​During the school year, most of my requests to my abuser for extra financial support due to the ebb and flow of kids in school, were met with a huge nope; I don’t have any money. Yet, summer after summer my abuser always had time and money to take the children on a week-long vacation to the beach. Honestly, going to the beach probably isn’t a fair statement; he had time, pretend patience, and money to take them to amusement parks, water parks, and all sorts of tourist activities while going to the beach. 

Last weekend, I caught myself thinking about one thing while doing another. Trust me, I find myself doing this all the time! Yet, this time was different; it was more significant because for the first time, I changed my response.
 
I stopped my thought, realized what I was doing, and redirected my thoughts to my activity.
 
I was being mindful of the moment. Really, really mindful of directing my thoughts to the task at hand.

​I learned a lot from giving up dessert, ice cream, cereal, and other major sugar cravings during Lent this year. 

​It was back in 2011 and I had just finished reading The Purpose Driven Life. I knew the irony of me, a domestic violence victim, reading a book by someone who publically disagrees with divorce, yet I couldn’t put the book down. My book is underlined, tabbed, and highlighted. I was absorbing every word.
 
At the time, my take away from the book was this: everyone needs to be in a Bible study. Okay, seems reasonable, I thought. Off I went the next weekend to find myself a Bible study in the large Methodist church I attend in eastern North Carolina.

I feel stuck in a revolving door of tiring and consistently selfish thoughts in my mind lately. That’s how I ended my day yesterday; totally focused on two situations in my world and how the situations impacted me. Honestly, when I woke up this morning I found my mind drained of anything positive; just yuck rolling around and around waiting for me to jump on some negative thought and toss it around for a few hours. 

     As I sit in church Sunday after Sunday mornings, I often leave discouraged and jealous. Surrounded by a thousand perfectly dressed, smiling, loudly singing, and actively listening to the sermon people causes me to feel unworthy. Unloved. Not good enough for God.
     Over and over I ponder the same confusing thought: If God truly loved me, He surely wouldn’t have let the abuse get so bad, right? If He really loved me, then the horrors of the night my abuser held me in a chokehold with my feet dangling inches off the ground wouldn’t have happened, right? If God truly loved me, I wouldn’t be feeling so alone and isolated.

My journey from domestic violence victim to survivor is in its twelfth year. I’ve made huge strides in my recovery over the past five years (aka nervous breakdown year), yet the anxiety within my head has never completely calmed down. But this past weekend, for one of the few times in my life, I felt totally connected to my world for a beautiful five minutes.

One of the goals in my recovery has always been to obtain the calmness and peace God offers to his children. Psalm 29:11: “The LORD gives strength to his people; the LORD blesses his people with peace.”

​So many non-victims that I share my abusive background with can’t believe the horrific things my abuser did to me. But what I don’t believe I do a good job at describing is that my life continued on as I was being victimized.
 
During the five years we were challenged with our daughter’s cancer, and subsequent bone marrow transplant, the abuse increased 100%. Literally, I remained bruised from her diagnosis at two years old until I separated from my abuser five years later. My abuser couldn’t handle the pain, suffering, and possible loss of our daughter so he took it all out on me. Deep down, not unlike the increased abuse I suffered with the birth of our first child, my abuser definitely didn’t like my being distracted and not completely focused on his wants and needs. I specifically remember one extremely painful beating I received due to my being more focused on our daughter and ignoring his needs. Those of us who suffer abuse know exactly what I am talking about. 

​I am the first to admit I have double standards on my anxiety level when I am late leaving the house. If being late is due to my kids (rarely my husband) not being on time, my internal anxiety meter goes from 1 – 10 within two minutes. After two minutes being late from my designated departure time, I am huffy and feeling disrespected. Rarely do I care about my children’s “excuses”. 

My most asked question during my transformation from domestic violence victim to survivor over the past 11 years is this:  If I give my life to God, believing and following Him to the best of my abilities, why do bad things still happen in my life? Why doesn’t God, the one who can calm the sea and perform miracles, remove all the negativity out of my world once I pronounce my belief in Him?
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Am I the only person who felt worthless after begging God to keep me alive the night my abuser attempted to kill me, only to find out that the next few years of my life continued to be inundated with unbelievable stress, anxiety, and financial ruins? My ruined self-confidence convinced me that even God considered me a loser and didn’t want to me around me.