HUSH by Nicole Braddock Bromley

I first heard Nicole Braddock Bromley speak in January 2006 in Edman Chapel at Wheaton College. With courage and grace, she shared her testimony of surviving childhood sexual abuse and incest at the hands of her stepfather. Part of her story is about her mother’s powerful role in rescuing and removing her from danger.

When Nicole told her mother what her stepfather was doing, her mother believed her and immediately left the home with her daughter. Nicole’s stepfather was an apparently outstanding member of the local church community in leadership, and no one, including his own wife, realized what he was doing to his daughter in secret. He successfully deceived everyone around him. But when the truth came out, he lost his cool. He came after his wife and daughter when they left and tried to harm them. By God’s grace, they remained safe and protected. Later, tragically, the man did not repent and change his ways but instead took his own life, ashamed of the truth that had been made public.

Nicole’s story makes it clear that mothers can be deceived just like everyone else when it comes to the abuse their husbands are perpetrating against their children. Once they learn the truth, mothers have a choice about how to respond to it. They can believe their young and innocent children and courageously take action. Or they can retreat into fear and denial, blaming the child who was victimized instead of holding their husbands, the perpetrators, responsible for their sinful actions and criminal behavior.

The courage it takes to believe should not be underestimated. A married woman derives much of her sense of identity from her husband, her financial security is tied to his, and her emotional health and well-being is supposed to be reinforced by her husband but is being drastically undercut when he is sexually involved with their children. However, many mothers do have this courage. As I recently read in the book Rocking the Cradle of Sexual Politics, when men are brought up on criminal charges for childhood sexual assault, it is usually because their wives had the courage to report their husbands’ devastating actions to the police and follow through in the courts.

The author of Rocking the Cradle, a feminist without religious affiliation, is very clear in her opinions and assessment of the way that mothers have been maligned by psychologists and the justice system. In her view, which is based on her research into court cases dealing with childhood sexual abuse and their outcomes, mothers are called passive by psychologists and often blamed by the courts for failure to protect their children from their abusive husbands. The children are sometimes removed to child protective custody rather than given to either of their parents in such cases. Sometimes the mother who reported is labeled “crazy” by her husband’s attorneys, and as a divorce proceedings go through, the children are given to the fathers who abuse instead of the mothers who dare to report. The situation in the courts can be very bleak indeed, especially when abusive fathers fight for themselves so adroitly there.

Not all mothers are protective. Sadly, some are profoundly emotionally unhealthy and cannot deal with the truth when it is revealed. They may have been abused themselves as children. For it is a strange but consistently observed psychological pattern: many sexually abused girls grow up to marry abusive husbands. How can women who never resolved their own childhood abuse experiences truly help their own children when they suffer the same fate?

Other mothers who try to protect cannot because of circumstances beyond on their control. Children who have been abused by their fathers inevitably experience feelings of rage not only at the abusers, their fathers, but their mothers, too, partly because they’re reacting emotionally from a child’s innocent belief that their mothers could or should be all powerful — as they are in the child’s life but aren’t in the real world.

Abuse has a terrifying and destructive impact on entire families, but Nicole’s story is one of hope for children trapped in incestuously abusive homes. Since statistics suggest that approximately 80% of childhood sexual abuse cases involve a father or stepfather perpetrator and a daughter victim, it is clear that the mother’s response to the situation can make the pivotal difference in her child’s immediate rescue and long-term recovery.

To read Nicole’s story, visit her website or pick up a copy of her book.

Dr. Jane Beal
JSASSN International

Being the Beloved

BEING THE BELOVED

In the Song of Solomon, we read:

“Catch for us the little foxes,
the little foxes that spoil the vineyards,
for our vineyards are in bloom.

My Beloved is mine, and I am His.”

Now, years ago, I remember pouring out my angsty, troubled, teenage soul to a wise, elderly, black woman who attended our church in Santa Rosa, California. Her name was Esther, and she was either widowed or divorced, and had, in consequence, raised her children with only God the Father as her co-parent. On this day, I was enumerating all my problems to her, and she said something to the effect of “you know, Jane, those problems are little foxes.” She went on to quote the whole verse from the Song of Solomon and to talk about how the enemy of our souls seeks to harass and damage the beautiful vineyards of our lives with the little foxes of difficulty and strife. This is one of the first times I remember hearing the Song of Solomon interpreted allegorically, and Esther’s interpretation has stayed with me a long time.

