That Should Take Care of It
Introducing my own discovery of sexual abuse. Sexual abuse cuts deeply — like a gorge forged by water. Horrific, sad, heartrending, burning, confusing, fearful, yet, when healed, beauty comes from ashes, hope from despair, light in the darkness, and as scripture affirms, “What was intended for evil, God used for good, the saving of many lives” (Genesis 50:20). I’ve experienced this and have had the privilege of helping many others find healing.
Karen, my wife, shouted and threw a small couch pillow at me. It hit my shoulder.
Something snapped inside of me. No longer was I a 34-year-old pastor and husband, arguing with his wife of 12 years, the father of four daughters. Instead, I became a little boy.
I felt seven or younger.
No longer standing, I was cowering on the floor of my treehouse behind the Hawkeye house I lived in as a kid. Fear consumed me. A tall mustached man behind me was hitting me on the shoulder and seething through gritted teeth: “Don’t.” Hit. “You.” Hit. “Ever.” Hit. “Tell.” Hit. “You do and I will kill your dog…” I was crying and whining back,
“Don’t hit me. Don’t hit me. Don’t hit me. I won’t. I promise.”
Those words escaped my adult mouth there on our brown carpet by the rust-colored couch.
If you want to end an argument, this does it. But this was real. I was little, on the floor of my treehouse, sobbing.
I felt a gentle hand on my back, and heard Karen saying, “What’s going on honey?” From her perspective, I had been hit with a pillow. But on the floor in our living room in San Jacinto, California, fear flooded me as I was being hurt and warned. As my sobbing resided, I looked up at Karen, and said with a certain knowing, “I was sexually abused.”
It had come to me in a thunderbolt of revelation. We both knew Karen had been sexually abused. We didn’t know to what degree at this point in our marriage, however, we had been doing healing work through counseling.
In that moment on the living room floor, I knew the abuse had begun in March when I turned five and ended in March when I turned 8. The perpetrator was the associate pastor of my family’s home church. His name was Sherwood. That night, I stood shakily, winded as if I had tripped and fallen headlong while running.
Beyond the horror of the flash memory, I felt confusion. I had always liked Sherwood. I thought he was cool. I had no memory of him I could draw on as anything but positive. For all the years, I had buried the abuse under the positive veneer. It was difficult for me to imagine he could’ve done something so heinous. And yet, there he was. Hitting me. Telling me, “Don’t you ever tell.”
A few months later in a counseling session with Joni, a woman Karen and I had been meeting with both separately and together, led me to pray through the memory. We began with me, the little boy, out in the yard. She asked me what he was feeling. “Afraid,” I told her.
“I am sitting by the Mulberry tree holding Miss Plum, my cat. Her fur is soft. She’s purring.” I paused, sitting in the office, yet also by the tree. I began again, “There’s someone inside I don’t want to get me.”
She asked if I am feeling this fear anyplace specific in my body. “I feel like someone is touching my genitals,” I said. Then, the memory rushed back. I had been hiding from him in the closet in my brother’s room. From there I could see to their metal bunk beds. Sherwood had found me there and fondled me. I sobbed as I told of this, filled with pain, horror, fear, anger and rage. I had run outside and sat by the tree, then run to the treehouse. He had followed me there, and hit me multiple times, telling me “Don’t. Ever. Tell.”
Sobbing uncontrollably in her office, I saw image after image of the ongoing abuse, in the house next to the church, on the ski trip, in the bathroom, he had pursued and used me. I screamed as I realized what he had done to me. I felt dirty and ugly.
That day there was no way to walk through all these points of trauma. So, Joni led me to the edge of a creek in my imagination and encouraged me to dive in. The water felt icy cold, in the office I inhaled quickly as one does after diving into cold water. But, the water washed me clean. All the dirt and ugly washed away. I stepped out naked and clean, made new somehow on the other side. There Jesus met me and wrapped a white robe around me. He tied it with a rope, then, he picked me up. I was little as he held me and rocked me in His arms.
Even though from that time I knew how pervasive the abuse had been, lasting for three years, at every opportunity Sherwood had had, I left Joni’s office that day, believing,
“That should take care of it.”
That day I didn’t know my flights into anger, my overeating, my need to please, my fears of sex, my inability to handle money, my struggle with ministry, and my fear of male friendships etc. were rooted in the shame, brokenness, and trauma I had experienced with Sherwood.
His actions compounded the brokenness I already had experienced in childhood. So rather than “take care of it,” the revelation and first steps in healing simply unlocked more pain, homosexual desires, anger, and a barrage of same-sex images. It was like a key had been turned to a long-locked closet, and once the door was opened, like pandora’s box, it could not be closed again. Rather than Joni’s prayer being a “one stop” meal, like a drive-up window at a fast-food restaurant, I stepped, a bit unwillingly into a healing journey.
In one of the most famous Psalms, the 23rd, the psalmist wrote, “He leads me in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I’ll fear no evil.” God leads not around but through the dark “valleys” of memory and pain. But with the Psalmist so is my experience, Jesus never abandoned me to the pain but was constant in saying,
“I am with you.”
This knowledge has sustained me in this journey of nearly 40 years of healing. I’m not done with the journey, I don’t imagine, but I can say I’ve seen giants defeated, shame uprooted, and hope and joy established within me.
Do you need to take your own journey of healing? Jesus is the wonderful counselor.
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Clives, the Wild Chef holding many knives…
Discovering the value of IFS (Internal Family Systems) became a personal journey. My own journey then was a gift to assist many others.
