotional and physical pain. He is able to set you free from all the afflictions that life and people have inflicted upon you, but you have the responsibility to seek deliverance. Let’s revisit a scripture that address the issues of our burdens and life baggage: Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all. (Psalm 34:19 NKJV) I love this scripture, especially having understood and accepted that I am made righteous through the grace of my Lord Jesus.

Are you truly innocent of your childhood abuse and any form of suffering imposed on you by another person? I agree with you that you are innocent. But there is no more time to waste trying to justify yourself. Now is the time for you to connect to the perfect will of God and to enjoy the promised abundant life. The burdens and baggage that people carry around are the deposits of the enemy. Our Lord Jesus Christ referred to that enemy as the thief. Let me say it out loud: A burdened and sorrowful life is what brings in Satan, the thief, the murderer, and the destroyer. Why would anyone chose to yield to this torture? Why do people prefer to cling to their life’s problems rather than letting them go? From my own experience and from what I have heard of other people’s experience, it often feels safer to be locked away in a closet of sorrow after one has learned a victim’s way of coping. The victim mentality never produces independence. Some people find it easier to be drawn into further destruction than to fight their way moving forward through their traumas with confidence in Jesus Christ.

I have been a fighter all my life. I found myself fighting against all the odds I was burdened with by childhood abuse and pain. Nevertheless, I must reiterate here that, like many of us, I tried dumping the baggage and finding strongholds in my human strength, which is an absolutely negative way of dealing with emotional pain. Psychology may advocate and encourage people to work through their traumas by their inner power, or what they call internal locus of control—in other words, using inner power to resolve their inner torment. However, I say to you, there is futility in the so-called inner power without Jesus’s divine intervention. It is this futility that keeps many secular psychologists in lucrative employment. It is a fruitless and wasteful use of time and energy when we try to resolve our life burdens with our own power. We need the power of God, the power of Jesus Christ.

It is impossible to fight Goliath with our own muscles. If that were not so, David would not have used a small stone to kill him. You need the same type of weapon that David used to bring Goliath down: faith. Yes, we need faith in our Lord Jesus, who paid the price for our pain by His suffering on the cross. Jesus has the muscle to defend the Goliaths of our lives, otherwise He would never have invited us by saying, Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. (Matthew 11:28 NKJV)

If you have been struggling with a whole range of life issues such that have weighed you down all these past years until you are like a hunchback, now is the time you must put down the weight of the baggage of your pain and sorrow. In plain terms, it is time you let go of the burdens of life. Does your life make you feel like you are a fish out of water? Are you living in the midst of affluence but struggling with sorrow and unhappiness? Do your emotions drag you downward all the time to the desperation point, where you do not want to carry on living? Perhaps you are you one of those who just want to carry their crosses in life faithlessly. Let me ask you, is your self-esteem convincing you to carry all the heavy burden of shame, guilt, and misery? Now is the time to tell yourself how you feel about the weight of unhappiness that the trauma of your past is causing you. The pain caused by human error and/or other people’s wickedness must never define how you live your life. Look in the mirror of your life and speak to all those negative thoughts, and say to yourself, I am beautiful because I am fearfully and wonderfully made by God!

Let Thine Inner Mirror Speak!

Here is what I know to be true. Here is the Father’s thought for you in five words of wisdom: "Endure suffering, but start living." We know it to be true that Jesus calls us blessed when we endure suffering, when we are broken in the spirit. We also know that every wilderness of temptation is temporary, although our pain may be forty years and not forty days as in the case of our Lord Jesus in the wilderness. He has made us overcomers by His own suffering and death (Matthew 4:1-11; Luke 6:22; Mark 13:9-13. See also James 1:2; 1 Peter 2:19-23). It is impossible to fully expound on the concept of Endure suffering but start living because suffering is a subjective matter; however, whatever causes us pain in life is more than likely to cause us suffering.

How we manage pain will determine how we manage the suffering that comes along with it. You and I do not deserve to suffer. You and I do not need to live life in misery, and there should be no confusion in knowing what God desires for us. God wants whatever it takes to shape us into useful, holy vessels for building the Kingdom