Yesterday, the verse came to me again as I was meditating on identity. It struck me that the bride from the Song of Solomon does not see her identity primarily in terms of her education or her vocation, but in terms of her relationship to the one she loves who loves her in return: “My Beloved is mine, and I am His.” She has a strong sense of mutual belonging, and from within the safety of a sacred love, she lives and moves and has her being. She loves and is beloved.

Then I began to think about how differently identity formation works for so many of us in this life.

SIN

Most of us have experienced the effects of sin on our souls. One of the most devastating effects is on our identity, on our understanding of our selves. Sin is so powerful that sometimes it begins to define who we are. Sometimes it is specifically the sin of others that damages us.

Just this past weekend, I met with a woman who was devastated by sexual abuse and incest when she was very young. She drove all the way from Michigan to Illinois to meet with me, having learned about my JSASSN ministry from her daughter and the JSASSN website. We talked for a couple of hours, and one of the things she said was that this terrible experience of abuse has prevented her all her life from feeling like she was good, from feeling like she could have real intimacy with God, and from feeling like she is loved. As a pastor’s wife on the verge of turning fifty, she believes intellectually that she is loved by God, but she’s been praying that God would move that knowledge down from her mind and into the depths of her heart so that it might suffuse her whole being.

I know that the sin of others can damage our identity as the Beloved. As Esther said to me years ago, the sins of others can be like little foxes. Those sins can steal our joy and make us believe lies about who we really are. So can our own sins.

When other people sin against us, when they hurt and damage our souls, whether purposefully accidentally, we are become vulnerable: able to be wounded. So often, I find, the places in our lives where we have been hurt are closely related to the sins that we commit. Our own sins further ground us in a shame-based identity that we hate. Sometimes sin is so powerful in our lives and in our world that the mere temptation to sin begins to define us.

Recently, one of my dear students at the small, private, Christian liberal arts college where I teach wrote an essay about being gay on our campus. He is a thoughtful young man, intelligent and gifted, sensitive and moral. His essay revealed how he sees his identity. Because he experiences attraction to other men, even though he does not act on his attraction, he believes that he is gay. When I read what he wrote, I thought: the temptation to sin should not define our identity. If I derived my sense of identity from my temptations, how devastated I would be! No, it is not being tempted or even acting on temptations that makes us who we are. While no Christian can deny that we have a sin nature and that we are, in fact, sinners, sin does not define us. Life is not about being sinners. It is about being the Beloved.

In his first letter to the church at Corinth, Paul makes a long list of sins that members of the church previously engaged in, including sexual immorality, idolatry, adultery, homosexuality, thievery, greed, and drunkenness, among others things. Then he says: “And that is what some of you were.” Were! He uses the past tense of the verb to emphasize that the sin and the shame-based identity are in the past. Paul goes on to say, “But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor. 6:11).

SOCIETY

It is not just sin that attempts to get such a strong hold on us that it defines who we are. The society we live in does the same. The people we are around name us in various ways, sometimes in ways that make us feel bad, but often times in ways that make us feel quite good.

For example, I teach at a college where people often ask each other, when they first meet, the following two questions: “What is your major?” and “What do you want to do with that when you graduate?” These questions are an entryway into getting to know the other person. There is nothing wrong with these questions in themselves. Certainly I’ve asked these questions any times because I am a teacher, and I want to foster my students’ current education and future dreams.

But because these questions are asked repeatedly, sometimes students start to get that feeling that who they are is based on what they study, their accomplishments in their field, and the grandiose nature of their future plans for great jobs, effective ministries, and, as the cliché goes, a white picket fence with a happy spouse, 2.5 children, and loyal dog. Faculty are at least ten times worse than the students because they have been members of academic society for a longer period of time. The questions they ask and answer are even more heavily inflected with expectation of success and judgment of failure.

The result for students and teachers is often a profound sense of inadequacy. Worse yet, people moving in the academic realm begin to base their sense of identity and sense of self-worth on transitory kudos. They begin to believe that they must work to be praised and that somehow that praise will make them good and may even result in their being loved. The whole dynamic is extremely unhealthy. But it is very common.

