Strongholds

It's amazing how things happen in your life at a specific time. Some people call these instances coincidences, but I call them God moments.


Some time ago, I knew I would share this part of my past one day. I had envisioned that it would be one-on-one with someone that I would have known  for a long time and that I could trust with this dark event from my past. I had never thought that God would step in and orchestrate the event, but lo and behold He did.


I thought we were going to the dairy warehouse to play. He was a senior in high school but he liked to play with me. Being four years old, I didn't think anything of it. Back then you never heard of sexual abuse in Hawaii. This day was different. We went to a part of the warehouse that was out of sight. No one would be able to see what was going to happen.


He turned me around with my back to him and dropped my pants, then my underwear. I don't know why I didn't react, but I didn't. I just stood there. There was no penetration, but instead he used my legs held tightly together to create the friction that he needed. It didn't take long but it left a mess in my underwear. He got dressed, then he got me dressed not bothering to clean me up and we left. This happened a second and final time a few weeks later. After that, I avoided him as much as possible until he left to join the military.


Having been a victim of sexual abuse at a very young age, I can understand some of the emotions that go with it. Sexual abuse is ugly and dirty. You don't realize the long-lasting effects until many years later. The immediate effects for me was fear. I was afraid to tell my parents. I didn't think they would believe me because the perpetrator was the beloved son of their close neighbors.


As I got older, it remained a secret locked away in the deepest crevices of my memory. I thought I grew up like any other kid with his crushes for girls, but pornography came into my life at the age of twelve. From that point on, it affected me and my view of women. Intimacy for me became sex and nothing else. Love was physical and nothing more. When I didn't enjoy it any more, I checked out emotionally.


Through the course of time, I found out that the guy that did it to me got married and had three daughters. One of the first things that came to my mind was if he had or would attack them as he did me. Should I warn his wife, or someone close, to watch out for what he might do? I didn't. Not too long afterwards, I found out that he had died from cancer. For me at the time, justice had been served. I felt that he died the painful death that he deserved. The anger that was locked up in me was turned loose. But I still kept it a secret.




"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you." - Maya Angelou


May 15, 2012 became a day of reckoning for me. It began at our weekly gathering innocently enough when I was asked to demonstrate what sharing strongholds would be like. I was asked if I would be part of an exercise to model what sharing a stronghold would be like with a group of leaders that would be meeting later that night with their own groups. There were probably fifty to sixty people there, most of whom I did not know very well or at all. I sat there and thought about what I would share with the group. How transparent did I want to be? What would I be willing to share about my life with these people, most of whom I did not know that would be safe and not open me up for unwanted scrutiny? Most of these people were strangers; people that I had never spoken to or had never spoken about anything of any significance. As I sat there, nothing came to mind.


Another leader began the meeting by talking about the subject of spiritual strongholds. Then she said something that would be the catalyst of what I would share. She had shared with the leaders to be prepared to hear from their group the statement, "I have never shared this with anyone before". That was the trigger. Moments later she invited a friend of mine to join me to begin modeling what that would look like, and he walked towards me. We stood together and he asked me to share my stronghold with the group.

I took a deep breath and gathered my thoughts for a moment. Then the words came out; words that I had not planned but words that were flowing freely. I spoke of the event that happened over fifty years ago. I was getting teary eyed and a little choked up, but the words kept coming out. Some other power had overtaken the moment and I felt at peace. I spoke of the boy who did this to me. I spoke of a hard time with intimacy and relationships. I spoke of listening to the lies from the pit of hell. I spoke of the forgiveness that I didn't have the opportunity to offer to the perpetrator. I spoke of bringing out what was in darkness into the light. I spoke of being released and free. I spoke of a loving and forgiving God.


I never realized how much toll those events had taken out of me over the years. There had been unresolved pain; putting on a smile and saying everything was okay when it wasn't. Over the next few weeks I realized a greater freedom from the darkness of those events.


Today, I still deal with the effects of the sexual abuse from years ago, but now it doesn't have the grip it had on me just a few weeks ago. I claim victory every day that I don't give in to the temptation of pornography. The memory of the sexual abuse still lingers, but I can now use it, as God brings the opportunities, for others who have experienced the same thing.

Legal Aliens

My father came to the United States from the Philippines in 1947. He was a guerrilla fighter in the Philippines during World War II and even spent time in a POW camp before escaping. He grew up in a rural area of the Philippines and had to leave school after the third grade to help the family make ends meet. He, like many people from foreign countries, came here looking for a better life.

