Quote From Linda M. Fossen
“On the day that I was born my father refused to come to the hospital with my mother because there was a boxing match on television that he had waited all year to see. This was a telling sign of things to come in my life. Whereas the rest of my siblings all seemed able to deal with the emotional absence of my father - I simply could not. I just craved my father’s love and attention and it seemed I would do anything to get it. This longing for my daddy created in me an enormously deep wound that simply would not heal. I was to find out later that my father would be missing at all the most important times in my life.
At the age of three my father introduced me to sexual abuse; although at the time, I did not know the meaning of the words, nor could I even spell them. I thought that all little girls played these same games with their fathers. The abuse started out so innocently – first as fondling and then gradually progressed to more perversion and abuse. The abuse started before our family became Christians and sadly was to continue for many years afterwards. My father went on to become a preacher. Being in a preacher’s family, I had no way of telling anyone about the shame that began to gnaw at my heart. I felt so damaged and unworthy and I did not know how to deal with these feelings. I remember as a little girl looking at the pictures of Jesus with children on His knee and wishing so much that I could be one of them. But I thought that Jesus hated me. After all, I had prayed for years for Him to come and rescue me. I heard that He could walk on the water and I just knew that one day He would walk into my bedroom and take me away from the abuse. When that did not happen, I felt completely betrayed by God. I began to stuff my feelings and bury them in the dark recesses of my heart. The abuse finally ended after I was twelve. What once was love for my father turned to hatred and then complete rage.
I spent most of my life trying to love God but always feeling such ambivalence in my heart towards Him. I just could not understand why God had allowed the abuse to continue after I had prayed so many years for it to end. My father used his position of being a preacher to make sure that I kept silent. I just had no means to ever tell my secret and I carried a profound burden in my young heart. I became an over-achiever, obsessive-compulsive and a very Type-A kind of person. I just could not relax because when I did the memories of my abuse would come flooding over me. I did not want to deal with these memories and kept stuffing my feelings back inside, hoping somehow that I could “run away” from my pain. On the outside, I looked like "the girl who had it all together" but inside I was silently crying. I began to loathe myself and turned to eating disorders, approval addiction and cutting to try to deal with the pain.
It was not until I had a severe neck injury that ended my 23-year career that I slowly came to the end of myself and had to face my abuse or die. There was no other choice. I was completely shattered emotionally, physically, mentally and spiritually. It was then that I began on a journey towards my wholeness and freedom. I am now 50 years old and have found such joy and peace in my life for the very first time. I have forgiven my father and there is not a single cell in my body that hates him anymore.
I never intended to write a book. I became an author quite by “accident”. In the depths of my pain, I began to journal and what came out was not in diary format but in story form. I was puzzled by this but continued to write as a means of finding peace for myself. After I found my freedom, I simply could not keep it to myself. As I began to share my freedom with others, I was appalled to discover that I was not alone. There were so many others that I knew who were still suffering in their silence. I could not keep this freedom to myself. I want to let the whole world know that there is a way out of this pain and His wonderful name is Jesus.
Linda M. Fossen’s Websites:
http://www.lindafossen.com/
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