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Spiritual Abuse

by Lois Eaton 
02/14/24
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SPIRITUAL ABUSE

Who out there understands spiritual abuse? When we speak of violence, sexual abuse, starvation and neglect people understand and commiserate. But it seems to me that no one understands spiritual abuse. There must be others out there who have suffered as I did. How can I reach out to you and help lift you up? 

I was in my early twenties, at Bible school. One day a lecturer shocked me by saying, “If you cannot remember being born again, don’t ask me to believe you are born again. If you cannot remember being born again you are not born again.” 

I could not remember being born again, but I felt certain I was. 

So I went seriously to prayer about it and came away more certain than ever that I was born again, but still with no memory of it. So I asked God to show me. I had no idea what He would show me over the next few years. 

First, He showed me that my life split neatly into three sections.  First, there were the early years that I called the OK time. I could not call it a good time because even then I knew that, being female, I was a dirty, useless moron. But it was nowhere as near as bad as the years that followed, so I considered it OK. When you are young, you do not know anything else. One thing that had been fully embedded in me was the ‘certainty’ that my parents were bringing me up in the Way of The Lord so questioning anything they said or did was totally unacceptable –  proof that I did not love God. 

Then came what I called the Black Hole time. Nothing but blackness. Silent blackness. Yet the silence was screaming at me. 

Then the Torment time. Nightmares. The sense of being horrifically guilty – although I had no idea why. My waking hours were filled with daydreams of being beaten and punished. Somehow, I was certain God had rejected me and there was no hope for me. Yet still I tried to follow Him. Life made no sense. 

So I asked God to show me what the Black Hole time was about. Obviously something terrible had happened but I had no memory of it. 

First, He took me back to when I was 19 and had just joined a charismatic fellowship in Brisbane, Australia. One Sunday I was standing with everyone else during a worship moment and God spoke very clearly to me, just three words: “Call me father.”  I was shocked! Father was a horrible word. God was love, wasn’t He? And pure and righteous? So how could He possibly want me to degrade Him by calling Him Father? This could not be from God. It had to be a lie from Satan. So I tried to push it aside. But it kept coming straight back. Call me father. Call me father. In the end I was forced to accept that it was God speaking. But how could I ever do such a thing? Calling God father seemed such an evil thing to do. But God just kept on saying it. “Call me father.” 

I was home alone a lot that week, which was most unusual. But God knew I needed it. I was trying so hard to call God father. I walked around and around the house, trying to say it. Many times I opened my mouth in order to say it, only to start gagging. 

Finally I got it out. I called God ‘Father’. 

For a few seconds I was shocked at the idea that I had done something so evil. But then the love of God came down on me, and into me, and through me. For the first in my life, I understood what fatherly love is supposed to be. I couldn’t STOP calling Him Father. It was amazingly wonderful. 

I think it was about 2 months later that God spoke to me again in church during the worship time – again just 3 words. “You must forgive.” Again I was shocked. I did not realise that I had anything to forgive, because I considered myself so evil that I deserved all the abuse that had been thrown at me. But God was telling me to forgive. I did not know how. 

Step by step He taught me how to forgive. It started with little things. But gradually the memories God brought back to me got worse and worse until finally I remembered the worst hours of my life. 

I was 8 years old. To understand how deeply this situation affected me, you need to know that my parents were full time Christian ministers, in the Congregational (later Uniting) Church. They were very evangelistic, determined that everyone should be born again. I knew all about being born again.  People who were born again went to Heaven. Those who weren’t, went to hell. It was that simple. Yet one day I learnt that the promise of Heaven did not apply to me. 

We were having a week of outreach meetings. My father was instrumental in organising them. It was a school week, but even so my brother and I were expected to go to every meeting. 

I think it was the fourth night when I distinctly felt God calling me to go forward and give my life to Him. I wanted to do this so much and it was hard waiting for the altar call. When it came, I whispered to my mother that I needed to go forward, expecting her to be happy for me. But she was absolutely shocked. What I did not know was that both my parents thought that children could not respond to God until they were 12. So I was only wanting to go forward to be a trouble-maker. My mother was FURIOUS. Misbehaving in church was the worst sin we children could commit. And I had just committed it. I had misbehaved in church. Mum was not able to raise her voice or take any action but I felt her fury and froze in my place and could not move. I did not understand it at the time, but my eight year old brain had only one explanation for this. I was so evil that God Himself could not love me. Devastated, I thought that maybe if I accepted lots and lots of punishment, God might love me just a little bit one day. Possibly. I never tried to say any more. One thing I knew was that my parents were always right and to disagree with them in the slightest was to disagree with God. (This even applied to colours I was allowed to like.) It never entered my head to try to explain. Nothing would have worked. Mum had made up her mind I was faking to get attention and that was the end of it. 

Somehow, I got to sleep that night. But when I woke up in the morning, I was amazed to feel the very strong presence of God with me right there in my bedroom. He was still calling me to give my life to Him. So I hid under the blanket and secretly gave my life to Jesus. It was WONDERFUL! I felt so great I just had to get up but then I felt so full of love for Him that I wanted to go on praying. So I knelt down by my bed and started praying. Mum came in to get me up. Seeing me on my knees she KNEW I was being dishonest about the whole situation. She started yelling at me – on and on. All the things she could not say the night before in church she yelled now. I rose to my feet and stood there stunned, incapable of responding. Very, very clearly I both felt and heard something snap inside me. It was as if a strong metal rod inside me broke in two. She broke me. I was so evil there was no hope for me at all. The pain was absolutely more than I could handle, so my subconscious buried it deep inside me where I could not reach it. From then on I had no memory of that night and morning. 