I think people develop a strong yearning to get rid of the shame-based identity that sin has imposed on them in favor of a success-based identity that academic society can give. But this is just replacing one merciless taskmaster with another. The soul, whether under the weight of shame or the weight of success, is still withering because the soul still desires to be the Beloved.

When identity is success-based, when that success is a desperate attempt to compensate for sins that have damaged the soul, people begin to hide as many of the unattractive parts of themselves as possible. We don’t want other people to know about our brokenness, our weakness, our shame. We fear rejection. The thought of rejection is terrifying, especially since our soul is still longing to be the Beloved. Even when people try to love us, when we have attempted to substitute a success-based identity for a shame-based one, we cannot receive the love that is offered. We can’t receive it because we believe that our true selves are not what is being loved, only the façade we have presented to the world. No one truly knows us. We believe if they did, no one would truly love us.

The silent and unseen devastation of success-based identity cannot be overstated. In truth, it absolutely damages the soul and leaves people feeling isolated and unloved. It was never what God intended for us. It is not our destiny in eternity. Both now and in times to come, God wants us to know that we are the Beloved.

SELF

The war between shame-based identity and success-based identity is constantly being mediated by the self. The self becomes the ambassador between the two opposing camps. The self tries to choose how to define itself, but the self is very weak.

How can we ourselves choose our identities rightly when it is our selves, our very souls, that have been attacked by both of the armies we are trying to force to agree to a peace treaty? It is impossible. After the first Persian Gulf War in the 1990s, no one expected Kuwait to be the primary mediator in the negotiations between Iraq and the United States. Why would we expect our souls to be able to negotiate the boundaries, the expectations, between shame and success?

There is only one person who can effectively define us: the Spirit of the Living God.

SPIRIT

In the Gospels, we read that when Jesus was about to be baptized, heaven opened up and the Spirit descended upon him in the form of a dove. The voice of God the Father then proclaimed from above, “This is my Son, whom I love; in him, I am well pleased.” As Henry Nouwen has pointed out, Jesus had not yet done anything on earth to earn the approval of the Father. He had not yet fed the 5000. He has not yet raised Lazarus or Talitha from the dead. He had not yet gone to the Cross to suffer and die and redeem all of humanity from the power of sin. Yet God loved him, and He was pleased with him.

Jesus was the Beloved.

I believe that when God looks at us, He sees us, and He knows us, but our identity in his eyes is not primarily about our sin and shame or our success and social standing. He loves us because He made us, and we are his. If only we could realize, in the deep heart’s core, that He is ours, our identity would be transformed.

Then we could live all our lives knowing that we are the Beloved at all times.

Jane Beal

“Psalm”

April is National Poetry Month. As a poet as well as an overcomer of childhood sexual assault, I want to give God the praise today for His healing power. He saved my soul, He redeemed my life, and He strengthened my body so that I can serve Him and speak the Truth that sets others free.

To God be the glory.

PSALM

In the morning, my spirit sings to God the secret
of my innermost being, my hidden heart, our sanctuary

All my longings lie open before You

I bring to You the sacrifice of thanksgiving when desire
burns bright for a new life in my body, in my soul, our being

All my longings lie open before You

You hear what cannot be spoken, You hear what hopes
I have that no one else can see or know

All my longings lie open before You

For You came into the darkness when the night was full of fear
when the silent scream rose to Your throne, You came

When I was powerless, terrified, when the Enemy
seized my throat and I couldn’t breathe, You came down

You held my soul when I could not bear the shame,
and You breathed my memories of myself back into me

All my longings lie open before You

O God, Savior, Redeemer, Almighty One, Your Name
be glorified for reconnecting the tree to the roots

All my longings lie open before You

I praise You for showing me the mysteries of the tidepool
and healing the pain in my eyes and my face and my mouth

All my longings lie open before You

You gave me a vision of hope and a future, pure
shining in white, marveling with joy, with my baby on my back

All my longings, all my longings, O God, lie open before You

So I am singing to You, Holy Wondrous Helper, who sustains my life,
who makes me overcome the pain of the past by Christ’s power
and live by the Spirit in continual VICTORY.

