I Will Walk in Your Truth.  By Melinda Skau.

Growing up in a fractured family amidst the violent gangs of East Los Angeles, assaulted verbally, sexually and physically, was agonizing. My inner rumblings echoed the shame of poverty and inadequacy.

Then came bereavement:

My alcoholic Dad attempted to end his life when I was eleven.

The day before my 18^th birthday, my 15-year-old brother arrived home from school to find our precious Mom lifeless from an overdose of pills. Suicide! My first task as the 18 -year-old executer of her estate was to buy my brother a white dress shirt and drive him three hours south for the funeral.  I fought internally not to accept her intentional death as a rejection.

Despair was never far away.

My escape was to bury myself in the safe space of academics, pushing through school with honors and pounding out Beethoven’s Pathetique Sonata on the piano with all the anger that burst from my inner volcano.

Then I buried the abandonment and grief with carbs and “forgot” it.

I finished college, married a great guy and completed the coursework for my medical doctor degree and family medicine residency. To the outside observer I looked and functioned as a “normal” professional and church goer. But while I was pregnant with my first baby, fears related to my repressed sexual trauma began to escape the tight cocoon where I had submerged them. My subconscious was terrorized by the idea of a baby arriving via the birth canal previously violated as a 4-year-old child.

Odd: as my honeymoon and marriage had been delightful. Somehow, the impending delivery felt like an event I could not control. I gained 70 pounds during that pregnancy and my blood pressure ramped up dangerously. Crazy nightmares assaulted me in the dark of night: a hand with a red-handled knife stabbing me front and back. I bawled so much I had to wash my face four times before I could slip out my front door driving to my clinic and then I sobbed all the way home.

I survived the delivery and we lovingly welcomed our precious baby into our lives. But my nocturnal flashbacks and depression persisted despite private and group counseling and much prayer and trauma-directed Bible study. I felt God must have abandoned me. Why didn’t He protect me from the rapes and the losses? Was I too broken to be fixed? Was God too distant to intervene?

When my baby weaned himself, I escaped solo to the beach for a sob session with God. First, I stomped up and down on the sand accusing Him, “If I were God, I would never allow a 4-year-old to go through all this!”  I wept until my face was puffy, crayoned left-handed drawings of the traumas and searched multiple books. Some of the Bible texts from “Disappointment with God” by Philip Yancey began to whisper to me like fragile wisps of comfort from my Heavenly Father.

It struck me that God had allowed His own Son to suffer like I did and even die! But not a wasted suffering —oh no! Jesus suffered for a holy purpose, willingly, to save me and the world from the ravages of sin and the deceptions of the devil. I wondered,

“Is it possible that God would use my suffering for a divine purpose?”

An inkling of hope flickered into my rage and despair.

Even while I was shouting at God, I coveted His presence! I had already lost my Mom: I was desperate for God to do life with me! I craved His comfort and His nurture.  My feelings of depression, abandonment and brokenness were so powerfully overwhelming that it was almost impossible to believe what God’s Word told me.

But I made a strong-armed decision to make God’s Word more true to me than the torrent of my negative feelings!  I knew that I supremely loved my son. Surely God loved me as His child in the same way. Thus began a 37-year journey listening to my Heavenly Father’s heart through His Word and music and nature.

2 Corinthians 4:15-18 NASB-

“For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God. So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”

I think this is my favorite verse.

When I remember the senseless death of my godly mother, the following verses come to mind:

“The righteous man perishes, and no man takes it to heart;
and devout men are taken away, while no one understands.
For the righteous man is taken away from evil, he enters into peace;
they rest in their beds, each one who walked in his upright way.”
– Isa. 57:1-2

“Precious (costly) in the sight of the LORD is the death of His saints.”

– Psalm 116:15

“For my father and my mother have forsaken me, But the LORD will take me up.” – – Psalm 27:10

The night my mom died, a friend walked me down to the college chapel for a vespers program. As we stepped across the threshold into the sanctuary, the pipe organ swelled and the whole congregation sang four-part harmony, “It is Well, It is Well With My Soul.”  I absolutely KNEW that God would never abandon me.

This is the grace which my loving Heavenly Father has poured down on my heart and soul through His Spirit of Comfort and the death and resurrection of His one and only beloved Son Jesus, my Friend and Brother and Savior and All!

He has used my sufferings transformatively to build TRUST and hope and faith in His goodness.

It is not the EVENTS of our lives that traumatizes us, but the LIES we attach to them (agreeing with Satan when He accuses God of being distant, uncaring, powerless, and unfair.)

On tough days, when the devil sends stabs of inadequacy, futility, bereavement or shame, I ask myself out loud,

“What is the truth here?” “What lie is Satan foisting on me?”

And I ask God to send me a song idea or scriptures to counteract the Devil’s lies with truth.

“Teach me Your way, O LORD; I will walk in Your truth; Unite my heart to fear Your name. I will give thanks to You, O Lord my God, with all my heart, And will glorify Your name forever.”

– Psalm 86:11-12