It is my prayer that today’s conversation with adult sexual abuse survivor Amy Nordhues will strengthen your heart in countless ways. Amy’s abuse was at the hands of an older gentleman, trusted by the community as well as the church and he was also a mental health professional.
Amy had the heavy burden of experiencing abuse both in her childhood and as this story indicates, an adult. Can childhood abuse set you up to be an easy target as an adult? Amy answers that question and many more with transparency and a genuine desire to give the abused a voice.
As we talked I could see countless ways the devil was focused on destroying her. From her childhood abuse, where she didn’t have any control over what happened to her to the professional help that at first feels like, she describes it, a sanctuary but then becomes a psychological prison.
She gives examples of the subtle ways her Doctor broke down barriers and Amy’s internal dialogue that silenced the alarms that were going off in her head. Her candor was refreshing as she didn’t side step any questions and gave authentic answers even if they weren’t the type that seem appropriate, canned answer most people expect.
Satan may have tried to shut down Amy’s heart, to silence her voice, and keep her from ever discovering who she was in Christ …. but he failed.
Amy is a solid Christ follower. She’s found healing for her abuse, victory over her abusers and whenever Satan feels the desire to take a swing at her over her past, she already has the tools in place to triumph over anything evil tries to put on her.
She knows the One who is our ultimate Healer, Christ. He’s the only One who holds the restoration of our mind, body and heart and He works it all together for our good and His glory.
Need a little encouragement for your heart today, listen in to Amy’s story of courage to report her abuser and face the backlash from those who did not believe her.
Amy’s courage now to share her story both in this podcast and through her book, Preyed Upon, Breaking Free from Professional Abuse gives you an inside look at the warped beliefs that early abuse instills, beliefs that make adult victims vulnerable to sexual predators and what it looks like to walk in victory.
If you are in an abusive situation or if you’ve experienced sexual abuse, Amy is speaking directly to you and your heart will find a kindred spirit. May you remember that you are not alone.
Live Loved and Thrive!
For more encouragement, read: https://alifeofthrive.com/2021/07/27/adaptive/
Connect with Amy:
https://amynordhues.com/
https://www.facebook.com/AmyNordhues
https://twitter.com/Amy_Nordhues
https://www.instagram.com/amynordhuesauthor/
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/21702772.Amy_Nordhues
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09HR9TN3N
https://www.linkedin.com/in/amy-nordhues-636806225/
https://www.tiktok.com/@amynordhues
Bio: Amy Nordhues is a survivor of both childhood sexual abuse and sexual abuse as an adult at the hands of a mental health professional. She is a passionate Christ-follower and expert on the healing God provides. She has a BA in psychology with minors in sociology and criminology. Her devotions have been published in The Secret Place (Judson Press) devotional series. Her essay, Give Me a Sign, won 2nd place at the Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference Foundation Awards. Her memoir, Prayed Upon, won the Inspire Christian Writers’ “Great Openings” contest for non-fiction. She blogs at www.amynordhues.com. A married mother of three, she enjoys spending time with family, writing, reading, photography, and all things comedy.
TRANSCRIPT:
[00:00:00.250] – Amy Nordhues
We assume that there was some part of us that caused it or allowed it to happen. So therefore, everything they do, if we tell, we’re kind of telling, like what a loser we are. That’s how I felt. When eventually he sat next to me. I wasn’t going to tell anybody, that I liked the physical nurturing. Now, it scared me at first, but he built his way up to that. I’m not going to tell anybody that because then I’m telling about everything that’s broken in me and defective in me. So we can’t tell the truth without telling on ourselves. We have all these faulty beliefs about ourselves that these needs that I have are defective. Well, no, they’re not. They’re human and they’re natural. Now he’s taking advantage. But the fact that I enjoy that nurturing, there’s nothing wrong with me in that. But I thought there was because I thought, well, I’m too old to want that. Normal people my age wouldn’t want that. Well, of course they would. If we can’t accept those things in ourselves, that is why they can trap us, because we have to admit something that we think is bad in ourselves to tell the truth.
