🙌🏽🙌🏽👑🙌🏽We have finally made it into June...pause...👀😳 we are officially half-way through 2017!! Cristal and I are in an exciting season of growth, from new families to strengthening relationships, and more importantly praying on the new things God has placed on our hearts!
And as we continue to grow together we wanted to continue to bring you all content that is inspiring us and moving us to reflect more, and educate ourselves not only around topics about rape culture and sexual assault, but examine the inter-weavings of these experiences from survivors to those connected to them as well. Some of those individuals include the men in our lives who have helped shape our experiences of healing. This month we are discussing "The Men who Hear our Healing." This week we will begin with how our Healing began with our Heavenly Father; whom without we would not be where we are today. From Devin Marie: I think Cristal and I can both attest to the fact that healing; I mean REAL healing comes from the healer himself, Jesus Christ. Because of my experiences with sexual abuse, I've battled mentally and emotionally with my relationships with men. I had difficulty trusting strangers let alone members within my own family who were male as well.. I unfortunately contributed my pain with the entire male gender, and displaced my negative sentiments about men even on the ones I loved. It was important that Cristal and I took this time to speak on the necessity of giving God full access to our hearts before we shared our healing with the men in our lives who were for us, and not against us. Speaking for myself, I can take full responsibility now and say that in my past, I loved prematurely. Meaning, I tried to love with the broken pieces I had left from my experiences of sexual assault. These broken pieces ended up cutting people with sharp words of defense and stabbed those I could only partially love with daggers of a painful past. For that I apologize. However, I will not Apologize for the timing of my growth. I have determined that You truly cannot heal to appease someone else's time frame. I so wanted to be seen as someone's wife, It was not until my Heavenly Father took possession of my entire heart, was able to see value in it, and in turn, love others based on the excess I had left over; that which was over-flowing love that wasn't tainted in unsettled or unpacked baggage I had yet to unpack. It wasn't until I dealt with my pain with my Heavenly Father was I able to openly and confidently speak to my earthly father, my four brothers, romantic relationships, and friends, on the trauma, but More importantly, my new found Healing. How did God introduce healing in my life? In many ways and phases, and honestly I'm still discovering them now. For starters though, my healing began with forgiveness; forgiveness of the man who assaulted me, the men who blamed me, the men who mocked and ridiculed me, the men who couldn't protect or provide for me the way society society taught and conditioned them to do so; but more importantly I learned to forgive myself. My healing was finally for me! My healing was no longer motivated in order to prove to someone I was worthy to be with, nor was it to prove to someone I was not crazy, or overly emotional, too sensitive or passionate about human injustice. My healing was finally meant for ME when I acknowledged the power of redirecting my pain into purpose; even though at the time I never imagined me writing or speaking openly in a public forum like Herstory. Looking back, my healing was only made possible when seeing the example of Jesus Christ die on a cross making the ultimate sacrifice that doesn't make sense to the carnal mind; to see a man not make excuses for staying downC but get back up from what could have and SHOULD have been His end. I couldn't let rape or the mental attacks after that be my end. And there in those brief moments I found glimpses of relief, of recovery and release...so to more growth and gratitude to the man who showed me the glory in the embrace of a better me..."thank you Jesus."🙌🏽🙏🏽👑 -devinmarie with love&solidarity, Cristal Lowe and Devin Marie
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