Where Were You, God?

TRIGGER WARNING ***** This post talks about God and abuse

One of the sessions we attended at the Healing Together Conference was entitled “Where were you, God?” We were so drawn and a little triggered to this discussion because we were abused using the Bible and religion, to shame us, keep us in order, and even to scare us. Each year at the conference, there is inevitably a session on either religion, or God, and each year we are always drawn to attend these sessions.

This year the question “Where were you, God? pulled us like never before. Rational, adult us knows what happened to us was not God‘s fault. That our abuse was a perverted man’s twisted way of using God’s name in vain.
Then there are the voices in the back of our head, that whisper or scream depending, maybe God wasn’t there for you, because you didn’t deserve it, you were not good enough, or you are such a sinner he couldn’t even hear you. So into this session we went…

We’d like to say, we can remember it all, we’d like to say, we took really good notes, but this is not the case. We were very fortunate to get down the two questions that she asked us. We’re pretty sure that we answered them in session, although what we said we don’t know, so we are going to try again.

First let me say “when we looked at these questions, we know exactly what we wanted to say for the second one. But the first one…??? It was like we had hit a brick wall. All my selves were screaming. Ginny and Peter are both of the mind that who are we to question God, it’s not our place. Damien, Becca, Sonja, and Lola are all in the mind of what the “F” do we care what God has to say. Why would we ask him anything. My Littles just wanted quiet and not to talk about the thing that was used to hurt them. So that left Alex, Kenny, Rose, Beth, Ana and Eric wanting to answer the question. And wanting to tell the answer they were hoping to get in return. Our system functions on majority rules so we asked and answered.

The first question was: “If you could ask God a question what would it be?” And “What answer would you like to hear?” 

After everything that has happened to us, and all the ways that we have split, Do we even matter to you and Can we be forgiven?

The Answer we hope we would get:there is nothing to forgive for you did nothing wrong. And You matter more than you will ever know. No matter how broken or split you feel all your parts are loved by Me!

The second question was: “what is most problematic or powerful about your relationship with God right now?“

The most problematic part of my relationship with God is that his Teachings were twisted and used to get what my wanted from me. Now we have to untangle those teachings from the ones we want to believe – that God is merciful, loving, just and kind.

Each year as we attend these sessions, we come away, feeling a little lighter and more connected to God. The speaker helped us validate the point that what happened to us wasn’t about God, but was a selfish man’s way of using some thing that was clear and pure in a twisted way to get what he wanted. Now, if we could just get all our parts to agree to this, we’d be doing good.

Feel free to post your answers if you want to.