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Aimee

by E B Smith
05/02/19
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A TRUE STORY of Rescue.

And so, she stood; facing the corner she was ordered to face, the other girls in the girl’s cloakroom sniggering, and the ostentatious ring leader giving out her orders in her usual bossy and cruel way. Aimee’s crime today had been to watch the bigger girls with her beautiful big hazel green/brown eyes alight with interest, only to be shocked and shamed again, this time for staring! To stare! Aimee hadn’t heard that word before; what did it mean? She looked again at the bigger girls wondering what she was doing wrong as she stood quiet and still inside the door of the cloakroom, apparently it was a big deal because next she was commanded to face the corner; and so she did, still and quiet as a mouse she stood there. Then to Aimee’s surprise another big girl of around the advanced age of 9 rounded the door post, she immediately took in the unfairness of the situation and turned on the ring leader and for once argued Aimee’s case, the prisoner was released and no more was inflicted in the playground at least for that day.

Aimee’s life was full of these confusions, what did it all mean? was she a bad girl like her Mother at home implied, not good like her little brother. She didn’t know how being bad was something that happened when you were still and quiet? Like that day when she had encountered the new word “stare” and why she had to stand in the corner because of it still confused her and made her sad. Her Mother had laughed that day when she asked, Mam, what does  “stare” mean, that had made Aimee feel awful bad inside, she had wanted her Mother to help her understand, to give her a hug (she didn’t know much about them) but Mother had laughed so it must have meant she had done something silly and wrong, but she was just standing still.. watching… Aimee did that a lot. What Aimee didn’t know was that she was a good girl, she went straight to school every morning like Mother said, she wrote her letters, rows and rows of them, she tried to make them exactly the same as the ones the teacher wrote at the top of the page and on the blackboard, but no one said they were any good so maybe they weren’t good enough. Aimee also wondered about the day she and another girl were having a really nice play with the beads and the jigsaws and they hadn’t heard that the teacher wanted it all tidied away. Then the teacher appeared from behind her desk with a piece of leather and made Aimee Hold out her hand! and oh, oh, oh, why did she hit Aimee with the leather strap for playing and having such a nice time with the beads and jigsaws? Aimee didn’t know why! No, she didn’t know why. But it made her awful sad, and she couldn’t tell Mother because Mother laughed…and so it went on.

Aimee had no real friends at school, there were no special days, no special birthday parties, no beauty days to treat this little princess, her brother played with her sometimes home as long as Mother said they could, but as soon as they got to the school gate he didn’t look at Aimee again until they were on their way home. It was a very lonely little girl who trudged day after day to that school and back. It was easy to give up on trying very much at all because nothing held any pleasure or reward. Aimee did it all because the teacher said she had to. She didn’t much like the reading aloud, some of the boys took a long time to read their two sentences and Aimee would be reading the next page when her turn finally arrived, then the teacher would be angry with Aimee, she had read too far!

The secondary years in school held even greater challenges, as the bloom of adolescence arrived, the more vulgar and loosely inclined girls were jealous and took advantage of Aimee’s purity and beauty (which she had no idea she had) their tactics were to taunt and bully her into a state of fear, panic and defeat, culminating in great anxiety. The school toilets were the safest break time place, they found her though wherever she hid, and It must have been her fault. When the school bell rang to go home, Aimee would now pull her coat from the wastepaper bin and scurry out the door to get home again, her nightly routine was now to sob in bed and to plead with Mother that she couldn’t go to the school the next day, again to be met with what nonsense she was speaking and how the silly little girls at school were to be payed no attention to. To be taken to the Dr for something calming was needed as well. Obedient and good little Aimee daily trudged off to be bullied through the next day and the next.  The head bully even phoned her at home, and the same words flowed through the receiver, only this time Dad took the phone away and spoke, oh; Aimee’s relief was huge, Dad would know now; he would help, he would fix the problem. But to Aimee’s aghast shock, Mother’s laugh again arose, oh those silly girls pay no attention, Dad even smiled, no one understood, no one cared. Aimee was alone. Noone could help, or so it seemed to Aimee.

And to some extent this was true, no one fixed the problem, Aimee lived with the shame and the defeat, Aimee who could have been the school’s top student was allowed to waste away in the darkness which a bullied state inflicts upon any person. What happened in Aimee’s life no one cared enough to help or fix.

Years progressed and Aimee had the astonishing ability to seemingly rebound outwardly from the childhood pain, she had now put those years behind her unaware of how the buried bullying, shame and emotional neglect was getting buried to a deeper and deeper depth. Aimee knew it was all her fault. As challenges came trying harder was the only option. She needed to be a fun-loving member of any group she was included in, which still weren’t many. Her Christian weekly youth group was good, and she now found Jesus Christ to be her Saviour.  She also had a good friend, a boy, he was a year younger and  because Aimee now had a driving licence (she tried hard for that) she was very useful to him for driving lessons, and he was nice to Aimee, she saw him a lot and secretly hoped he would like her back. But when he procured his driving licence, he soon introduced Aimee to his new girlfriend. Aimee knew she was nicer that her, she wasn’t like Aimee.

