My Broken Pieces : Mending the Wounds from Sexual Abuse Through Faith, Family and Love (9781101990087)

by Rivera, Rosie

  To my delight, I had never felt so welcomed and loved. All my fears and worries seemed to melt away and I was invaded by a sense of peace. I took a seat in the second row with Mom as the service commenced. Onto the platform walked a group of singers that they called “the worship team.” It was led by my nephew Petey, Pete’s son, who was nineteen at the time.

  I had watched him grow up from the sidelines and I’d always thought he was a shy boy. But not on that platform. With beautiful sincerity and authority, he led the singers and the congregation in “Levanto Mis Manos” (“I Lift My Hands”).

  The moment they began singing, I had the feeling that a spring of water had opened inside of me—as if a rock had been removed from a deep well and the water would not stop flowing. It was a release like I had never felt before. I couldn’t control my tears as I listened to the powerful words of that song:

  I lift up my hands,

  Even when I don’t have strength

  I lift my hands

  Even with a sea of problems

  When I lift my hands . . .

  I can feel you love me.

  I had never heard the song before but I knew, from the bottom of my heart, that those words were true. I had lived my entire life fearing that God wouldn’t love me if He saw the real me. But at that moment, everything changed. I finally understood what my mother had been telling me all along: God already knew everything about me and He loved me anyway. He still does.

  Mom could see I was filled with emotion, but she gracefully refrained from making a big deal of it, allowing me to have my moment with God. But I could see from the corner of my eye that she, too, was crying.

  I can’t tell you what text my brother preached that day. At first I said to myself, Maybe this is for others who haven’t done the awful things I’ve done, but then quickly I realized it was also for me.

  When the message was over and Pete invited everyone in the congregation to come forward to pray, I knew this was my chance. But I was terrified. As I stepped into the aisle I knew perfectly well that this was what I had to do, but I felt as if I was dead inside. I was walking, but it felt as though I was dragging myself from being beat up in battle. Every step seemed like an eternity.

  As I got closer and closer to the altar, the worship team started singing “I Lift My Hands” again and once more I felt that beautiful feeling of peace wash over me. Could I possibly be worthy of worshiping the Lord?

  Suddenly, both of my hands were up in the air. Part of me kept feeling unworthy so I asked God, “Do You really know every nook and cranny of my life? Do You know that I killed my baby? Please forgive me, Lord.” And as the beautiful music surrounded me in a warm embrace, I began relating my past sins, asking for forgiveness.

  As I poured out my heart, a man I’d never seen before knelt beside me and said: “The Lord says, ‘I love you.’” He prayed for me, then added, “Can I give you a hug?”

  Through my tears, I replied, “Yes.”

  It was as if the Lord was there in person. The man kept repeating words from above. “I love you,” he said. “I love you, I love you.” I understood it was God speaking to me through this man so I drank up every word. Finally, after so many years of living out in the cold, I was finally letting down my guard and allowing God to love me.

  No one can ever change my mind about what I felt at that moment. After so many years of going to church but not really being in church, I was finally starting to understand what it was all about. My Maker knew all my imperfections and all along I’d been mistaken. I didn’t have to be perfect to be worthy of God. I just had to be me.

  Then I heard a voice that came from Heaven itself: “Do you still want to take your life?” it said.

  Immediately I answered, “Yes. It’s hard to live with so much pain and sadness.”

  Next, the voice said, “What if we made a promise—a pact?”

  “Okay,” I answered.

  He continued: “What if you die to your feelings and your emotions? What if you die to your hatred toward Trino? What if you die to your vengeance and bitterness? What if you die to everything Rosie has ever wanted, and you start to live for me?”

  For a moment I mulled over the questions as I didn’t want to make any empty promises. Then, I started to remember all the stories I had been told as a child. I saw Jesus dying on the cross—and now I knew it was for me. The King of Kings had a million angels at His command, and He could have sent one of them my way. Instead, He left His throne, came to Earth, and gave His life for Rosie. I understood what God was asking. So I prayed, “If You did this for me, I happily say ‘yes’ to dying to my past and current feelings. I say ‘yes’ to dying to my own plans and dreams. I promise I will never say ‘no’ to You again.”

  As I was talking with God, another individual came up to me—a lovely woman of about sixty years of age, with gray hair. She looked so wise and knowledgeable.

  “May I pray with you?” she asked.

  I said yes, of course, and she began to pray. The woman repeated exactly what the first gentleman had told me, “God says, ‘I love you.’” And she kept saying, “I love you. I love you, I love you.” Over and over again.

  My heart continued to melt.

  Suddenly, a third person was by my side, a woman in her forties. I could hardly believe it when she whispered, “God is saying, ‘I love you.’”

  I was in awe. Could this be a coincidence? Had someone planned it? But then I remembered no one knew I was going to be there, not even me.

  That day, I understood God’s limitless power. His limitless love. Knowing that everything about my life was out of order, I told God, “I am ready to die to self and live for You, but I need Your help.” And I pleaded, “I don’t know if I should go back to my husband. I am terrified of him. Please help me.”

