April 24, 2024 • 9 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, our host, Lee Habeeb, tells his wife's story. Decades after years of sexual abuse and crisis, Valerie leaned on her faith to forgive her abuser, and to powerfully heal.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. Up next, the
story of how God's love and forgiveness brought a broken
woman's soul back to life. And this story, this one
hits close to home. It happens every day in America
and across the world. God's grace changes hearts, changes minds,
(00:34):
and changes lives. It often brings people back to life.
As another Easter rolled by the Sunday before last, and
Christians in America and around the world celebrated the resurrection
of Jesus Christ. One story in my small town of Oxford, Mississippi,
is worth telling. She grew up near the Gulf coast
(00:57):
of Mississippi, not far from Biloxi and got towns known
for their fishing and shipbuilding industries and their casinos. She
didn't have much growing up. Her mom, who had been
married several times, did her best to raise her four
daughters by herself. She worked as a waitress pulling long
shifts at a local restaurant to support her girls. Her
(01:20):
father he was out of the picture. He never showed up,
never paid child support, and never provided the basics of
life that a young girl needs from a dad. He
was never there to show her what a man's love
looks like. Sometimes, as a month closed, there were hard
choices to make, the choice between paying an electric bill
(01:43):
or a grocery bill. Sometimes there wasn't enough for both.
The young girl blossomed into a beautiful teenager, but there
was an absence, a void she didn't know was a void.
Without knowing it, she found and sought a substitute for
the love she never received from her father. In step
(02:04):
to predator to do just that. He was a prominent
lawyer in a nearby town and decades older. He did
what this particular brand of predators due. He paid attention
to her, He praised her, He did the things he knew.
A vulnerable, unprotected girl with a father void longed for
things that approximated what a broken young girl would think
(02:27):
was love. In short, he groomed her for his own pleasure.
She was fourteen when it started, she was seventeen when
it ended, and more alone than ever. What she experienced
wasn't love. It was the opposite. It was human cruelty
(02:47):
of the worst and ugliest variety. She didn't tell anybody
what happened, not her mom, not her sisters, not her friends,
which she could count on one hand. She kept things
to herself because she blamed herself for what happened, because
she felt ashamed for letting him take advantage of her,
(03:08):
because she was afraid to tell anyone, because after all,
who would believe her, And because she wanted to forget
it ever happened. For all of those reasons and others
she will never know and no longer cares to know,
she never told anyone. She wanted to move on, so
she moved north to Baltimore to start a new life,
(03:29):
A new life with an anchor holding her down, a
secret holding her down, a trauma holding her down she
couldn't name or run away from. She was now a
stunning young woman with a kind of good looks that
could stop traffic. She put herself through college and got
a job at a local law firm, but her past
(03:50):
kept haunting her, especially when she drank, which wasn't often,
but things ended poorly when she did. That's when the
darkness descend. That's when the demons came out. There were
sexual encounters, there were abortions, there were fights and words
uttered in anger, in blackouts, and more regret and even
(04:13):
more shame. She concealed these parts of herself to people
around her. She was a world class actress, and the
outside world was certain she had her act together, and
she mostly held things together except for those episodes and
those secrets and that trauma. She hadn't told anyone any
(04:37):
of this in her twenty seven years in this world
until she told me a few years later I would
marry her. She was a beautiful and courageous and strong woman,
so beautifully broken, so eager to figure out how to
make her life better, how to make our life better.
(05:00):
With the birth of our child a few years later,
a spiritual dimension awakened in my wife, one that was
dormant for almost all of it. He was desperate to
put the angry girl of her past, the wounded and
bitter girl filled with resentment, behind her, and thus began
a new, long walk with God, a walk that would
(05:22):
bring miraculous changes to her life, to our lives. She
began to do things that, but for God's command, most
people wouldn't or couldn't. It started with forgiving her mother,
whom she secretly blamed for leaving her so exposed and
so vulnerable. If her mother had stayed married, she thought,
(05:42):
deep down inside, maybe that predator would not have done
what he did to her. Maybe the father she never
had would have protected her. But her new walk with
God softened her heart. It made her more compassionate, It
made her more empathetic. Only a year or so after
our daughter was born, she did something she never thought
(06:03):
she'd do. She asked her mother to move from Biloxi
to Baltimore, where we'd lived for some years, to help
raise our daughter. Her mother has lived with us ever since.
