The House That Jesus Built: a Memoir

Dedication
Introduction
Disclaimers
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six

9–14 minutes

Dedication

For my children and my children’s children, so you will know and remember.

“Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. …if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” Jesus (John 8:32, 36, BSB)

Introduction

For the sake of keeping this to a short story, many significant events in my life have been drastically abridged or not mentioned at all. The details I share about the traumas I have endured in my life is given for no other reason than to share what Jesus has healed me from. It is my hope that by sharing of my own path, that you can be encouraged in your path of life, finding healing and peace from Spirit, and comfort in the healing arms of Jesus.

Disclaimers

While this story is not overly graphic or obscene, it does contain some sexual themes, as well as themes of child abuse, including sexual abuse of children, that are not appropriate for younger audiences or for those with sensitivities. There is also some harsh language that may be offensive to some.

If you are an adult survivor of child abuse, please exercise caution when reading. If you become triggered, please stop reading and consult a mental health professional.

I am not a health professional, and the personal opinions and experiences I share are not to be used in place of professional advice, nor to diagnose, treat, prevent, or cure any disease or condition. Please seek the advice of your own health professional if you are in need.

Chapter One: Trevor

Trevor was born in September of 1978. I was 2 years old.

The inauspicious event was commemorated in my baby book with a small lock of my white-blond baby hair and the caption: “This was cut accidentally in September, 1978—We don’t believe in cutting little girl’s hair!”

Earlier that week, during a rare visit with some of my extended paternal family, I had seen one of my teenage cousins primping in the mirror, applying a heavy stroke of eyeliner around her eyes and fluffing up the front of her hair that was cut in a thick fringe right above her eyebrows. I had never seen such a hairstyle before, and I found it interesting and beautiful. When I asked her about her hair, she said she had bangs, but I thought she had said “vangs.”

So a few days later, on the fateful day that Trevor was born, I stood on a stool in front of the dresser and looked at myself in the mirror. I wanted vangs just like my cousin, so I picked up a pair of scissors that Mommy had laid on the dresser—not the scissors that were bent in the middle, but the ones with the wavy edges—and with both hands, awkwardly manipulated the unwieldy scissors with tiny fat baby fingers.

SNIP!—there went some of my pale-blond baby hair falling down amongst Mommy’s glass perfume bottles and her creamy lacy doily that I thought was called a “dolly.”

At that moment, Mommy walked in and saw me with those wavy scissors in my hand and the dispossessed wisp of hair lying neglected amongst the colored glass and the dolly on top of the dresser, and her face turned red and twisted.

She seemed to fly across the room, yanked the scissors out of my hand, and screamed, “Little girls do not cut their hair!”

I immediately started crying, realizing I had done something awful to make Mommy very, very angry, and I stood on the stool, twisting my fingers and hands around each other, tears flowing down my cheeks, watching Mommy’s angry face scream down at me—

little girls do not cut their hair, you’re getting a spanking!

—then she abruptly turned and flew out of the room.

I sobbed into the sudden silence and picked up my hair off the lacy dolly on the dresser, frantically pressing it as hard as I could against my forehead. I was trying to make my hair stick back on so that Mommy wouldn’t be mad anymore, but it kept falling. I didn’t understand why my hair wouldn’t just go back where it was supposed to be, and a growing terror began building in the pit of my stomach as I pressed the lost lock harder and harder against my head, wailing and frantically praying to Jesus that he would help my hair to be stuck back on my head again.

Mommy came back in the room again with a belt in her hand. It was her light pink belt: the thin plastic one that she wore with her special lavender colored skirt and matching jacket that I liked when she dressed up pretty to go to church.

Mommy grabbed me by my arm and yanked me off of the stool and began beating me with that belt. I screamed in pain and tried to run away, but Mommy had a tight hold of my arm and I could only run in circles while she chased me with her belt.

Then she began laughing loudly and shrilly.

“Stop, Mommy, please don’t be mean, Mommy,” I tried to say through my tears and screams, but I just sounded all choked up because crying had made my throat feel too tight.

But she kept laughing and swinging her belt, its plastic length snapping around my body and tearing into my skin with each blow. “Be still!” she demanded through her laughter.

I was able to finally pull away from her, and I ran down the hall and into the kitchen, hiding underneath the yellow Formica-topped dining table. But then Mommy was there again, pulling me out by my arms, and she started hitting me with the belt again.

“Stop jumping and I’ll stop spanking you!” she half-screamed and half-laughed, spittle flying from her frenzied mouth.

So I got quiet.

And I got very still.

And even though my body was physically standing there in front of Mommy while she hit me with her pretty pink belt, my consciousness came out of my body, and for all I knew, I was back under the table again.

Under the table that had always been my favorite play spot.