Having only a third grade education, the only work he was qualified to do involved manual labor. He didn't complain and went to work willingly every day. After working at a local dairy, he went to work for the local sugar cane company. It was hot and dirty work. He got up early in the morning to get on a truck that would take him out to the cane field that he tended. He would come home hot, sweaty and smelly each afternoon between three and four. 

He came to this country legally, abiding by all the requirements our country had for people of his status. He finally decided in the early sixties that he wanted to become a citizen of our country. He went about filing the proper paperwork to start this process.

I have never seen anyone study as hard and as diligently as my father. Every day after coming home from work and on his days off, he would spend an hour learning about the country that he wanted to become a citizen of. He even quizzed me on the subjects that he was studying and had to memorize. He felt so proud when he could answer the questions correctly and I couldn't. Of course, it did help him that I was only in the third grade.

The day finally came that he took the oath and became a citizen of our great country. He was the proudest man on this earth that day. He did everything that was required by this country to achieve what he did. By doing so, he received all the benefits that a citizen of this country was entitled to. I never told him, but I was just as proud that he worked so hard to achieve what he did.

Today, achievements like my dad's should be honored, but instead, they have been downplayed. He did it as required by this country so he could legally receive all the benefits due to a citizen of our country. Today, it's much different. There are still those that have completed the requirements to become legal citizens of this country, but there are so many more that have not. And yet they receive many benefits from our country.

I have no problem with anyone wanting to come and live in this great country of ours. I do have a problem when they do not fulfill the requirements to do so. They have made what my father and so many others have achieved seem worthless.

Our government is unwilling to seal off our borders. They are unwilling to send illegal aliens back to the countries they came from. These people are using up our resources when we have our own citizens that are unemployed, homeless and go without food or shelter. Something is drastically wrong with this picture.

I am not saying that we don't allow anyone into our country. I'm saying that they need to go about it the same way my father and countless thousands have done over the years. We should welcome anyone with open arms that fulfill all the requirements to receive all the benefits a citizen is entitled to. I would rather spend the money we are spending now in supporting illegals to get them back to the countries they came from and, going forward, use that money for the citizens of this country who need assistance. When they come into this country legally, then they should receive all the benefits that their status entitles them to.

Now here's the BUT. We need to be loving and compassionate not just to our own, but to others as well. As long as they are here, we need to help them survive. This goes against the grain of what I just wrote, but they are human beings, and as such we need to take care of them while they are here. The flip side of the coin, though, is that we still need to encourage them to go back home and to gain access to our country legally. Otherwise, all the time and effort put in by those that legally obtained their citizenship here was worthless.

Sandusky

Hate evil, love good. - Amos 5:15

There is no doubt that the crimes committed by Jerry Sandusky are some of the most heinous imaginable. I can imagine emotions are running high, running the gamut from anger to sorrow. Justice has been served, but it does not change the effect it has had on the victims let alone all who have been involved.

Having been a victim of sexual abuse at a very young age myself, I can understand some of the emotions. Sexual abuse is ugly and dirty. For someone like me, you don't realize the effect until many years later. The immediate effect for me was fear. I was afraid to tell my parents. I didn't think they would believe me because the perpetrator was the beloved son of their close neighbors. It didn't just happen once, but twice. I avoided him as much as possible until he left for the military.

As I got older, it remained a secret and was locked away in the deepest crevices of my memory. I thought I grew up like any other kid with his crushes for girls, but pornography came into my life at the age of twelve. From that point on, it affected me and my view of women. Intimacy for me became sex and nothing else. Love was physical and nothing more. When I didn't enjoy it any more, I checked out emotionally. This was one of the main reasons for my divorce.

Through the course of time, I found out that the guy that did it to me got married and had three daughters. One of the first things that came to my mind was if he had or would attack them as he did me. Should I warn his wife or someone close to watch out for what he might do? I didn't. Not too long afterwards, I found out that he had died from cancer. For me at the time, justice had been served. He died the painful death that he deserved. The anger that was locked up in me was turned loose. 

May 15, 2012 became a milestone date for me. It began innocently enough when I was asked to demonstrate what sharing strongholds would be like. One of the things I shared was that I wished I had the opportunity to forgive him face to face.

What Jerry Sandusky did was a choice. He had the temptation to do what he did and if he didn't act on it, it would still be just a temptation. But he did act on it and it was evil. I am tempted on a daily basis with pornography. When I give in to it, that is evil. The act of evil is what we should hate and not the evil-doer.

The challenge for us as a society is to forgive the Jerry Sanduskys of the world and accept them back. But there has to be genuine repentance, renouncing what they did, before we can accept them back. That acceptance is called reconciliation. We are to love one another to the point of reconciling with and loving our enemies.

It's about forgiveness. It's about love. It's about life.