<\/p>\n
\nComment by Professor James\u00a0on 04 Mar 2010 at 10:46 am<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n
Karen,<\/span><\/p>\n
Would you say your abuse was fueled by your father and grandfather\u2019s religious beliefs or by a crooked misleading catholic priest? To be abused in God\u2019s name must have torn you apart. What can you suggest to people who feel tested by their own faith? I find your personal experience great input to a delicate spiritual matter. I believe your survival to be a true miracle. One God. How did you recover? Where does your faith come from? What have you experienced at a higher level than most of us here on earth? God is with you.<\/span><\/p>\n
Professor James<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Dear Professor James,<\/span><\/p>\n
I believe it was primarily my grandfather and the Catholic priest, who knew each other before my father’s birth, who were responsible for my abuse. \u00a0As my father grew up, he was groomed to join in, and did so to receive his father’s praise and attention. The priest did not abuse me himself, but he watched my being abused and condoned it. He turned his back on me, which to me felt the same as being abused. As a child, I believed all that happened to me was because God ordered it. <\/span><\/p>\n
Being abused under God’s name did tear me apart as a child, but not since I learned that I was abused. When a child is born into routine abuse, as I was, it is simply an everyday event. I never heard anyone discuss child sexual abuse. I never knew that I was being abused until I was a freshman in high school. Of course I knew what was happening to me was terrible, and my mind created alters to help me survive, but I didn’t know it was unusual; I thought all girls suffered this way. <\/span>I couldn’t comprehend my experiences as abuse.<\/span><\/p>\n
It’s hard to explain how to find faith after being abused. It just happened. I drew my strength from good people I met along the way. Somehow I knew within me what I needed in order to survive. I found kindness in a few people and modeled myself after them. I can’t explain. <\/span><\/p>\n
I believe I survived to share my story. I admit, my faith was tested time and again, but at the end of each day I knew my job here on earth wasn’t finished. I survived for a reason. \u00a0 I’m wise enough to know not to question God. I’ve accepted that there are no answers. I am simply grateful to be alive and well.<\/span><\/p>\n
God is with all of us.<\/span><\/p>\n
Karen<\/span><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Comment by Professor James\u00a0on 04 Mar 2010 at 10:46 am Karen, Would you say your abuse was fueled by your father and grandfather\u2019s religious beliefs or by a crooked misleading catholic priest? To be abused in God\u2019s name must have torn you apart. What can you suggest to people who feel tested by their own […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-karens-answers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.switchingtime.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.switchingtime.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.switchingtime.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchingtime.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchingtime.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2085"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchingtime.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2085\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2086,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchingtime.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2085\/revisions\/2086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.switchingtime.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchingtime.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchingtime.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}