While Mommy cooked dinner and talked on the happy yellow phone, the long curly cord wrapped around her skirt two or three times, I used to stand under that table and hold on to the tapered metal legs. I was fascinated at how my fingers touched together at the bottom of the leg, but when I would slide my hands up, my fingers suddenly couldn’t touch anymore, and I would wonder why.

Under the table.

I cut my teeth on the legs of that table. The first time I touched my mouth to those cold metal legs, I had felt the metallic zing that filled my mouth with water. It startled me the first time, but I got used to it. It fascinated me, that taste. That electric zap. And the chill of the metal felt good against my itchy gums that were erupting with tiny bud-teeth.

Under the table.

I took my first steps from underneath that table. I had been holding tightly to the legs, relying on them to keep me upright as I flexed my knees up and down, bouncing and gnawing happily on the deliciously cool metal. Then I had decided that I wanted to go outside and let the grass tickle my toes again, the way it had when Daddy had taken me outside before. That had been a happy feeling. So I left the safety of the table and made my way towards the back door, wobbling on unsteady legs. I was almost to my destination when Mommy let out a excited exclamation, startling me, and I fell on my diapered bottom, frustrated with myself. And because I hadn’t yet learned to be afraid of Mommy, I was also frustrated with Mommy, who had scared me. When Daddy came home, Mommy had been enthusiastic to show him how I had walked: “Show Daddy how you can walk,” she had said. So Daddy had whipped his cowboy hat off his head, tossed it on the kitchen floor, and crouched down, arms out, waiting for me. His thick dark hair was plastered against the top of his head and feathered out with soft curls around his ears and neck. His wide grin was encouraging and I loved him. When I finally took a couple of faltering steps towards him and fell into his outstretched arms, he had laughed and swept me up high above his head. Then he had dropped me down low towards his face, a sudden motion that had made my belly tickle. “Well I’ll be goddamned!” he had exclaimed, and Mommy got mad and pulled me away from Daddy, who had said, “Aw, hell, she’s just a baby. She won’t remember.”

But I remembered.

Under the table: those were the happy memories underneath the kitchen table. But the memories of hiding under the table while Mommy beat my body with her thin plastic belt: those were the bad memories. And that day, I took refuge under the table until Mommy wasn’t angry anymore and it was safe to fly back inside my body.

A short time later, I stood weeping in front of the mirror again. My entire body was bruised and sore, especially my legs and backside that still stung with excruciating intensity. I was sure that I was bleeding, and I twisted and turned my head in every direction to see my reflection in the mirror as best I could, but all I could see were bright red marks crisscrossing my entire backside.

Mommy came back in the room and laughed at my tortured calisthenics. “What are you doing? Why are you still crying?”

I turned to her, wailing. “My bobo, Mommy! It’s bleeding!” I looked back at my reflection and twisted my body back and forth again to try to see where I was surely bleeding, but I couldn’t see any blood dripping down.

Mommy knelt down in front of me and turned me to face her. “You aren’t bleeding,” she retorted sharply.

I fell against her breasts, sobbing and shaking uncontrollably. I was deeply terrified of my Mother, but I was also desperate for her comfort.

She patted stiffly at my back, and I winced at her touch. “Stop that silliness,” she said.

I looked up at her and grabbed her face tightly between my hands. “Don’t do that, Mommy!” I pleaded. “That’s not nice! Don’t be mean, Mommy, don’t be mean! Say sorry, Mommy, say sorry!”

Mommy pulled my hands from her face and held them down. “Listen to me,” she demanded, then she proceeded to tell me a story about a lady who used to go to our church. The lady didn’t have any children and so she had prayed and prayed and prayed for God to give her a child. After many years her prayer was finally granted, and she named her little boy—her gift from God—Trevor.

“He was your age once!” Mommy said. “Only two years old! And his mommy loved him so much that she prayed to Jesus that if he would grow up to be a bad boy who would go to Hell, that Jesus would take him to Heaven before that ever happened!”

I listened with growing fear as Mommy told me how Trevor became sick after that.

“Really, really sick,” Mommy said. “He got cancer and it ate him up and killed him before he was even five years old. But because Trevor loved Jesus,” Mommy explained, “when he died, he went right to Jesus, and his mommy wasn’t even sad because she knew Trevor was in Heaven with Jesus! She was happy, because she knew that Jesus had answered her prayer, and had taken Trevor to Heaven before he could grow up to be bad and die and go to Hell! I don’t want you to be bad. I spanked you because I love you. I want you to go to Heaven, just like Trevor. Okay?”

That day I came to understand that Mommy loved me enough to hurt me so I wouldn’t do bad things and go to Hell, and Jesus-God loved me enough to make me sick and kill me so I wouldn’t do bad things.

That made me feel afraid of Mommy and of Jesus-God, too: terrified, but desperate for their love all the same.

That day, all of that fear was personified in my mind as a little boy named Trevor, and that’s how, through dissociation, Trevor was born inside my mind on that day in September of 1978. ¹