How do you ask somebody about this....?
Over the past 24 hours, I have spent more hours than I care to admit watching Oprah.
I borrowed her 20th anniversary collection from a Friend and have thoroughly enjoyed watching it.
But as I sit and listen to tragedy after tragedy - and how Oprah has made America aware of those tragedies - I am struck by one particular theme that seems to show up time after time.
Childhood Sexual Abuse is something that permeates our society.
One statistic said that 1 in 4 girls is sexually abused before the age of 18.
1
in
4
And as I think through my girlfriends who have shared their lives with me, I see that statistic stands true, even in Christian circles. As a matter of fact, 4 of my 5 closest friends were abused in some form or fashion before the age of 18.
Even my husband has "dreams" and "vague memories" of things that happened in his childhood. He confessed to me early in our marriage that he could not remember any of his childhood prior to middle school.
One lady on the Oprah show had been abused so badly as a child that her mind shattered into 92 different personalities - each holding a different part of the story so that her mind could never allow itself to fully put the pictures together.
It makes me sick.
More than that, the thought of my own little girl going through such a terrible life-altering scenarios TERRIFIES me.
But we are not called to live in fear.
So I pray.
I realize that this is the most affective tool that I have against this gross force.
But still I somehow feel helpless.
And there is one person in particular that haunts me when I think of this.
It is a person that I love dearly and that has never hurt me. I have perhaps felt a bit uncomfortable around him at times, but NEVER scared or disgusted.
I have no reason to fear this person. I LOVE this person VERY DEARLY.
And I keep telling myself that I have simply watched too many Lifetime movies.
And I pray for the Lord to free me from this... check. That's the only way I know how to put it. It's not a fear (if I feared for my child's innocents, you had better believe that this mother bear would come out in a vicious blur of claws and fangs). But still, there is a check there....
It lingers - and gnaws at me.
And as I hear the statistics and the stories and the lives that have been ruined - I want to do EVERYTHING within my power to protect my innocent little girl from those evil things.
How does one do that? Is it really even possible?
As for the person in question, here is the decision I have come to:
I am going to continue to pray and watch very carefully over the next nine months. I am going to pray for the Lord to bring forth "the things that are done in the dark [which] will be shouted from the rooftops in the morning."
OR
That the Lord will COMPLETELY remove this "check" from me.
If neither of those things happen, and nothing has come forth, but the check is still there - then on her 2nd birthday, I will make the necessary changes to insure that there is no opportunity for anything inappropriate to happen.
It breaks my heart to even be writing this, and I may delete this entry in the near future.
But I cannot escape this thing gnawing inside me.
It is something that the Lord MUST remove from me or either I MUST act on.
I do think, in the meantime, that I will lay off the Lifetime movies and even the Oprah stories.
I need to know that this "check" is from the Lord - and not just from some story I watched on TV this afternoon.
I seriously might delete this entry soon. But for you faithful readers, I wouldn't mind some advice.