Jane Beal
sanctuarypoet.net

“All my longings lie open before you,” Psalm 38:9

victim, Survivor, OVERCOMER

After a person is sexually assaulted, in the eyes of the law, that person is a victim. The assailant is the perpetrator. In the police reports and the court records, there is a contest between the victim and perpetrator.

When a person has been sexually assaulted and seeks counseling, in the eyes of psychologists, that person is a survivor. The assailant is an abuser. In counseling sessions, conversations, and notes, there is a record of what the abuser did and how the survivor responded, at the time of the assault and afterwards.

But after being a victim and a survivor, there is another stage of being, another identity: OVERCOMER. The overcomer experiences healing and grow stronger, learns self-care and self-defense, gains courage and confronts, and comforts others who have experienced abuse and assault.

I have been both a victim and a survivor, but today I can honestly say that I am an overcomer.

“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” Romans 12:21

“They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their life so much as to shrink from death. Therefore rejoice, you heavens and you who dwell in them!” Revelation 12:11-12a

Dr. Jane Beal
JSASSN International

Dealing with Dreams and Nightmares

At the end of the fall semester at Wheaton College, one of my students asked to meet with me. We met over lunch. At that time, she shared with me that one of her friends had been raped while on a missions trip in Africa four years ago. Her friend was having dreams and nightmares that made her afraid to go to sleep. My student wanted to ask me what would help.

At that moment, I was especially aware of how dreams, nightmares, and hallucinations are symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder, a common condition among survivors of sexual assault.

My student’s question made me remember the years that I was afraid to go to sleep, and all of the strategies I developed for trying to get a peaceful night’s rest while going through counseling and trying to come to terms with my past experiences. I share these now in the hopes that others who need sleep might be able to benefit:

* When I went to sleep, I would remind myself of where I was: in my own room, in my own bed, safe. If I happened to be traveling or visiting a friend or family member, I would clearly tell myself where I was before I slept. That way I would not wake up confused and afraid, not knowing where I was.

* I had a verse from Scripture that I recited to myself when I went to sleep. Different people have different verses or words that they say to themselves. This was mine: “The Angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear Him.”

* If I were having a dream or nightmare that made me afraid or terrified, one in which I was trapped in a story causing me pain, I would remind myself that the dream was my dream or my nightmare, and I could make choices in the dream or nightmare, and then I would make the choices that set me free.

* More often, I would just shout at the top of my lungs in the dream (and often actually out loud in my room): “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus!” This would always wake me up, and the dream would be over.

* If I were still shaking and afraid after I woke up, I would turn the light on and leave the light on as I went back to sleep. Sleeping in the light helped to drive away the darkness.

* Sometimes I would get up in the middle of the night and write down whatever I dreamed. If I didn’t write down my dream in the night, I would write it down in the morning. I would pray that God would show me what the dream meant. Usually, as I consciously thought about the images, stories, and feelings from the dreams, I was able to understand why they were coming up. This understanding helped me to have peace and to integrate my past memories into my present lived experience, which was necessary for me to be whole.

* Sometimes I was too exhausted to write down my dream immediately after I had it, but I still needed some way to process what I had just experienced. I had a short list of people I could call at any hour to ask for help. One of these people was a trained counselor. Others were prayer partners in my family. These people helped me deal with my fears.

(Interestingly, the same method, of having others listen to the dream and pray for the dreamer in the middle of the night right after she wakes up, is used by International Needs in Ghana to help women who were formerly trapped in the trokosi system deal with PTSD dreams, nightmares, and hallucinations.)

What I did not do is deny the importance of the dream. I did not tell myself it didn’t matter. I did not try to forget it. I knew that something so intense, a dream or nightmare or hallucination that left me terrified, was a message from my soul trying to communicate something vital – something important. So I learned to pay attention to my dreams and nightmares.

And gradually, as I listened to my soul, the frequency and intensity of these PTSD dreams decreased. Now I only have these kinds of dreams very rarely, when something has cued a memory that I haven’t been able to fully deal with before. When I have these dreams now, I know what they are about and how they work, and when I wake up, I have patience with myself and deal with the dreams in prayer.

