SOS

 After I graduated high school, I decided I wanted to go to Mexico to work in an orphanage there.  I first went to live in the Joliet and Chicago area so that I could work in ministry there.  I wanted to serve others and thought I was following the Lord.  At that time in my life I was neck deep into Christianity and thought I was making choices to become a better person and to help others.  I quickly learned that people are evil and ill willed even if they proclaimed to be a Christian.  

I had went on a trip to Mexico before and my next trip I had planned on staying a year there.  I enjoyed Mexico.  I adored the kids and learned a lot about their culture and the hardships that many women and children faced.  This was a time when a lot of "purity" lessons were taught in the mid 90s in the Christian community.  I had a promise ring I wore as a pledge to save myself for my husband.  I wanted nothing more out of life than to be a wife and a mother.  So I was ok with waiting for the right guy.  

While living in Mexico I realized there was kidnapping happening of young girls and boys.  I didn't really understand all of it but was educated enough to know that it was for sex trafficking.  Because of my age, my long red hair and blue eyes I was told I was a target and wasn't allowed to go anywhere by myself.  When I did go out there were times they would make me cover my red hair and either wear a scarf on my head or a baseball cap.  It began creating in me some major anxiety, but I complied.  Groups of "Christians" would come to the orphanage a lot for week projects.  There was constantly a new group arriving as another would be leaving.  I had become friends with one of the girls from a group that was based in Chicago.  She told me when I came back to come and visit her.  So I did after my return to the area because the ministry group that I was associated with was borderline cult like.  So I left there and went to Chicago.   She was working in a homeless shelter and I joined her on some of her days.  I had a big beautiful African American woman teach me how to cook.  I started helping in the kitchen and sometimes serving the food to the homeless.  I felt so fortunate to learn to cook in Mexico by the ladies there and now I got to learn new recipes from an excellent cook in Chicago.  Her food was glorious and she was an amazing person.  She also cleaned the offices at the building so I would assist her with that as well.  She introduced me to Blues and Jazz music because she also on the weekends worked at a kitchen in a blues club.  I was already a lover of music, but I felt like I had never heard a guitar sound so amazing as I did in that club.  I didn't realize then just how famous that club was, I was pretty naïve in all honesty.  

There was a ministry worker that was in charge of a lot of the scheduling and supplies that I had to speak to on various occasions.  He was about 10 years older than me.  Seemed charming enough, but he made me uncomfortable a lot with various questions he would ask me.  He asked about the ring I wore and if I was dating anyone.  I wasn't dating and didn't feel like I needed to tell him anything about myself in that department.  He asked about my family and how many friends I had in the area.  I had mentioned that I had a couple of friends from high school that was attending college there in Chicago and that I had planned on trying to meet with them sometime.  He just smirked.  Which struck me as odd.  That evening I was going to get some supplies to stock in the kitchen, I was told that what I needed was in his office.  So I headed that way and once I was in there I got locked in.  I just thought it was the old door jammed or I had accidently hit a lock or something so I didn't really panic.  Then as I sat there waiting, I realized that this office was at the back of the building and not many people actually walked by it or near it.  I yelled for help but no-one came.  It got really late and dark.  It was starting to become winter time in Chicago and if you have ever experienced it, it's very cold.  The lights didn't work in the office.  I started looking around and realized that there really wasn't much in there.  A desk, chair and couch.  No lamps, pictures or anything personal.  There was a bookshelf with about 20 black bibles on it and that was it.  He finally unlocked the door and came in.  I said, "Oh thank God I thought I was going to be stuck down here forever."  He laughed and said, "oh no I would come for you eventually."  Wait, what?  He knew I was down here. I walked toward the door and he said, "no use even trying to get out.  I am going to make sure you learn a lesson in why you should not ignore a good man when he is trying to pay attention to you."  

He wasn't a good man, not even close.  He hit me so hard I fell to the floor.  I don't even know how many blows I took to the side of my head.  It threw me off and I couldn't even find any strength to fight back.  To just say, he raped me is an understatement.  He tortured me.  The things he said, the pain he enforced was beyond anything I could have ever fathomed.  I thought I was going to die and by the second day I asked him if he was trying to kill me.  His reply was a laugh and he said, "oh no, you are just going to wish you were dead.  You will wish it over and over for the rest of your life.  I will never get out of your head." After several rounds of getting hit and spoke to in a horrific way, he left.  I just laid there.  I could smell so many different things but mainly blood.  Blood everywhere.  I ached but was also very numb at the same time.  It was as if I could no longer feel the pain and it just consumed me.  I pulled myself up and tried for the door again.  It was locked.  I gave up.  I sat on the floor and picked up one of the bibles, I started ripping out the pages of it and soaking up the blood that surrounded me.  I put pages on my open cuts to try to stop the bleeding.  He was right.  I did wish for death.  I laid down and when I woke up it was to a scream I will never forget for as long as I live.  My older, African American lady friend.  She was doing her routine cleaning for the week.  I just remember her yelling for help and holding me like I was a newborn.  I woke up in the hospital a few days later.  She took me home to her house and I began to heal from all my wounds.  Or at least I thought I healed, but it was only physically. I didn't like being alone, so when she would go to the blues club to cook, I sat on a stool in the kitchen.  I never had to help, she just told me to sit, listen and watch.    I would sometimes close my eyes and listen to the sound of the guitar making some of the most beautiful rhythms I had ever heard.  By spring time I had healed as well as I could.  I called my grandmother and told her I was ready to come home.  I never told anyone what happened to me.  I had already believed that no good would come of me sharing it with anyone.  

I never contacted my friends from school that were in Chicago.  I just stopped functioning actually.  I went through the motions and tried to figure out a way to not feel everything I was feeling.  It was a multitude of confusion.  Before I left Chicago, my dear elderly friend gave me a piece of paper with the scripture Song of Solomon 2:11-13.  She said that everything that has happened to me will one day pass just like Winter does and even though it may not feel like it now in this moment, I will eventually bear fruit and start to grow from the slumbered state I was in.  

It has taken 32 years and I might be experiencing that now.  I don't reach out very often to anyone for help.  I have always been the one that gave help.  I thought that was how I would heal.  I did some.  I am realizing now it takes both.  The problem for me has always been I chose the wrong people to reach out to.  

I am ready for the season of Winter to pass in my life.   A friend of mine called it a reawakening.  It fits.