[00:01:02.910] – Sherrie Pilkington
When life as you know it is flipped upside down. We struggle to make sense of it all. Why would a good God allow this to happen? Hi, I’m Sherrie Pilkington, your host of Finding God in Our Pain. In early 2018, the deepest questions of my life erupted when I unexpectedly lost my husband of 32 years. Since then, I’ve searched the heart of God for what he has to say about pain and suffering. In this podcast, we’ll discover how God enters into our pain, shepherds us through our darkest Valley and out into the green pastures. Once again, I’ll bring you first hand stories from women who will allow us into their authentic struggle, along with professional advice from experts, counselors and others who can speak to what it looks like to navigate pain. Join me as we discover God’s answers to the deepest cries of our shattered heart. It’s my prayer that today’s conversation with my guest, Amy Nordhues, will strengthen your heart in countless ways. Amy is a survivor of sexual abuse, both in her childhood and as an adult. Childhood abuse made her an easy target as an adult, not to mention that the abuse committed against her as the adult was done by a respected Church going professional psychiatrist. As we talked, I could see countless ways the devil was focused on destroying her from the childhood abuse where she didn’t have any control over what happened to her, to the professional help that was at first and she describes it as a sanctuary, but then becomes a psychological prison. She gives examples of the subtle ways her doctor broke down barriers and Amy’s internal dialogue that silenced the alarms that were going off in her head. Satan may have tried to shut down Amy’s heart or to silence her voice and keep her from ever discovering who she was in Christ. But he failed. Amy is a solid Christ follower. She’s found healing for her abuse, victory over her abusers. And whenever Satan feels the desire to take a swing at her over her past, she already has the tools in place to triumph over anything evil tries to put on her. She knows the one who is our ultimate healer, Christ. He’s the one, the only one who holds the restoration for our mind, body and heart. And he works it all together for our good and his glory. Need a little encouragement for your heart today? Listen in to Amy’s story of courage to report her abuser and face the rage of those who did not believe her because remember, her adult abuser was a Church attending professional in the community. Amy’s courage now to share her story both in this podcast and through her book preyed upon breaking free from professional abuse and prayed upon prayed is spelled P-R-E-Y-E-D not P-R-A-Y. This book gives you an inside look at the warped beliefs that early abuse instills, beliefs that make adult victims vulnerable to sexual predators, and what it looks like to walk in victory. Welcome, Amy, and thank you for being my guest today. So good to see you.
[00:04:09.390] – Amy Nordhues
Yes, you, too.
[00:04:10.590] – Sherrie Pilkington
You share in your book that you experienced childhood sexual abuse. So in what ways did that type of abuse equip you for adulthood? Because I think it’s a proven fact that our family of origin impacts the way we’re equipped to do adulthood. And so if that is one reality, how does it set you up for adult making decisions, relationship skills?
[00:04:37.140] – Amy Nordhues
Yeah, it sadly kind of places a target on your back. And one thing I’ve talked about before is that it kind of removes the word no from your vocabulary. It’s like when you become an adult, you see all the same red flags and you have an intact gut tuition, but you don’t feel that you have the right to say no, especially to an authority figure, especially to somebody who’s representing God or a doctor, things like that. And it just really obliterates your self esteem. It makes you think that you don’t have a right to your own personal space anymore and your own physical body and self. And so when somebody invades that, you feel it and you know that it’s wrong, but you don’t know what to do with it because you don’t feel that you have any right to say something because it makes you feel like you’re less than other human beings. And intellectually, you kind of like, no, that’s not right. But emotionally, we 100% believe that. And it’s like watching this happen to me as an adult. I could sit back and kind of be horrified about what I was allowing and what I was watching and experiencing. So I had that intact, but I couldn’t do anything about it. It was like I felt paralyzed.
[00:05:54.830] – Sherrie Pilkington
I can relate to that. I did not have sexual abuse in my home, but I had mental, emotional, physical. We had neglect. There was mental illness. So, in that there was no boundaries, you had no personal space, there was no personal identity. And so I completely relate to the fact that you had no boundaries. And so people blurred them all the time. And you do have this feeling of like, wait, that’s not right or that makes me feel this way or that way, but you don’t have a voice. Why does anybody going to listen to you now if they didn’t listen to you in the home? So, I completely understand the fact that we do not feel allowed to say no. Strange as it is, especially in that adult context. It’s still the way I don’t know if groomed is the wrong word, but it’s still the way you are set up to relate to people because I’m the first one to tell – and I’ve said this many times on my podcast, I left my home with more survival skills than I did relationship skills, but outside of that environment, they did not serve me well.
[00:06:52.620] – Amy Nordhues
That’s spot on. Yeah.
[00:06:54.640] – Sherrie Pilkington
Because I’m trying to reproduce what I was equipped to reproduce, but I’m not getting the same response outside the home. I don’t need to protect myself in the same way that I did there. It was just a big cluster and a lot of healing had to take place.
[00:07:08.930] – Amy Nordhues
Yeah.