Redemption: A Sermon

On September 13th, I preached a sermon entitled “Redemption” at my home church, Church of the Savior, in West Chicago. In it, I testified to the redeeming power of God at work among women freed from the trokosi system in Ghana, West Africa and in my own life as I have recovered from sexual abuse and assault. To hear this sermon, click on:

http://www.friendsofthesavior.org/2008/20080913-JB.mp3

The above address is a connection to Church of the Savior’s home-page (www.friendsofthesavior.org) and the section on which interested friends may find audio recordings of all sermons preached at our church.

The text of my sermon, “Redemption,” is given below.

REDEMPTION

Yosef’s Story:

“Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve numerous people, as he is doing today. So have no fear” (Genesis 50:20-21a, RSV).

These are the words of Yosef, son of Ysrael, son of Yitzak, son of Avraham when his brothers come to him seeking forgiveness for the evil they did to him in his youth.

These brothers were the same men who assaulted Yosef, sold him into slavery, and pretended he was dead. Not only did they strip him of his beautiful robe, they stripped him of his innocence, his freedom, and his sense of security in the world. They were driven by hatred and jealousy and rage that came, in part, from the fact that their father loved Yosef more than any of them—and that their father loved Yosef’s mother, Rahel, and hated their mother, Lea. They cast their younger brother first into a pit and then out of their lives. In one swift series of events, they physically abused Yosef, they violated his will, and they robbed him of his dignity as a young man. They overpowered him. They shamed him. Then they sat down to eat together while he was alone and thirsty in the bottom of a pit in the desert without water. Finally, instead of killing him like they originally planned, they decided to sell him, half-naked, to Midianite slave-traders and profit on his flesh. Yosef was then taken out of his homeland and into Egypt where he suffered first as a slave and then as a falsely-accused prisoner for thirteen years.

Yet, when his brothers approached him asking for forgiveness, he could say to them: “Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve numerous people, as he is doing today. So have no fear.”

You see, the greatest trauma in Yosef’s life was not the end of his story. The pit, the pain, the powerlessness – the enslavement and the suffering – were not the end of Yosef’s journey. The God of the Universe was watching when all these things happened, and He had a plan to redeem. God had a plan to redeem not only Yosef, but every living member of his family, all the citizens of Egypt, and thousands upon thousands of people from surrounding nations.

As we well know, Yosef did not remain a slave or a prisoner in Egypt all his life. Yosef was delivered by the hand of God. God gave him dreams in his youth of what would happen in his future. He gave Yosef the power to interpret dreams. He elevated him in the court of Pharoah and gave him a position of leadership. In that position, God gave Yosef authority over Egyptian agriculture, so that Yosef was able to preserve the lives of thousands of people during a severe famine that went on for seven years. Yosef married and had two sons. So, in his personal and professional life, Yosef prospered. During the days of famine, he was reunited with his father and all his brothers, and the entire family was reconciled one to another. Yes, God had a plan to redeem.

Tonight, I want you to know that God has a plan to redeem your life and every painful experience you have been through in the past and every difficulty you are suffering through now. The God of the Universe has a plan to redeem. His love for you is very great.

The concept of redemption: (getting the theology straight)

Now, as we begin to discuss redemption, I want us to get the theology of redemption straight. Redemption does not mean that God planned or caused the evil that happened to Yosef—or to us. God is light, and there is no darkness in Him.

Redemption does not mean that the evil Yosef’s brothers did to him—or that others have done to us—was somehow justified or excusable just because God brought good out of it. From a fully-informed, Judeo-Christian, biblical perspective, if the means are evil, the means never justify the ends. God hated the sin done to Yosef just like He hates all sin that we do or that is done to us.

Furthermore, redemption does not mean that sin is necessary to God’s plan. The wrong Yosef’s brothers perpetrated against him—and that others have perpetrated against us—did not have to happen for God to accomplish His purposes in Yosef, in his family, in Egypt, in the world—or in us. Sin is in no way necessary to God for God to accomplish His sovereign purpose.

But neither is sin any impediment to God’s will.

God knows that we live in a sinful world, and so when the effects of sin traumatize and damage our souls and our circumstances, our relationships and our cultures, God has a plan to redeem.

Tonight, I want to share some stories with you about redemption.