Aimee deeply desired and dreamed of having her own family; her own babies; they would Love her; she wanted that more than anything else she could think of, so when her friend’s 11 years older uncle made her laugh and was kind, Aimee had to like him back, after all, who would like Aimee! she had to grasp what might be her only chance. Her life could only be better when she had her own family and this could be her chance to have her own baby now. Marriage was the right thing to do and quickly!  He was and is a kind man with much Love for Aimee and she did Love him too, but her experience of Love was so scant it was another hard thing for her. 

A happy time! Babies did come; the first being a beautiful son; within the first year, and another son after another year passed. But with him arrived sorrow and pain, the awful dark loneliness of sorrow, and with it shame and tears, her precious second son was stillborn, a third son came the next year, and to her desperate horror the same thing happened again but even later, at her due date; double sorrow came as he too was stillborn. The shame, the guilt, the pain was immense, excruciating, all encompassing.  Aimee’s husband couldn’t support her, he had no resources, so he kept away, his work was such that he could hide from the pain and situation. Aimee’s mother came! She knew Aimee was making a fuss that was not needed, Aimee was like that, the Dr would have something calming which would help! Aimee wanted Mother to help put away the baby’s clothes and paraphernalia, to help reverently fold the lovingly prepared items and place them somewhere safe for future. Mother did help and that was easy, the bag was filled quickly, stuffing it all down, it would be needed sometime. Everything was quiet now, no need for fuss.  And Mother would take care of her little grandson, Aimee didn’t know the best for him. Although There was one area in which Mother did help, this must be noted, she too had a gift in which God (in whom she did trust) in her own quite hardened way showed her the most wonderful visions, in this time she Aimee’s mother was shown a vision of the precious baby in the most perfect and beautiful state, the setting was so beautiful, the clothes so white the baby so lovely! This was a comfort and still is to Aimee.

Yet, where was God in all this, the journey was full of confusion, Aimee prayed and prayed, she couldn’t understand this in any way. She had been struck by the thought as she walked down the hospital corridor to be induced to give birth to her second dead baby within 11 months that this was akin to the walk Jesus undertook on his way to the Cross knowing the torture ahead. Aimee brought this all to God as she spoke to him, prayer may not describe well the dialogue Aimee held with him, she seriously considered turning her back completely on her faith and having no more to do with God in whom she had put her trust.  His answer came that day in the weeks following and it was a serious one, he spoke deep within Aimee, and said you may turn your back on me but I will still be the same, she knew then, she knew she would lose something of inestimable value if she did as she threatened,  that day the broken Aimee with a grudging heart decided to continue her journey with God.

And something of the old Aimee almost died then, something in her couldn’t keep trying so hard anymore, her days were so sad and difficult, she had her little boy to care for but, in her eyes now her little boy was bad, he was like her! Her job to be a loving Mother was to spare him from having the pain she had, she had to stop him from being bad, he needed discipline! he needed to be punished for every little thing, that was best for him because then he would have an easy and good life. But gradually it became clear that the God who Aimee had wanted to turn her back on, who said he would be there even if she did that, was there and he did begin to bring sparks of hope and faith back to Aimee, she heard enough from God daily to light some small glimmer of a path for her. Then as the months since the death of her third son passed God began to send Bible verses which spoke to her having another Son, he would be born next year the verses said, there would be no more deaths or miscarriages another verse said, her children would be as strong olive trees around her table another verse said, and that this son would be a great man. Eventually faith was again strengthened to make the quite major decision to step forward into possible pregnancy.

Three consecutive days prior to the awaited monthly period held the following 3 verses.

Hebrews 11:11 By faith even Sarah herself received power to conceive seed when she was past age, since she counted him faithful who had promised:

2 Peter 1:4a Thereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises, that by these you might be partakers 

Mark 5:34 He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace and be healed of your suffering.”

Aimee knew pregnancy had again begun; she was so scared but had these precious verses to strengthen her as she awaited the arrival of her 4^th son and God again thrust scripture into her life, this time the words of Psalm 121 were her strength and comfort as she awaited in hospital the birth.  He was born healthy and strong 16 months after his previous brother, the promises from God had been received? This was a time of joy in abundance for Aimee and her little family, Mother could not now step in and snatch the joy, and to some extent this was the single event which most brought life back to Aimee, and rescued her and her family from certain implosion. Aimee would follow God though her Saviour Jesus Christ firmly and strongly to the end.

However Aimee had suffered more than most people will ever have to, years of stress, trauma and to some extent neglect had been her experience, she did not realise the extent of how this had affected her, and many experiences were to follow but a major one was the next year God brought into their family the presence of a Church employee who was their lodger and who brought life and communication of a kind that Aimee had never experienced. Her life was being rekindled, she has gone on to be an invaluable Church Leader with much to give but will always still need to receive, the 25+ years since then have contained more episodes of bullying, as well as other traumatic harrowing and desperately sad chapters, which would make us say why God? why does this happen to some and not others? our Bibles speak of such lives and we hope that people like Aimee will at the end receive some great reward, because Aimee to date has not received all the human resources and care which she so desperately needed and deserved, it is God who has sustained and taken her through!

Afternote. May the reader understand this writing is of the utmost importance to anyone who you may observe as treading a similar path, the result for that person may not contain the result you have read here about Aimee. Aimee Was one of the strong ones. “giving up” can and does happen in much more profound and tragic ways and could result in suicide. Please protect, nurture and cherish any precious one you perceive as treading any similar path to this.

And…Please pray for Aimee, and all the other ones like her out there.  She Lives on.

God Bless you the reader.