Lisa's Story: How God Helped Her Forgive Her Father

(NOTE from the Publisher: This story is true, but the names have been changed to protect the family.)

Recently Lisa has been dealing with the fact her dad sexual abused her as a child. To make matters worse, her family was active in church. This is her story.

Lisa is the oldest of four children. She has two brothers and one sister. Her dad would take the children to the park and on the way home they would stop by the local magazine store. Lisa would have to watch her brothers and sister while her dad looked at the adult magazines.

During her teenage years she spent countless hours in her room listening to music with her dog. She had a couple of boyfriends but her dog ran them off, except for one, her husband.

The first person she could really trust was her husband. He saw some of the signs of abuse, such as depression, the inability to remember her childhood, and the desire to sleep long hours.

The book of Job helps us understand a little how Lisa felt through the years of her life. Lisa often wished she hadn't been born. In Job 10:19 we read, "I wished I had never existed but had been carried from the womb to the grave." In verse 21 and 22 we read, "Before I go to a land of darkness and gloom, never to return. It is a land of blackness like the deepest darkness, gloomy and chaotic, where even the light is like the darkness."(HCS) These two verses describe her outlook of life.

Lisa had to constantly fight through bouts of depression. She used her children to get through life one day at a time. The dark clouds of depression would sometimes go away for a few days. However she and her husband knew they would return.

Then two month’s ago, God looked at Satan and said, "Enough she is a child of mine." Lisa’s healing was about to begin. The call to her husband’s job was urgent. When he came home he knew this was different. He had talked to several victims of sexual abuse before and was prepared for the streams of emotions and constant talking that would follow, as counselors call it "gushing."

Three hours later, Lisa slowed down. The feeling of finally unloading the emotional baggage gave her real peace and joy for the first time. Her father’s actions had destroyed the natural trust between a father and daughter, however they had also shattered the image of God as our Heavenly Father. Before Lisa had viewed God as God. The Holy Spirit had begun the healing touch that only He can provide.

As her family started to deal with what had happened there would still be some rough days ahead. During Lisa’s darkest hour of her recovery, her brothers and sister rallied around her. They remembered how Lisa had been treated different and how she was often made fun of, by their dad. Confronted by her youngest brother, their father finally confessed to abusing Lisa.

Lisa doesn’t hate her father. As she said, "There is no need to harbor hate. Hate will only destroy you. Even though the consequences will be felt years from now, what is in the past is in the past. What is most important is the present and future. It is time for the whole family to heal."

She knows the perfect ending to this ordeal is for her to forgive her father and for her father to have real repentance. Then in eternity they can sing forever of God’s wonderful love and forgiveness. As a family they will experience the joys of Heaven.

However if her father does not offer genuine repentance and rejects God’s love he will spend eternity in Hell. While he is in the torment of Hell he will have something to think about. He will know the daughter he once molested is safe in the arms of God. She will dance forever on the streets of gold, in the presence of God. She will not dance because her father is in Hell but she will dance because evil has been defeated and God reigns supreme.

Lisa’s hope and prayer is that in Heaven the circle will be unbroken.