I grew up in churches where we used to have “testimony services” some Sunday nights, and people would encourage one another by telling the stories of what God had done for them. There’s a basis for this practice in scripture. In Revelation, it says: “They overcame the devil by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony.” Does anyone here want to overcome the devil tonight? I need to hear some amens. Jesus, the Lamb of God, has overcome the world. He is the Word of our testimony. And when we testify about His redeeming power, freedom comes not only to us, but to all those who hear in faith and believe in Jesus’ Name.

Let me tell you the first story.

International Needs in Ghana, West Africa:

This summer, I saw the evidence of God’s redeeming power being made manifest in Ghana, West Africa.

I’ve been blessed to visit Ghana before to attend the wedding of my dear friend, Kate Na-aku Tetteh, and to help Kate when she was traveling from San Francisco to Accra with her newborn twins, my godchildren, Reina Akweley and Renee Akuorkor Tetteh. This time, this summer, I went to Ghana because the Wheaton College Office of Christian Outreach sent me there to visit to student interns working at the International Needs Network Vocational Training Center in the Volta River region of Ghana.

I first learned of the work of International Needs in Ghana from the Rev. Walter Pimpong when he came to speak at Wheaton College in the fall of 2007—one year ago. He spoke of the “trokosi system” that is currently practiced among Ewes and Dangmes of the Volta Region. “Trokosi” is a word that means “slaves of the gods.” In the trokosi system, girls and women are handed over by their families to village priests as sexual slaves to pay for the crimes of their ancestors.

When I was in the Volta region, I learned the story of a woman named Mercy who works with the International Needs in Ghana and regularly speaks on behalf of the trokosi who have been set free and those who are still in slavery. Mercy herself was trapped in the trokosi system until she was redeemed.

Mercy’s Story

Mercy Senahe, an Ewe, grew up in the Volta region of Ghana, West Africa. When Mercy was about eight years old, the fetish priestess cursed her family after the priestess lost a gold earring because she believed that Mercy’s grandmother had stolen it. To pay for this “theft,” and avoid the fatal consequences of the priestess’s curse they so deeply feared, the family planned to give Mercy, the youngest virgin daughter in the family, to the village shrine in Avakpe.

Mercy has said of this event: “My age-mate came to tell me that I would be sent to some place and I would never come back. Some days later they told me that I should bathe because I was going to some place. I remembered what my age-mate had told me, so I went to the bush to hide. I stayed there until the night. When I came out, my grandfather beat me roughly. 
That same night they took me to cross the river to the shrine.”

After Mercy arrived in the next village, she fell asleep on the ground. When she woke up, her family was gone. Women from the village shrine came and placed bracelets on her wrists and ankles. They showed her how she must worship each of the idols in the shrine. Mercy had become one of the “trokosi,” a slave to the gods.

Her new name in the shrine was “Gold.” She was named after the item her grandmother had been accused of stealing. She was the sacrifice meant to be appeasement for that crime, and she bore its name.

But Mercy did not understand this at the time. How could she? She was only eight years old. She really had no idea why she was in the shrine. But she quickly learned to be terrified in her new environment.

In the Avakpe shrine, Mercy was sexually assaulted repeatedly by the priest, sometimes as part of an occult ritual meant to symbolize the “marriage” between the trokosi and the shrine gods.
At about age twelve, Mercy gave birth to her first child, fathered by the priest. She would eventually have four children by him. The priest had already fathered dozens of children borne by the other trokosi in the shrine.

Even as a young pre-teen, Mercy had to farm to support herself and her children. She was forced to work all day before she was allowed to eat. She could not go to school. Her children were not allowed to go to school either, but were instead forced to work with her on the farm to feed themselves.

Mercy tried to escape, but her family sent her back to the shrine. She was completely trapped in slavery.

But when Mercy was in her early twenties, the International Needs team in Ghana (ING) team came to negotiate for Mercy’s freedom.

Intervention: International Needs Ghana, freeing the trokosi

Typically, the International Needs team in Ghana involves all the stakeholders in the redemption process: the priest, the women, their children, their families of origin, the tribal village communities, the International Needs negotiators, and a Ghanaian government representative. Native Ghanaian negotiators explain to the priest why he must, by law, release the trokosi who wish to be free from slavery. Sometimes the priest is compensated for releasing the women. In such cases, the women are literary “bought back” –literally redeemed— from slavery.