  Those moments at the front of the sanctuary, pouring my heart out, did more for me than anything I had ever found in all my years of running. I left church that day, breathing a deep sigh of relief, as if a ton of weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I felt loved and light in spirit, just like the princess my dad always said I was.

  On the ride home I remember thinking, What’s come over me? I didn’t feel guilty about my past anymore. The pain that had weighed on my spirit for so long was lifting. Then I heard the little voice inside me say, “This is the peace I give you.”

  Mom was very quiet in the car, but at some point I felt the need to say something about what I had just experienced.

  “I really enjoyed the service,” I said, trying to keep it as simple as possible. “I felt something very beautiful.”

  She reached over and patted my cheek, smiling.

  “I know, Hija, I know.”

  • • •

  As soon as I found a minute alone, I called my sister, Chay, to tell her about what had happened.

  “Rosie, I’m so sorry I didn’t get to talk with you last night,” she said as soon as she picked up the phone. “How are you?”

  “I am so happy, Sister,” I said.

  “Why?” she asked, somewhat surprised. It really wasn’t like me to say I was happy.

  “Well, I went to church today and I can’t put into words what happened, but did you know that God loves me?”

  She kind of giggled. “Yes, He loves you, Sister.”

  “No, Sister, I mean He really, really loves me,” I said. My voice cracked a little, I was getting emotional.

  I could just see the smile on her face as she said, “Rosie, of course God loves you. You are very very lovable and we all adore you.”

  “Really?” I asked in disbelief.

  “Yes, Sister,” she continued. “You are the easiest person to love.”

  I paused for a moment, and then said to her, “Sister, I’ll tell you what. I’m going to stop drinking.”

  “Oh, that’s great,” she
said, a tinge of surprise in her voice.

  “And I’m going to stop smoking, too,” I continued.

  “That’s wonderful!” she said.

  “From now on, I am going to live a different life.”

  I could tell she was surprised, but she was also excited. “I’m so proud of you,” she said.

  And that was when I dropped the bombshell: “And you know what, Sister? I’m not going to have sex anymore.”

  There was a long pause, after which finally she shot back, “Whaaat???”

  “I am going to practice abstinence until I get married.”

  At that point, no one knew that Pedro and I had eloped as I still hadn’t mustered the courage to tell the truth. But what I was really telling myself was that things had changed, and from that day forward, I was going to practice abstinence.

  The thought of me quitting sex was so inconceivable that Chay couldn’t help but burst into laughter. “I know you,” she said, still giggling. “How will you be able to do that?”

  “I’m not sure,” I replied. “But I know God can help me.”

  Chay, who believed in a higher power even though she didn’t regularly attend church, said, “I’m so proud of you, Sister. I know this is going to be great for you. Whatever you need, you know I’m here for you.”

  • • •

  That afternoon, I told my mother, “I made some real decisions this morning. You’re going to see a big change in me.”

  My mother was thrilled to hear me say that, but of course she had her doubts. Was all this just a passing whim? Or was I going to be able to sustain it? Was I serious about what I was saying or would it soon blow over? But as days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months, my mother and the rest of my family started to notice a drastic change in my disposition. Instead of sulking around and being constantly angry and unhappy, I would smile every day. Problems would pop up and I’d say, “Don’t worry about it,” without stressing or flipping out.

  From the instant I stepped out of the church that fateful morning, there was no more alcohol in my life. To this day. From time to time, I would still go to parties with Chay and my friends, but never again did I drink or use drugs. At the beginning, it came as a surprise to the people who knew me, but soon enough they realized that I was serious about the change in my life and respected me for it. God breaks chains of addiction and those who have been healed have to make the effort to see those changes stay permanent.

  As drastic as it was for me to stop drinking and smoking and having sex, what became the biggest shift in my life was that I wanted to be in church every time it opened its doors. It was my home, the place where God had said, “I love you,” and I wanted to spend as much time in there as possible.

  • • •

  God gave me back my life but my biggest challenge during this time was deciding what to do about my husband, Pedro. We were still legally married, but we weren’t yet living together and were still in the middle of planning our fake wedding.

  Since I had vowed to abstain from having sex until we were properly married, I used every excuse in the book not to be with him. He was, needless to say, very upset—not just because I refused to be intimate with him, but also because he was totally baffled by the huge change in my behavior. I wasn’t so down and depressed all the time and in my dealings with him, I was becoming less and less submissive. I tried, many times, to get him to come to church with me but every single time he refused. For him, the only explanation for the change in my behavior was that I had to be having an affair with someone in church. He wasn’t so far from the truth, since I had fallen in love with Jesus Christ.

  For the following two months, Pedro would wait for me outside the church—accusing me of sleeping with someone in the congregation. He simply couldn’t understand why I was there so often.

