“Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”-Genesis 2:24
Extreme loneliness
When my father first raped me twenty years ago, I was 5, and had nearly no knowledge of how profoundly this would affect me. Aside from all the guilt, shame, depression, anxiety and fear that manifested throughout the years, there was one thing so subtle of which I was not aware for years. That is––loneliness. I was an extremely lonely person, and worse than that, I had no idea that I was very lonely. The very core of me was messed up because of the assault, and since my father, with his depraved mind, attempted to make me like his little girlfriend physically and mentally, I didn’t hate him, but rather held fast to him. I thought I loved him, just as he claimed he loved me; I thought that was love. What I didn’t know is that this perverted affection rooted in the rape was substantial in the spiritual realm; it was a real bondage between us two. And it bound me deep in rebellion with him. And I suppose from then on, there was this horrible loneliness in me as a result of my rebellion, even though I was ignorant.
To be clear, for me, being lonely never meant being alone. When I was young and was easy to be controlled, I was always carried here and there by my father. When I grew older, I started to have my own group of friends. And yet, looking back, I had little understanding of what different kinds of relationships shall look like. In my mind, I only knew to seek one kind of relationship, which was the one that bound me and my father together in a sickening way. I don’t mean that I was always seeking something sexual (even though I did try to and, thankfully, failed), but that mental intimacy and closeness, since that was the only thing I knew that seemed satisfying. And indeed, only this kind of relationship made sense to me, for I was so desperate because of my loneliness. If a relationship doesn’t require deep mutual commitment and thus does not provide the ground for total transparency and intimacy, it doesn’t seem appealing to me at all. Of course, no relationship will be able to quench that thirst in the long term. Yet since I didn’t have this knowledge at that time, and also because it did at least grant me a sense of satisfaction, I was always seeking to bring others into this kind of closeness with me, no matter who they were. I was always looking for friends. Best friends. Like what my father said we were.
Seeking friends in every way
I sought to be best friends with my teachers, and I sought to be best friends with my peers. I sought to be best friends with my cousins, and I sought to be best friends with their parents. The way I did it was always the same: I would look for someone who seemed approachable, and after a few times back and forth, if it went well, we would start sharing things in our hearts. We would wait for each other while together, and we would keep each other in mind while not. I had no sense of the complexity of different kinds of relationships, and maybe unconsciously, refused to learn about it at all. The relationship between husband and wife, between parents and children, between siblings, between friends, between neighbors, between teacher and student, between staff and customer, between employer and employee…with all their respective rights and duties…seemed no different to me. All I wanted was someone to be there with me and for me, whether legitimate or not, and that was all.
One thing for which I thank God is that He somehow protected me from being exploited or exploiting others sexually, which could have driven me into deeper darkness. And yet since I was always so eager to present myself to be bound with others mentally, at the age of 20, what shattered me most when I came to faith was that I started to realize I had never found what I wanted by making friends, but only deep wounds coming along with each past attempts of building friendship to ease my loneliness, since I was always entrusting my heart to people and not God. I had gained nothing but only hurts. At that time, I had a friend who I recognized as my best friend and was an unbeliever. Nothing changed at first in our friendship in my walk with God. But then I started to sense that God wanted me to stop being best friends with her, since there is no fellowship between light and darkness. I had to either compromise on my faith, or cut the ungodly fellowship with her. The latter I did, and it went down the hill. The friendship broke completely and we stopped talking altogether.
Set free and wholly for Jesus
For two or three years, I carried a sense of guilt and felt sorry for the whole situation. I was afraid of seeing her around the corner. I still wondered how she was doing once in a while, like back in those days when we were friends. My thoughts and feelings were still sometimes affected by how I supposed she might say or think of certain things. I wanted to be free but was not able to. Finally, one day God showed me the key to receiving deliverance. I had to repent and renounce the unholy bondage I had formed with her. I had to cut it off in words of prayer (merely blocking her on social media didn’t work), since it was formed in the spiritual realm. After that, I knelt beside my bed and continued to pray, naming people that I knew one by one, and cut off all commitments I made that were not according to God’s will.
From that time on, God started to heal me of the confusion I had towards relationships. He showed me the root of it was the abuse. Since only husband and wife shall become one flesh with one another, and from them the order of society is built, there must be different levels of closeness and different roles between people, which is right and good in God’s eyes. Sounds so obvious, right? It took me decades to learn since the abuse! In addition to learning how to walk in wisdom and propriety towards people of different roles, I no longer let myself be sold to others because of my loneliness; I have been bought by the precious blood of Christ. He indeed is the one who loves me and fills me with His Spirit. To be honest, I failed Him several times by turning to my old ways of seeking friends and making them my comfort (even though this time with believers), yet Jesus is so patient and kind to bring me back to Him gently every time. He is indeed my hope and salvation. May my love for You be more and more steadfast, my Lord. I want to do Your will. And indeed, one day, through all this turmoil and loss in life, we shall see Him face to face, and be one with Him forever.
“Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give Him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His Bride has made herself ready.”-Revelation 19:6-7