Once the priest agrees to set the women free, he performs a ritual inside the shrine to appease the idols. Then, a second ceremony is performed, in which it is declared to the women, their families, and their village communities that they are free: no longer trokosi, no longer slaves. They are set free. The government official bears witness to this and signs a document to this effect.

The freed women often return to their families of origin and the villages where they formerly lived. International Needs workers talk with their families to facilitate this re-integration process—and, again, they can do this effectively because the workers are native Ghanaians. International Needs also offers education and work-skills training to the women through their Vocational Training Center (VTC) in Adidome, Ghana so that the women can economically support themselves and their children.

I was at the Vocational Training Center myself this summer, and I saw the amazing work of teaching and learning going on there. Women can learn mat-weaving, soap-making, bread-baking, hair-dressing, cloth-dyeing (“batik”), and dress-making, among other things. Their older children attend schools in the Adidome. Their younger children are cared for in an on-site nursery. They themselves have the opportunity to learn reading, writing, and small business skills as well as health-care.

Women not only receive vocational training, but on-going counseling and psychological support. They are provided with one-on-one and group counseling to help them overcome their intense fears and traumatic experiences. Many of them have been told that if they ever speak of what went on in the shrine, they or one of their family members would die. But they do become free of these fears gradually.

And the International Needs staff shares the knowledge and love of Jesus with these freed women, and many of them become passionate Christians. Not only does the staff share with the women, the staff goes out into the villages and invites whole villages to accept Jesus Christ as Lord. As Ewes and Dangmes and others become Christians, they turn away from the trokosi system, and even greater freedom comes to the tribes and the cultures of the Volta Region of Ghana and the neighboring country of Togo.

Today, Mercy is one of these Christians, telling her story and helping to change the lives of hundreds of people who need to know of the sovereignty of God, the love of Jesus, and the power of the Holy Spirit.

My Story

Now I want to tell you a second story, part of my testimony, because I want us to see together that God’s redeeming power is not just for Yosef, who lived thousands of years ago in Egypt, or for Mercy, who lives thousands of miles away in Ghana, but it is also for us, the members of Church of the Savior living today right here in Chicagoland. God’s plan to redeem is not only for the whole world, it’s for you, each of one of you here with me tonight. His love for you is very great.

Now I’m just going to tell it like it was so I can get to telling it is now. This is my testimony, and I’m giving it with full confidence in Jesus, my Savior, who said, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.”

When I was eight years old, like Mercy Senahe, I was abused, and I was sexually assaulted. A friend’s grandfather, a man who has since died, and my best friend’s uncle, a man who is now a registered sex offender, were the perpetrators. A girl from my church, who was herself abused, acted out many of her issues with me and more than half a dozen other children we knew.

These experiences were like being thrown in a pit. In many ways, they stripped me of my innocence, my freedom, and my sense of security in the world. They physically injured me, they violated my will, and they robbed me of my dignity, my sense of beauty and self-worth, as a young girl. They overpowered me. They shamed me. They sold me into an emotional slavery to a pain so deep that I can only express it by saying I wanted to die, and I nearly took my own life four separate times, the first time being when I was just nine years old.

But the greatest trauma of my life was not the end of my story. The pit, the pain, the powerlessness—the enslavement and the suffering—were not the end of my journey. The God of the Universe was watching when all these things happened, and He had a plan to redeem. God had a plan to redeem not only me, but everyone who calls upon His Name to be saved.

I can tell you truthfully that the Holy Spirit has faithfully guided me through a process of healing.

The story of that healing process is a long story, and I can’t tell you all of it now, but I can tell you the steps that were involved. First, the abuse had to stop. I had to feel physically and emotionally safe. I had to recognize the truth about what had happened to me, and I had to make a decision to seek help and healing. I had to fully remember my experiences and integrate them with my present understanding of myself. I had to learn to express all the emotions my memories provoked in healthy ways. Through the healing process, I gained understanding, and I gained the courage to tell my story. I grew stronger, I confronted those who had harmed me and those who had not done anything to stop the harm, and I forgave those who had abused and assaulted me. I began to see myself as I am, and as you are, in Christ. We are overcomers.