Next came an even bolder, spiritual move. She decided, not
long after our move back south to Mississippi, to write
a letter to her biological father. He didn't know she
(06:27):
was married, let alone that she'd become a mother, making
him a grandfather, and he didn't know she'd moved closer
to home in northern Mississippi. He quickly replied to the letter.
It took time, but soon we would visit him in
the small rural town he'd grown up in, a mere
two hours from where we lived. Those visits became quite regular.
(06:51):
Watching her father play with my daughter was something we
could not have imagined nor wildest dreams. My dad got cancer,
my wife was there to provide the care for him.
He'd never provided for her. When he died, she was
there to bury him. Happily, for all of us. She
(07:11):
buried her past, her anger and bitterness toward him long before. Indeed,
watching my wife put the past behind and forgive the
father she never knew was not merely remarkable, but downright inspiring.
William Faulkner, who lived here in Oxford, Mississippi, where we broadcast,
(07:32):
once said the past is never dead. It isn't even past.
My wife would have given Faulkner an earful if he
was still alive in living in this town. She would
tell him that he was wrong, that the angry, numb
young girl she used to be was dead, that his
unforgiveness yielded to forgiveness God gave birth to a new
(07:55):
and better version of herself. Soon, my wife's forgiveness walk
included the man who raped her. It took many years
to get there, but she did it. It was, in
my mind, an almost supernatural journey to witness, because it
is so unnatural to forgive someone who rapes you, who
raped you for so many years. Luckily, for my wife,
(08:18):
the most important book in her life is not Faulkner's
The Sound and the Fury it's the Bible which speaks
powerfully and often about the transformational power of forgiveness. Two
verses in the Bible come to mind. In Hebrews, watch
out that no poisonous fruit of bitterness grows up to
trouble you, corrupting many and Colossians. Make allowance for each
(08:43):
other's faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember the
Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others. My wife
now ministers to women who suffered traumas at the hands
of men, women who suffered from the trauma of absent fathers. Two.
She has a message of hope for them and the
(09:03):
example of her own story. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, once noted forgiveness, says,
you are given another chance to make a new beginning.
And it is true. As another Easter season passes, I
thank God for the countless new beginnings all around us,
(09:24):
the resurrections all around us, for lives restored all around us,
For we who call ourselves Christians, and even those who don't.
The miracles of God's love, God's mercy, and God's grace
are everywhere. A story of love and forgiveness, a close
(09:44):
and personal one for me, my wife's here on our
American stories
And we continue with our American stories. Up next, the
story of how God's love and forgiveness brought a broken
woman's soul back to life. And this story, this one
hits close to home. It happens every day in America
and across the world. God's grace changes hearts, changes minds,
(00:34):
and changes lives. It often brings people back to life.
As another Easter rolled by the Sunday before last, and
Christians in America and around the world celebrated the resurrection
of Jesus Christ. One story in my small town of Oxford, Mississippi,
is worth telling. She grew up near the Gulf coast
(00:57):
of Mississippi, not far from Biloxi and got towns known
for their fishing and shipbuilding industries and their casinos. She
didn't have much growing up. Her mom, who had been
married several times, did her best to raise her four
daughters by herself. She worked as a waitress pulling long
shifts at a local restaurant to support her girls. Her
(01:20):
father he was out of the picture. He never showed up,
never paid child support, and never provided the basics of
life that a young girl needs from a dad. He
was never there to show her what a man's love
looks like. Sometimes, as a month closed, there were hard
choices to make, the choice between paying an electric bill
(01:43):
or a grocery bill. Sometimes there wasn't enough for both.
The young girl blossomed into a beautiful teenager, but there
was an absence, a void she didn't know was a void.
Without knowing it, she found and sought a substitute for
the love she never received from her father. In step
(02:04):
to predator to do just that. He was a prominent
lawyer in a nearby town and decades older. He did
what this particular brand of predators due. He paid attention
to her, He praised her, He did the things he knew.
A vulnerable, unprotected girl with a father void longed for
things that approximated what a broken young girl would think
(02:27):
was love. In short, he groomed her for his own pleasure.