[00:07:09.670] – Sherrie Pilkington
What is it about sexual abuse that it does to our body and our mind? Why does the victim bear the brunt of the guilt and shame when in fact, it’s not their fault at all, especially if you’re a child?
[00:07:21.330] – Amy Nordhues
I think one of the biggest reasons, especially if you’re a child, is that our reality is much too terrifying to accept it at face value, that there are evil predators lurking around that are supposed to be our loved ones and people that are safe and trusted and the people we’re supposed to go to if we need help, what happens when they are the predators and we can’t accept that? I don’t feel like and survive. I just can’t even imagine being a child and accepting that reality. So, it is just much safer and easier to take the blame ourselves. And I know I relate to this so much because anything that happened, if I could take the blame, then I could figure out how to fix it. Then it didn’t have to necessarily even exist anymore, right? Like, if it’s a problem in me, something bad in me, then when I fix it, it won’t happen again. So it gives us some semblance of safety and control that we really don’t have as an adult. I think that applies. We don’t want to believe that our pastors and our leaders and our doctors are evil sociopaths, but at least we have a little more mental capacity to accept that that evil does exist. We’re so conditioned to be subservient to them. I know I had a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that somebody could really be this evil. It’s just through my own lens that couldn’t be. So I responded to him the way that I would respond to myself. Oh, I have to be misunderstanding it. He must have just been joking, stuff like that. So, I think there’s a lot of reasons, but those are some of the big ones.
[00:09:13.180] – Sherrie Pilkington
I agree with you, and that control is an illusion. So what happens when you realize that it’s not anything in you that you need to fix, or is that something that you don’t even realize until adulthood? And then it’s more about healing than fixing something that’s supposed to be the reason why you got physically abused or sexually abused?
[00:09:38.050] – Amy Nordhues
Well, I think as a child it wasn’t an idea that I could even entertain because I didn’t know how I could survive if I accepted it as it truly was. So, I just think it’s an instinctual survival mechanism to take the blame. It’s such an egregious breach of our boundaries that it’s almost like we can’t imagine that there isn’t something bad in us because why would that happen otherwise?
[00:10:16.130] – Sherrie Pilkington
Level of evil, silence issue?
[00:10:18.090] – Amy Nordhues
Yes. You think there has to be something in me because this is so abnormal and it isn’t happening to everybody, or we assume it’s just us. That’s the other piece, too. We think it’s just us or a handful of us, especially when you’re a child. And if that’s the case, then it’s really more likely that there’s something wrong with that handful. We don’t have the knowledge that it’s happening to one in five.
[00:10:42.100] – Sherrie Pilkington
I have had people say to me, how can there be a God when children are sexually abused? But I know the heart of God enters into that sort of suffering. He’s not happy at all. He doesn’t agree with it at all, but he doesn’t snap up our gift of choice either, just because we don’t use it like he wants us to. How did God show up for you as a little girl who was being abused?
[00:11:05.080] – Amy Nordhues
I didn’t know that he did when I was a kid. I didn’t recognize that he had always been there until really this abuse happened in my early 40s, sadly. So, I had to go through life most of my life without him, which was a dark place. It was a dark way to live. In retrospect, I could look back and see ways that he showed up for me even in these very evil situations, but I didn’t know it at the time.
[00:11:37.090] – Sherrie Pilkington
Can you give us an example? Would you be willing to share?
[00:11:40.270] – Amy Nordhues
There was a period of time when I was probably in my early 20s and I was wrestling with the idea of this family friend that had molested me and just feeling like, Is this for real? God, am I a terrible person? I’m even thinking this. I’m so confused. I don’t have anyone I can bounce it off of. I went to my mom, and she believed me, but I still wanted more. I was just like, God, I need something in the sky that says it’s okay. It happened. It’s the truth. And you’re not a bad person for recognizing the truth. I’m such a conscientious person. So, I was working at the time for my cousin’s husband, I think it was. And out of the blue, came out of the office and started sharing very intimate details about this person’s home life. Shocking information. And I thought, oh, my gosh, thank you, God. He is essentially through this person explained to me the sickness in this family and the issues in this family so that I could let myself off the hook. He wanted me to not be beating myself up with the guilt. It’s so amazing to me now, in retrospect, how he does that.
[00:12:58.140] – Amy Nordhues
I didn’t even know if God answered prayer back then. I was just crying out to him, and he knew what was on my heart, that I was feeling guilty. And he basically sent me an explanation so I could let myself off the hook. That’s one of the huge ones, because then you can say, oh, okay, so I’m not just crazy.
[00:13:15.870] – Sherrie Pilkington
Had a break through there.