  Over the course of those two months, it became so clear to me that we were not right for each other. In my brain, I finally knew what my heart had been trying to tell me: our marriage was never going to work. Pedro and I had been two emotionally unhealthy individuals, desperate for love, who had just happened to find each other at a vulnerable time in their lives. We shared a powerful sexual attraction and while we were enamored with the idea of being in love, the fact of the matter was that we weren’t.

  Day after day, I would ask God for help on how to deal with my predicament. Even though I was sure we weren’t going to be able to be together, I still grappled with the issue of divorce. I was still hung up on the fact that I didn’t want to add another item to my list of failures. So I prayed to God: “Please show me what path I need to take.”

  My reading habits took on a radical change too. Instead of wasting my time reading trashy novels and porn, I was now reading the Bible every spare moment I had. One day my eyes focused on these words by an Old Testament prophet: “I will give her . . . a door of hope; she shall sing there . . . ‘And it shall be, in that day,’ says the Lord, ‘That you will call Me “My Husband”’” (Hosea 2:15–16).

  I had walked into the door of my new home, been given a new song, and was united with God. Upon reading that verse, I knew now that the earthly marriage I had hastily entered into was not part of Heaven’s plan for me. I was going to turn my life to God.

  The next day, there was total peace in my heart when I asked Pedro for a divorce. His reaction was saying “No way!” believing that my turn toward spiritual matters was just a passing fad. But he was wrong.

  Pedro continued to pursue me for several months, always calling me and waiting for me outside of church, begging for us to get back together. But I stayed firm. As time passed he started to come by less and less, mostly just to check up on Kassey, whom he was always so good to.

  A year went by and then one day I got a call from Pedro telling me that he had met someone and he couldn’t keep coming around to see me. I was happy for him but also sad because it made me realize that throughout the whole ordeal I had lost my friend.

  I wanted us to get a divorce right away, but Pedro didn’t want to. The person who saved me, once again, was Lupe. At the time I was working as a real estate agent and my brother wanted to buy a beautiful ranch up north and he wanted to put the house under my name in order to get the loan from the bank. There was just one problem: I was married! I couldn’t let Lupe put the ranch under my name because that would mean it also belonged to Pedro. I explained the whole situation to Lupe (who was shocked, of course) and together we decided to ask Pedro to please sign the divorce papers, if not for me, for Lupe.

  Pedro ultimately understood the situation and he finally accepted. He loved and respected Lupe and he wanted to make things right. A couple of weeks later we went to the courthouse and signed the divorce papers. It was remarkably anticlimactic, and I realized I had made that legal union out to be a bigger deal than it really was. I immediately told my family to forget about any future wedding plans; Pedro was no longer a part of my life.

  Shortly thereafter, I stood before the congregation and shared my story. I said it all. For the first time in my life, I spoke of all my secrets and explained that my name in Greek means “secret” but that the truth would set me free. With my mom in the front row, I unveiled every single nook and cranny of my life, including my promiscuity and the fact that I had eloped with the first guy who asked. My family, who was in the audience, was blindsided by the news of my elopement, but I felt it was time to be totally honest with God and with them. They were shocked and surprised, but they breathed a sigh of relief that this particular episode of my life had finally come to an end.

  ten

  breaking free

  The change came immediately. My transformation was dramatic and from the inside out. It was as if a dense fog had been cleared from my mind and I could finally see life’s higher purpose. I wasn’t just some sexually abused single mother, law school dropout, and divorcée. I was so much more. Those labels t
hat for so long had weighed so heavily on my soul no longer mattered. I didn’t care. Others may have thought I was useless, but I no longer saw myself that way.

  Now I was happy, joyful—I was even singing in the choir. However, there were other issues whose roots were deeply seeded in my soul—including my anger toward Trino and the psychological aftermath from the years of abuse—and those would involve a longer and more complicated process. It was as if after such a huge revelation—the discovery that God really loved me—I was able to let go of all my exterior chains, but what was going on inside my head was an entirely different problem.

  I sought counseling. It did not solve all of my problems, but the sessions certainly gave me the tools to take a long hard look at my life and make some changes. It was a long process that involved a great deal of trial and error, but ultimately I started to acquire the tools that would help me break with certain thoughts and behaviors while confronting the pain from my past experiences. I had gone to therapy many times before, but this time, for the first time, my heart was truly open to change.

  I found an outstanding Christian counselor, who treated me as if I had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)—a disorder that usually affects people who have been to war or suffered through a deeply traumatic event. The truth was, ever since the tender age of eight, I had been waging an emotional war against myself. Now that I had found God’s love, I was at last able to take a step back and look at my life for what it was; I was able to analyze my feelings, understand my behaviors, and ultimately let go of all the hatred and sadness that had weighed me down for so many years.

  It was a time of so much self-reflection. I spent hours reading, writing, and thinking about my life, my family, my loves, my daughter. Everything. It wasn’t always easy—change never is—but I felt powerful and loved, and for the first time in as long as I could remember, I was starting to feel as though I could take on the world. Deep down inside of me, a tiny voice was reminding me of what my father had said to me all those years earlier when I was a little girl: “You can be anything you want, Hija. Anything at all.”