This summer, when I went to Ghana, West Africa, I shared my testimony of overcoming sexual abuse and assault with more than sixty women who were formerly trapped in the trokosi system—women who have now been set free and who have accepted Jesus as their Savior and who are healing and growing and prospering by the grace of God. I shared my testimony in detail, and in very short sentences that were translated into Ewe and Dangme.

I played my flute at different points in my testimony. The first song I played was called “Give Me Jesus,” and I talked about how I saw Jesus at the time of my assault, and he held my soul until it was over. The second song I played called “Evidence of Your Glory,” and I talked about how suffering can cause us to wonder if God is truly good and if He truly cares for us, but in the end, He shows us that He is redeeming everything and showing His glory.

Finally, I danced to a song called “Surrounded,” and I was so glad that I chose to dance a praise dance, because it spoke across the language barrier about how fear devastates us but the love of God surrounds us and lifts us up so that we are strengthened and made whole.

Tonight, I want you to know, whatever you have been through in the past, whatever you are going through now, God has a plan to redeem. What Yosef said to his brothers, the very men who attacked him but later threw themselves down at his feet praying for mercy, is very true:

“Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve numerous people, as he is doing today. So have no fear” (Genesis 50:20-21a, RSV).

Praise the name of Jesus.

Prayer requests: Please pray for the work of International Needs in Ghana, West Africa. Please pray for the full recovery of women who have been freed from the trokosi system. Pray for those that are still in slavery that they might be set free.

If you would like to donate to this ministry, see www.innetworkusa.org or contact Terry Heyward directly at terryh@innetworkusa.org.

The Voices and Faces Project

In the third week of April, Wheaton College held “Voices” week, “a time to remember those who have no voice and pray for the marginalized grops of the world by hearing the stories of often-unheard voices.”

On Thursday evening of that week, Anne Ream, a rape survivor and key participant in the Voices and Faces Project, came to the campus to speak in a forum called “From the Inside: What We Can Learn From Rape Survivors.” I met Anne and learned from her.

What is the purpose of the Voices and Faces Project?

According to the Voices and Faces Project website, “The mission is to create a national network of survivors willing to stand up and speak out about sexual violence … The belief is that to stop rape we need to start talking and … the initiatives are political, cultural, and creative.”

What does the project accomplish?

The project specifically invites sexual assault survivors to complete its survey, which can be accessed, downloaded, and returned online.

The survey is helping to build a permanent archive of survivor stories as well as give shape to presentations, books, and photographic exhibits intended to help survivors, raise community awareness, and influence the creation of laws and policies pertaining to sexual violence. The survey helps to make visible the otherwise often invisible trauma of sexual assault.

I completed the survey this week, and I believe it would be very worthwhile for other assault survivors to complete it as well.

PRAY for Anne Ream and the extraordinary work of the Voices and Faces Project.

Dreams of Joseph

In the Bible, the book of Genesis tells of the dreams Joseph dreamed of his future. He saw the sheaves of his brothers bow down to his sheaf; he dreamed the sun, the moon, and eleven stars bowed down to him. His brothers asked him, “Do you mean to rule over us?” They understood the imagery of his dream.

But Joseph himself could not have imagined as a young man that before his dreams would come to pass, his brothers would sell him as a slave to their cousins, the Ishmaelites, who would sell him again to a new owner in Egypt. He would be trafficked. In Egypt, he would be sexually harrassed, thrown into prison, and forgotten for a long time.

But one day, when Pharaoh dreamed a dream he needed interpreted, Joseph was remembered, brought out of prison, and, eventually, given a powerful position of leadership in Egypt. During a terrible famine, his brothers did come down to Egypt and bow down to him and ask for bread so that they and their families might live. And Joseph said to his brothers when they feared he would take revenge on them for what they had done to him:

“Do not be afraid! For am I in place of God? Now you, you planned ill against me, but God planned-it-over for good, in order to keep many people alive.” (Genesis 50:20)

In the world today, there are many men, women, and children who have been trafficked: betrayed by their brothers, sold into slavery, and locked into prisons from which they cannot escape. Like Joseph, they dreamed of a different life. God is in the process of bringing their dreams and His plans to fulfillment, despite every sin that has been done against them.

PRAY: Please pray for the deliverance of men, women, and children from the horrors of sex trafficking and forced prostitution. Pray that the dreams of every Joseph in this world will come to pass by the power of the Holy Spirit.