"me too..."

"Sometimes I feel discouraged
and think my work's in vain,
but then the Holy Spirit
revives my soul again..."

This video recording of The Adventist's Vocal Ensemble singing  "There is a Balm in Gilead"  was shared with me recently, and it reminded me of two experiences that I now see are related.

I don't know how inspirational this post will be. It may be su that I such a departure, that I may lose most of my readers. I hope not, but I also cannot be quiet any longer.

If you have read this blog regularly, you might have found the posts I bury because I have to write them, but still can't bear to make the "public." These are the posts I don't link on Facebook, or the ones that I write and then immediately write another so that the earlier one isn't the first one to come up when readers are looking for new posts.

They are the posts that refer to a childhood punctuated by sexual abuse and rape. They are the posts that I simply have to write, in order to relieve my heart from the terrible pressure of a foul wound.

So here goes the full story. As long as I keep it secret, I own it -- and I just can't own it anymore.

When my mother started dating the man who would become my stepfather, I was just over 3 years old. I was a tiny child. I was just a tiny little girl. A man's hands, his fingers are large.

I was taken from the only safety I knew. I was subjected to his secret abuse for the next 14 years. The details of that abuse are not something I can write about. Suffice it to say that it was serial. There were two years after my stepdad "found God," when the abuse stopped. I will never stop being grateful for that respite. But a move back to where he was surrounded by reminders of his darker side reignited his hatred for himself -- and his abuse of me.

When I "told," I was accused of lying, I was blamed for having large breast, and for wearing short skirts. Within months I was abandoned in a town I had lived in for less than a year while still in high school. I had to find my own housing, make a living, secure transportation to school and work -- and back to where I was living. And even then, my stepdad and his friends would come to the small motel room I'd was renting weekly and bang on the door asking for "favors."

When he was killed in a motorcycle accident later that year, I thought it would stop. All of it. I had attached the abuse to him. I had made it personal. Get rid of him. The abuse would stop. But it didn't.

If you think sexual abuse ends with the death, arrest, or separation from the abuser, you are wrong. What is abused is not so much the body, but the way one thinks of oneself.

Every relationship I had with a man for the next 35 years would be colored by that abuse. I saw myself as someone who was unworthy of respect, tenderness, value.


One Saturday their choir sang, "There is a Balm in Gilead." I was familiar with the Scriptural passage from Jeremiah which reads:

"Is there no balm in Gilead;
is there no physician there?

Why then is not the health of
the daughter of my people recovered?"

There was something about having read that passage earlier in the week - as part of my own faith's Bible study - and then hearing the same gospel message sung in my friend's church. It made it feel as if the whole world was "at one."

But I always found that passage from Jeremiah both comforting and confusing. How could God be everywhere, but not in Gilead? Where was Gilead anyway? Etymological research was helpful -- sort of. "A rocky mountainous region, the grandson of Manasseh, a name given to a male child that means eternal happiness and joy."

Each time the passage would surface, I would seek deeper meaning, I would remember the gospel song I'd heard, and I would pray for inspiration. But it remained a beautiful, yet confusing passage for me.

That was, until our toddler daughter was struggling with an illness that seemed to be lingering. I'd been on-my-knees in prayer for over 24 hours when that passage flooded my heart:"

"Is there no balm in Gilead;
is there no physician there?

Why then is not the health of
the daughter of my people recovered?"

Yes, I thought, that is my question, too. And on its heels came the answer:"

"And when he was demanded of the Pharisees,
when the kingdom of God should come,
he answered them and said,
The kingdom of God cometh not with observation:
Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there!

for, behold,
the kingdom of God is within you."

That was when I "got it."  The balm, salve, the answer - it wasn't in Gilead, an inspired passage, a wise person, or a well-written article. No, they were only waymarks -- pointing us towards the true location. The balm was not in Gilead, it was in "the kingdom of God" which was always, already "within" the daughter -- and her mommy.  Within minutes, the symptoms completely disappeared and our daughter was playing happily.

I love Mary Baker Eddy's definition of "Children" from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, which reads, in part:

"not in embryo, but in maturity"

My job wasn't to go searching for the balm -- in Gilead or anywhere else. It was my privilege to realize that the balm was already within the daughter -- the King's daughter -- who, as the Psalmist says, "is all  glorious within."  This was simply my opportunity to recognize her spiritual maturity. To see that our spiritually-wise daughter was ever-conscious of the presence of that spiritual "balm." She had every right to feel the fullness of its promise in her life -- as health, strength, wisdom, intelligence, purity -- the all-presence of infinite good.

The balm is, never was, and never will be in Gilead. It is, and has always been, in the kingdom of God, which is always within you, and me, and "the daughter" -- and son. This rhetorical question:

"Is there no balm in Gilead;
is there no physician there?

Why then is not the health of
the daughter of my people recovered?”

stirs the human heart to ask -- where am I looking? And where do I place my trust?

God is All-in-all. Not All-in-some, and the rest of us need to go searching for one of those wiser pilgrims. Not Some-in-all, and we all need to find the someone, some place, or some institution with more "some" than others. But All-in-all. The kingdom of God within us all -- impartially and universally.

So the answer, for me, is, "no," the balm, the physician, the answer is not in Gilead -- or anywhere else. It is within you, and me, and her, and him, and all.


offered with Love,

Kate