The basic idea of IFS is we all have various parts within us developed over our lives. You’ve said, “Part of me is feeling angry right now,” or something along those lines. The parts all have positive intent, even if it may not look like it. They seek to protect us from feeling deeper pain which is kept hidden away, in another part called an “exile.” which is an expression of the inner child. The protector parts are either managers or firefighters.
A manager part, as the name implies, manages a situation. Managing takes many forms — being excessively critical, strident, joking, withdrawn, dazed, etc.
One of my parts used to “manage” tense conversations with my wife by erecting a wall within me. I then came off really strong over against her! This part used to often come up in the kitchen when my wife, Karen, and I were preparing a meal. Once when the part came up, I stepped out of the kitchen knowing a part had come up. I spoke to the part, saying, “Could you step aside so I could get to know you?”
Immediately, I got the picture of this chef, wearing his hat, in this crazy outfit holding several knives in each hand with a wild expression on his face.
“Please stop flooding me,” I said, and the hot emotions I was feeling immediately dissipated. “Now, stop helping for today. I will talk with you later, okay?” He agreed.
I then stepped back into the kitchen without the disrupting hot emotions or wall of defensiveness.
Later when I returned to speak with this part, he told me his name was Clives! After he trusted me enough to step aside from guarding the exile, I met the exile, an inner-child. I walked into this dark room, and found this little boy (me) tied up, naked and gagged. I untied him, whispering comfort to him, and asked him to share his powerful, painful story with me. To be heard helps immensely. Jesus came, unburdened all the pain, and dressed this little boy in a white robe. Now joyful, not terrified, this little guy came out of the room with me and met Clives. Clives was shocked to see “little me” healed and free. I told Clives he had done a great job, but could have a new job now. Thrilled, he laid down all his knives. Just like that! “I’d like to bring joy to the kitchen now” he said.
This is what happens in this type of work. The parts get new jobs and exiles are healed. It’s beautiful to watch happen.
That same September, a friend in another state hit an emotional wall in his life and needed help sorting his heart. We began to meet by phone weekly. This method was just what he needed. It gave him tools for handling emotions on his own and allowing Jesus into his pain. For six months we talked weekly and God slowly but surely unraveled the pain held within. Over those months this friend faced off with huge points of pain and fear, and came out a new man. He’s never felt so free.
The second type of part is called a firefighter. This part uses a more extreme way to distract us from the pain within, such as overeating, sex, emotional outbursts, substance abuse, etc. IFS therapists have discovered how multiple parts can be connected to addiction, even. Once the client gets to know these parts and can meet and unburden the exiles being protected, the person can find freedom from the addiction.
One therapist told the story of her client who struggled with bulimia. She had worked with this client for months to no avail, so recommended inpatient work. The therapist found her client a spot in a facility which happened to use IFS therapy with the patients. After four months at the facility, the client returned home and came to her first appointment back with her original therapist. In that session, the client described how she and her family had gone out to dinner after she returned. As she ate, she also planned to throw up afterward. But instead she didn’t, and was still free. The therapist was fascinated, this was the first time the client had ever been successful over against the bulimia.
The therapist asked, “How did you turn away from making yourself throw up.” The client said, “Well, I just went into the bathroom and instead of making myself throw up, I talked to my parts.” This astounded this therapist, who asked many more questions about what this meant. This therapist realized she needed to understand more about IFS, began to study it and became an IFS therapist.
Part of the IFS process is to learn to approach the parts within from the true self, which IFS describes as coming from a place of compassion and curiosity.
When helping a client work with a part, we are to ask our clients, “How are you feeling toward that part now?”
If the client is feeling compassionate and curious, then, she is in self and can continue. If she is feeling critical, angry, impatient, etc., then, another part has “come up” and needs to be asked to step aside for the time being.
I have had to ask clients to ask many of these other parts to step aside in the process of working with one part. But when in self, there is a tenderness and curiosity toward what is happening within. This self, the deep center of personality, seems to be the seat of God within a person.
In the Harry Potter book series by J.K. Rowling, her character Dumbledore, the headmaster at Hogwarts School, is the epitome of the self. Serene, calm, measured, compassionate and curious, Dumbledore is given all the best lines. Whenever I have read the series I meet deep wisdom in this character time and again.
In chapter 37, of the fifth book, “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” Harry and Dumbledore are in the headmaster’s office in an intense conversation. Harry, grief-stricken because of decisions he’s made and resultant losses is filled with rage. This is like an angry part seeking to cover the deep pain! It is often easier to be angry and blame another (for Harry, he blames the headmaster) than express the deep sadness one feels. Harry, in his anger, has destroyed many items in Dumbledore’s office, “‘By all means continue destroying my possessions,’ said Dumbledore serenely, ‘I daresay I have too many.'”
Harry shouts, “I don’t care!” To which Dumbledore gently responds, “Oh, but you do care. You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it. You have now lost your mother, your father and the closest thing to a parent you have ever known. Of course you care.”
Here is truth. Harry is not ready to hear it, but it is truth, nonetheless. His anger is birthed from the feeling “he might bleed to death with the pain of it.” What compassion Dumbledore shows Harry!
I am reminded as I walk with clients and walk with others in the world today, how much everyone needs to encounter compassion and curiosity in me. It seems it is not something people often give themselves, and is certainly not something we often give others. Yet, how essential, to be willing to be present with compassion and curiosity and see what fruit it brings.
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In this interview, Brian and Steve discuss the power to be found in pastoral counseling to impact our lives.