[00:13:17.390] – Amy Nordhues
Yeah, that was huge. And I didn’t really even appreciate that until probably much later when I thought, wow, that’s really amazing how he came through for me.
[00:13:28.940] – Sherrie Pilkington
And then one time I was talking with the Lord, and he wanted to take me back to the physical abuse in my home and the verbal abuse. And I said to him, Lord, we’ve already been over this. I’m X number of years old. I get it. You don’t get people like you want them. You just have to meet them where they’re at. I was starting to get very mad because the pain was starting to well up. And I said to him, you know what she did. You saw what she did. You saw it. Why are you asking me to go back? And he said to me and I don’t hear audible words, but he said to me in his fatherly tone, he said, Sherrie, I don’t take you back to hurt you. I take you back to heal you. Just the acknowledgment that he saw what had happened, that he was present, that he cared, that he heard me. That was huge to me. A weight lifted off my shoulders for that. So when you tell me of the story where God delivers this message to you and just, like, hugs your heart, if you will, I remember the release and the freedom granted a layer. At that time, I still had more healing to go through, but I remember how beautiful that was. That exchange. What did childhood abuse take from you? How are you robbed?
[00:14:39.100] – Amy Nordhues
You know, in a way, it takes everything because it takes your self esteem. And there’s so many things I feel like I didn’t get to experience or go through as somebody that had any semblance of self confidence. For example, I felt like in college I was surviving. I wasn’t hanging out with friends and dating boys and trying to decide what I wanted to be when I grow up. I was in full on survival mode still from the depression and the anxiety and the self hatred that ensued after early abuse. I say this too. It puts your life on a different trajectory. And I often wish that I could have gotten to see what I could have been and could have done with self confidence, but I don’t really spend a lot of time there. I love my life and where I’m at, it does make me smile. Watching my kids go through these stages, high school and college. And not that they didn’t struggle with different things they did. Just seeing them thriving makes me extremely happy that they didn’t have as much heaviness that they were lugging around. It’s such a joy for me that they are not dealing with depression or suicidal feelings or self hatred or extreme need to control. I had an eating disorder that was based out of a need for control. And I relate to what you were saying about coming out with more survival skills. One of mine was to be shut down and very guarded and protected, and I used a wall of anger also to try to dampen the pain a little bit because I am so very sensitive and very emotional. So, that made me isolated and lonely. That isn’t who I was. That was just me surviving. So there’s just you lose a lot. It takes a lot from you, kind of everything.
[00:16:30.650] – Sherrie Pilkington
I can also relate to withdrawing all the ways that you still feel like you need to protect yourself. Again, do not work outside that environment so you end up with more regret because you’re doing things. You’re keeping people at arm’s length that you love, people that you’ve chosen to do life with and maybe even intimate life with, and you still catch yourself working to protect yourself. And then you’ve got to find a way to heal from that. Knowing what you knew growing up. How did it affect the way that you raised your children? As an example, I came into fears of being a mother when I thought, especially when I held my first child, then I really did not understand my mother. Like, how does that happen? How does that type of abuse happen?
[00:17:15.030] – Amy Nordhues
I know I actually put off having kids because I was so afraid I would ruin them. I didn’t want any of the badness that I felt was in me or the flaws that were in me to hurt them. How we always swing a little bit one way too far or the other way too far. And I definitely wanted to err on the side of being loving. And I didn’t spank. I raised my voice, even though that was a goal never to do that. But I still did that. I just tried to be emotionally present for my kids and let them know that their emotions are completely normal. Everything they’re feeling is completely normal because I felt like I was too emotional and therefore I had pain. That was another one of my childhood interpretations. If I wasn’t emotional, these experiences wouldn’t hurt as much. So therefore, I just need to tone that down, and then things won’t be as bad. So I ended up hating myself for being sensitive and emotional. And those are all wonderful qualities, right? Those are all gifts that God gave me, but I despise them in myself. And so I had to be really careful that I wasn’t sending that message to my kids.
[00:18:28.480] – Amy Nordhues
I caught myself. I was always right there to apologize and say, Mommy was wrong for this. I felt like I made so many mistakes, but I had a therapist that was so wise that said, It’s not going to be a home run every time. And as long as you keep communication lines open and you apologize to your children, then they know. It’s the not communicating and everything swept under the rug uncomfortableness that makes intimacy impossible. And so I kind of felt like any mistake I made was going to ruin it. But that’s not it. That’s not how intimacy works, right? It’s a constant flow back and forth. And so, I tried really hard to keep that line open. And it took me a lot of years to realize that, like I said already, every mistake I made, I thought was like a permanent mistake, but it’s not. So I’d go in and say, oh, I am so sorry. Mommy was grumpy and Mommy was tired, and we talk about it. And that’s how they learn how to do life with their own emotions.
