Orange Blossom Wishes

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through many harmful times. Fate, or perhaps destiny, provided I would be the one to go through these experiences. While I have grown from an innocent child to a sage grandmother, I have slowly and painfully, yet thankfully come to the conviction nothing happens by coincidence; everything is part of a greater plan set down by a much bigger God who truly has His best for us in His heart.
   The very first episode of being molested is clearly etched in my mind. I was seven years old. As a child I was molested for almost eight years. As a woman I was abused for sixteen years. The deafening silence cloaked my life, seeming to take the very breath from my lungs at times. I struggled to suppress what I was enduring, but the experience began to form a persona all its own. I liken it almost to a cute little elephant sitting in the corner of the family parlor, not taking up a lot of room and seeming rather innocuous at first, but obviously out of place. As time passed and I grew, so did the elephant. I often wondered when or even if anyone was ever going to notice, much less acknowledge the fact that a rather large pachyderm was taking up residence within my very soul. It was leaving a great amount of waste product inside my fragile spirit that only increased as time went along. Inside my injured psyche was a precious innocent child, inwardly and silently screaming out, yet nobody hearing, “Please, won’t somebody stop the deafening silence? Can’t you see it, can’t you smell it? Get this terror out of my life before it kills me.” Unfortunately, it did kill a portion of me, but thank God for His resurrection power.
   Hopefully, before you finish reading the account of a life subjected to molestation, sexual assault, and marital abuse, you will gain a strong reassurance, whether you are the victim or a friend or family member of a victim, that there is hope beyond measure for a future of a full life well worth living. Yes, a life free from abiding in the times someone trespassed against you, your body, mind, soul, and spirit.
   The last thing I want this to be is just another religious book about being molested or abused and getting over it. The cry of my heart is that in some way you will be able to relate to the events of my life, know that someone else has walked the path you have traveled, or may be traveling now, should you be able to relate this book to any part of your life, and that you will discover a hope that had likely vanished along the way. While I do not set out to write a religious piece, I can’t make it real without presenting the divine intervention and revelation that was the source of my deliverance from total desperation to a life renewed with glorious hope and faith for a future.