She was fourteen when it started, she was seventeen when
it ended, and more alone than ever. What she experienced
wasn't love. It was the opposite. It was human cruelty
(02:47):
of the worst and ugliest variety. She didn't tell anybody
what happened, not her mom, not her sisters, not her friends,
which she could count on one hand. She kept things
to herself because she blamed herself for what happened, because
she felt ashamed for letting him take advantage of her,
(03:08):
because she was afraid to tell anyone, because after all,
who would believe her, And because she wanted to forget
it ever happened. For all of those reasons and others
she will never know and no longer cares to know,
she never told anyone. She wanted to move on, so
she moved north to Baltimore to start a new life,
(03:29):
A new life with an anchor holding her down, a
secret holding her down, a trauma holding her down she
couldn't name or run away from. She was now a
stunning young woman with a kind of good looks that
could stop traffic. She put herself through college and got
a job at a local law firm, but her past
(03:50):
kept haunting her, especially when she drank, which wasn't often,
but things ended poorly when she did. That's when the
darkness descend. That's when the demons came out. There were
sexual encounters, there were abortions, there were fights and words
uttered in anger, in blackouts, and more regret and even
(04:13):
more shame. She concealed these parts of herself to people
around her. She was a world class actress, and the
outside world was certain she had her act together, and
she mostly held things together except for those episodes and
those secrets and that trauma. She hadn't told anyone any
(04:37):
of this in her twenty seven years in this world
until she told me a few years later I would
marry her. She was a beautiful and courageous and strong woman,
so beautifully broken, so eager to figure out how to
make her life better, how to make our life better.
(05:00):
With the birth of our child a few years later,
a spiritual dimension awakened in my wife, one that was
dormant for almost all of it. He was desperate to
put the angry girl of her past, the wounded and
bitter girl filled with resentment, behind her, and thus began
a new, long walk with God, a walk that would
(05:22):
bring miraculous changes to her life, to our lives. She
began to do things that, but for God's command, most
people wouldn't or couldn't. It started with forgiving her mother,
whom she secretly blamed for leaving her so exposed and
so vulnerable. If her mother had stayed married, she thought,
(05:42):
deep down inside, maybe that predator would not have done
what he did to her. Maybe the father she never
had would have protected her. But her new walk with
God softened her heart. It made her more compassionate, It
made her more empathetic. Only a year or so after
our daughter was born, she did something she never thought
(06:03):
she'd do. She asked her mother to move from Biloxi
to Baltimore, where we'd lived for some years, to help
raise our daughter. Her mother has lived with us ever since.
Next came an even bolder, spiritual move. She decided, not
long after our move back south to Mississippi, to write
a letter to her biological father. He didn't know she
(06:27):
was married, let alone that she'd become a mother, making
him a grandfather, and he didn't know she'd moved closer
to home in northern Mississippi. He quickly replied to the letter.
It took time, but soon we would visit him in
the small rural town he'd grown up in, a mere
two hours from where we lived. Those visits became quite regular.
(06:51):
Watching her father play with my daughter was something we
could not have imagined nor wildest dreams. My dad got cancer,
my wife was there to provide the care for him.
He'd never provided for her. When he died, she was
there to bury him. Happily, for all of us. She
(07:11):
buried her past, her anger and bitterness toward him long before. Indeed,
watching my wife put the past behind and forgive the
father she never knew was not merely remarkable, but downright inspiring.
William Faulkner, who lived here in Oxford, Mississippi, where we broadcast,
(07:32):
once said the past is never dead. It isn't even past.
My wife would have given Faulkner an earful if he
was still alive in living in this town. She would
tell him that he was wrong, that the angry, numb
young girl she used to be was dead, that his
unforgiveness yielded to forgiveness God gave birth to a new
(07:55):
and better version of herself. Soon, my wife's forgiveness walk
included the man who raped her. It took many years
to get there, but she did it. It was, in
my mind, an almost supernatural journey to witness, because it
is so unnatural to forgive someone who rapes you, who
raped you for so many years. Luckily, for my wife,
(08:18):
the most important book in her life is not Faulkner's
The Sound and the Fury it's the Bible which speaks
powerfully and often about the transformational power of forgiveness. Two
verses in the Bible come to mind. In Hebrews, watch
out that no poisonous fruit of bitterness grows up to
trouble you, corrupting many and Colossians. Make allowance for each
(08:43):
other's faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember the
Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others. My wife
now ministers to women who suffered traumas at the hands
of men, women who suffered from the trauma of absent fathers. Two.
She has a message of hope for them and the
(09:03):
example of her own story. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, once noted forgiveness, says,
you are given another chance to make a new beginning.
And it is true. As another Easter season passes, I
thank God for the countless new beginnings all around us,
(09:24):
the resurrections all around us, for lives restored all around us,
For we who call ourselves Christians, and even those who don't.
The miracles of God's love, God's mercy, and God's grace
are everywhere. A story of love and forgiveness, a close
(09:44):
and personal one for me, my wife's here on our
American stories
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