Titus2Women

My desire is not to shock you, nor is it to titillate your imagination with my life, but to make you realize that there is nothing that we can’t talk about. If you are burdened or concerned about something, we need to talk about it so write an email, contact this site, etc. If you need someone to pray with you, we need to do that even if by phone.

Have you ever seen TV shows where someone goes to an AA meeting and starts by saying my name is Laura Linda and I’m an alcoholic? Well, ladies my name is Teddi, and I’m a sinner that is saved by grace. Until early this year I had never told my life story to any one person. Bits and pieces yes... but not everything.

When God urged me to first share this, I argued with him. I told God I would be too vulnerable if my friends knew all about me. God reminded me that ‘vulnerable’ is hanging naked on a cross.

I am blessed to have been born into a Christian home. I am the third child of four and the only girl. I don’t remember a time as a child that my family didn’t attend Sunday school and church together.

At the age of five, I asked the Lord Jesus into my heart. I have not always lived for the Lord but I have never had an occasion that I doubted my salvation.

I was tall for my age and began to develop physically at a very early age. I was wearing a bra when I was seven and had begun to menstrate just before I was nine. I have not grown at all since I was eleven.

A friend of my fathers made sexual advances to me well before my teen years and certainly long before I could comprehend the significance and sin involved. I knew I didn’t want him to touch me but I also had no idea how to make him stop. I am thankful that his sin was no more than touching and grabbing but it still left lasting scars on me emotionally.

I began having hormone problems when I was sixteen and had my first of many female surgeries two weeks prior to my seventeenth birthday. I was told at that time that I would never be able to have children. The doctors started me on hormone therapy after my surgery and the medication did help for many years.

I also had a condition that was mis-diagnosed several times but for want of another title they ended up calling it arthritis. Because of the joint/ligament problems I was unable to participate in any sports. My current doctor suspects I had Lyme disease before anyone knew there was such a thing.

After graduating from high school, I attended Western Baptist Bible College at El Cerrito, CA. for two years.

The summer between my two years at college I dated a young man that I had no business dating. He did not want me to go back to Bible College in the fall so he beat me to convince me to stay out of school. Then he raped me to prove how much he loved me.

In the 1960’s no one had heard of date rape. When my parents came and picked me up, they ask what jail he was in and if I was all right but they never asked if he had raped me. Until this year the only people I have told that I was raped are other rape victims that I have counseled.

I was certain that I would meet Mr. Right at college but I didn’t, so after two years I decided that I would help God out by looking for a husband.

I looked in all the wrong places. I was consumed by a desire to be married and safe. During the following years I made no pretext of living a Christian life yet I always knew I was saved. I would come home ashamed and disillusioned to cry myself to sleep.

My parents were praying people. I’m sure I caused them great heartache but they kept right on praying.

Finally, when my fiancé jilted me, jobless I cried out to God, seeking his forgiveness and direction for my life. My parents and I prayed together asking the Lord to show me His will. I specifically asked that God leave no doors of choice open to me except the one he would have me open. In answer to that prayer, I bought a one way ticket to Wisconsin.

Just as God had been working in my life, He had also been working in the heart of a young man named Fred. We were introduced three weeks after I moved to Wisconsin.

Fred was a born again Christian and a single father with five sons. We were married six weeks after we met with the blessing of my parents, his parents, his first wife’s mother, and our Pastor.

God gave me an instant family. Our boys all began calling me "Mom" by their choice in less then a month and that has been over 30 years ago and I’m still their "Mom"!

More surgery followed for me. The doctor, at that point, took me off of the hormones. Within two months the Lord had touched my body and I conceived. My first major miracle is named Eric. Eighteen months later a second miracle named Andy was born. Only a woman that never expected to bare children can understand the awe I felt.

When I was 32 years old the doctor informed me that I needed to have a hysterectomy. In my initial fear and concern I prayed and told God if he really wanted me to be sure that I needed the surgery, He could knock down a large black walnut tree that was in the back yard. In the same prayer, I immediately told God I didn’t need a sign. There was no storm just a rustling in the leaves, a loud crack, and that tree fell over. I called the doctor’s office to schedule the surgery.

God impressed on me a verse that I have claimed for my life’s verse. Isaiah 40:31 But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.

As well as the joy of these 30 plus years, my husband and I have faced in our sons lives sibling rivalry, rebellion, drug use, pornography, grandchildren born outside of marriage, marriages, divorce, and the death of a grandson. Isaiah 40:31 has always been there to sustain me.

What long-term effect did my sexual assault and abuse have on me? At one time I’d have said none but I realize now that that was wrong.

The beating and rape were brutal, but I was a young adult at that time. I carried a minor guilt because I should not have been dating a non-Christian. Once I had asked God to forgive me for not obeying His will in dating, the guilt was gone but the nightmares lasted for years.

As I grew into an adult I knew that the first abuse was not my fault so I carried no guilt. The reasoning about guilt was correct but abuse always leaves scars.

Children grow up believing that their home is normal. Each feels their life is average. They have no textbook, no chart, and no life experience to tell them differently. They may not like what is happening to them but they don't have the social experience to prevent or change their situation.

The sexual predator may use one of several ploys to fulfill their desires. Let me list a few and see if you recognize someone you know/knew.

The child believes they have no recourse. As a child I didn’t know how to protect myself, who to tell, or even that I should tell someone. As an adult, I know I should have told my parents and it would never have happened a second time. Once a child is old enough to understand that they should have told, they begin to feel guilt or embarrassment because they didn’t tell.

As a sexual abuse victim grows up they often act out in one or more of the following ways:

Rebellion =	you didn’t protect me or you abused me why should I obey you.
Self-abusive =	if I cause myself enough physical pain I won’t feel the inner pain.
Bilemic/Anorexia =	if I get thin enough you won’t see me.
Compulsive eater =	if I get fat no one will want to touch me.
Drugs/ Alcohol addicted =	if I’m high enough or drunk enough I’ll be able to forget.
Sexually promiscuous =	I’ve already been used maybe I can use me to get what "I" want.
Suicidal =	if that is love, I’d rather be dead.

We are so wonderfully made that our self-protection system kicks in to over-drive at the perceived threat of a repeat of abuse. As we mature, most victims push the memories down inside, buried deep within, hopefully forgotten until something causes the memory, the hurt, the frustration, the anger to bubble to the top.

Several years ago, I began to notice that even when I was thinking about being sexually intimate with my husband, as soon as he let me know what was on his mind, I pushed him away. I didn't push him physically but in my mind and my response to him. I knew the scripture from I Corinthians 7:3-5, Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence: and likewise also the wife unto the husband. The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband: and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife. Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency. Knowing the scripture and obeying it were two very different things.

If I was asleep and woke to feel my husband touching me, my instant reaction was rage. I was not annoyed or angry. I was consumed with a red-hot boiling rage. The rage became so intense I felt I would explode.

Slowly, over a period of weeks the Lord spoke to me. God created me with my emotions and anger is one of the emotions. Christ got angry and drove the moneychangers from the temple. Anger is not sin unless it is mis-directed. The Lord showed me that because when we married my husband and I became one flesh, he had the right to touch me. Genesis 2:24-25 Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. My anger was mis-directed.

I asked the Lord to show me the cause of my anger. I knew it had a root growing somewhere inside of me. He showed me that when I was a child I could not prevent the touching but that now that I was an adult I was striving for total control of who could or couldn’t touch and when they would be allowed
to touch me.

When I recognized the cause, I was able to ask the Lord to remove the rage, to heal my inner self and to allow me to rejoice in my loving husband's caress. God is the great physician and He brought healing to me.

Titus 2 Men And Women