But the damage that had been done did not disappear. I was a mess. Neurotic. 

My subconscious buried the memories, for many years. I could not remember becoming a Christian, yet, deep down inside, I knew I was. Despite my heart telling me that I was a useless, hopeless reject, I always knew that, at some level, God was there for me. Without that I would not have survived. Living in a Christian home where the rules were strict was so confusing. I had to live like a Christian, while all the while pretending that I wasn't, while deep inside I knew I was. A psychiatrist would have had a field day with me. I wanted to kill my parents. Only fear of God stopped me. 

Whenever people were nice to me, I would curl up inside and pull away from them. I could not believe they had decent motives. Why would anyone want to be nice to me? I was the evil, ugly, unwanted reject. If someone spoke nicely to me I would often snap back, and drive them away. I could not accept compliments. It was a very lonely life. I hated the loneliness, and hated the way I behaved, but could not stop myself. 

It was about 17 years later before the memories surfaced from my subconscious. At first, the pain was so great I tried to bury the memories again. But I couldn't. I was already on the path to healing - forgiveness. I still believe forgiveness is the only answer. For over 30 years I struggled to forgive, step by step. Gradually I reached the point where, when memories of little hurts came back, I could turn them over to God, asking Him to forgive the people responsible. Telling Him that I forgave. Asking Him to forgive me for hanging onto the hurt for so long, when all the time He was there, longing to heal me. Finally, I would pray that He would touch me in the hurt area and heal. He did! (Recently another step has been added: placing the problem at the foot of Yeshua (Jesus) and walking away, trusting Him that the problem was dealt with on the cross.) Gradually the hurts that came back to my mind became worse and worse, until they were absolute torment. Step by step I learnt that God was there, helping me forgive. Step by step I found healing. Then the big memory came back, of that dreadful night and morning. It took a lot of prayer to deal with that one. Then the memories continued, each one a little less than the one before. The next memory was of a time when, as a tiny child, I was in such a state of shock in hospital that I clearly remember floating around the room, looking down on my body. No, it wasn't a near death experience – I was looking down on my ALIVE body. (I have had near-death experiences at other times.) I don't remember the abuse that lead up to that state, and it doesn't matter to me anymore, but it must have been something awful. I have forgiven. 

The process is still continuing. But now it is only little things that come to mind – things that most people would shrug off and never take seriously. I too can now experience such things without taking them to heart. God's healing is a precious thing. Nothing else works. 

So many people recite the Lord's Prayer regularly, including the words “And forgive us our trespasses AS WE FORGIVE THOSE WHO TRESPASS AGAINST US”. In other words, they are praying, week after week, “Lord, if I don't forgive my enemies, PLEASE DON'T FORGIVE ME”. What are they going to say when they stand before God? Just one of the reasons I no longer like churches is that I want to scream when I hear people who show no love in their lives reciting those words. Will they ever realise what they are saying? But it is not mine to judge. 

Forgiveness, made possible through believing prayer, is the only answer. 

I remember wondering why decent men did not like me. But looking back there were ones who did. But I drove them away, certain they had to be bad just because they were showing interest in someone as evil as I was. In the end I married late, to a verbally abusive, totally dishonest, male whose greatest fun was getting me into trouble with the church elders. They never believed me. Only him. He was male. I was female. This was especially painful when I was expressing concern for my stepson. My husband said there was nothing wrong with him, so that was the end of the matter as far as the elders were concerned. My stepson has now got a long jail record. Until recently I thought I was the only person in the world who cared about him. Now I thank God for the prayer partners I have found. 

My husband tried so hard to get the children to turn on me. But thank God he failed there. They were not as easy to deceive as the church elders were. 

I grieved when my mother died, but only for a day or two, then again for a day over the funeral. I have never missed her since. Not once. I did not grieve when my father died. I had no reason to, although I tried to be the dutiful daughter, and grieve, but I couldn't. Why should I grieve? It was such a relief that he was dead. He couldn't hurt me anymore. 

The real tragedy was that they wanted to be perfect parents. 

I have seen so many women – not just myself - who came to believe that the abuse was valid, because they were just a female. 

ALL IN THE NAME OF THE GOD WHO IS LOVE. 

Remember that, all you men who put women down, and all you women who accept it – GOD IS LOVE. 

Love doesn't put anyone down. Love accepts people for who they are. Love does not expect people to think it funny  - or Godly - when they are being abused. Love is the yardstick – the first of the fruits of the Spirit. If there is no true love, the Spirit of God is not operating. It is as simple as that. GOD IS LOVE. 

And to mothers (and fathers) I say: Your children are able to hear from God MUCH younger than 12. I was only 5 the first time I felt the presence of God and knew it was God. I was told of a man who first responded to God at the age of 3. My daughter responded to the presence of God as a 5 month old baby. She has no memory of this but I do! My son prayed out loud at a prayer meeting when he was only 3. Only one other mother and myself realised that it was a three year old leading the prayer meeting. And all those men – who probably would have been angry with me if they knew it was my three year old and I had made no effort to stop him – said ‘amen’ without opening their eyes at the end of his prayer and the meeting continued. Please do not destroy your children by holding them back from committing themselves to God. And I will never be able to thank God enough for the fact that He never gave up on me but kept on calling me and showing me His Way. Thank You, Lord. 

I have met many people who have suffered dreadfully, but I have never found anyone else who suffered in the same way that I did. If you suffered in a similar way, please contact me. We can understand, help and support one another. 

Lois Eaton