[00:19:25.130] – Sherrie Pilkington
God taught me so much when I became a parent because I just cried out to the Lord. I’m like, what do I know? What has been modeled for me, what has been given to me? I do not want to repeat. So, the Lord taught me so many things about who I was as his daughter. When I looked at my children through me being their mom. He also taught me the difference between discipline for the purpose of correction and then abuse, which would be my mother’s version of discipline for correction. But he showed me the difference between that. That was huge to me. I also apologize to my children when I was wrong. I would say, you know what you did? We need to talk about that, because you either broke the family rule or whatever the issue was, we need to talk about that. But my response was not right in doing that and taking responsibility for that, I was growing as well. I put parameters on what it meant to discipline for the purpose, to correct. I did not want to all of a sudden become my mother. And one time, one of my rules was I could not discipline when I was angry because she would just beat you until she felt better about the situation. And so my whole thing was, no, if I’m mad, I can’t do it. Well, one time I did it, and the Lord corrected me immediately, and I went back in there and talked to my son. I’m so sorry. That will never happen again. And so it was just taking away that anger when you’re trying to discipline, that was huge for me to remove that out of the equation.
[00:20:41.180] – Amy Nordhues
I was so afraid of being too harsh that I wasn’t very skilled in discipline for instruction’s sake. I mean, I did the best I could. I wanted them to know they were loved. But children can feel loved and have discipline and structure, and I did have discipline and structure, but probably not enough.
[00:21:00.880] – Sherrie Pilkington
One of the things that I’ve learned is that we all do the best that we can do with what we know at the time and my failures and the parts where I didn’t do a good job. God either covered for me, or at least he let me see that I have somewhere to come and lay that guilt or shame or pain. I can just lay it at his feet and he covers it over because he knows that I did the best I could with what I had and what I knew, and then he covers the rest of it. That is freedom. Being able to lay any of my shortcomings, any of my failures at his feet and let him absorb that. That’s freedom.
[00:21:32.600] – Amy Nordhues
One of the things that I also wanted to make sure that I did was in a dysfunctional home where things aren’t discussed and there’s that looming energy out there. I was the kid that absorbed it all. I absorbed my mom’s emotions. She wasn’t expressing them, but I felt them. And I took on the role, kind of like her protector and trying to be there for her and be her emotional support, that kind of thing. As I got older and started to have different issues, I blamed myself for most of my struggles. Again, if you weren’t so sensitive, it wouldn’t be a big deal. If you weren’t so emotional, you wouldn’t have emotions. I mean, it’s silly, but those kind of things, especially after this adult abuse, when my family really tanked and was really suffering and there was a lot of unhealthiness going on, not just because of this, but even in my marriage leading up to it, I made sure to tell my children that the emotions they were experiencing and the problems that they were facing large result, maybe not all, but almost all a result of the problems in the home and that Daddy and I were not communicating in a healthy way, hadn’t been and we hadn’t been interacting in a healthy way. And since we weren’t acting as healthy adults, you guys are suffering. And I know that my children, especially my son, would still say maybe still want to blame it on himself. But I made sure that they know that it is not their fault that they are in an unhealthy system. As healthy as we knew to make it, and we’re more healthier now. But I really needed them to know because that is the worst. As a child, you 100% think it’s about you. I needed them to know at least accept, please hear me when I say it is at least 50% about Daddy and I’s dysfunction and the problems that are going on in the home that you are picking up on. That’s huge for me. And no process that.
[00:23:36.130] – Sherrie Pilkington
What a Mama’s heart to set her children free in that way, to take responsibility where responsibility is supposed to be taken and give them the freedom to embrace that and to try to process that and to understand that and lift the weight off of their shoulders.
[00:23:51.020] – Amy Nordhues
Yeah.
[00:23:51.680] – Sherrie Pilkington
That’s a beautiful Mama gift.
[00:23:53.430] – Amy Nordhues
Thank you. My kids don’t know that, and they can’t gift themselves with that because number one, they don’t get it.
[00:24:00.200] – Sherrie Pilkington
That’s a good example, or at least the example that you’re given to me right now reminds me of the fact that my son one time I was upset with him and I’m fussing at him about something he did, and he goes, Mama, you hate me, don’t you? And I was like, stunned, like, what do you mean, I hate you? No, I do not hate you. So then it hits me that when I’m upset with him, he interprets that receives that as that I hate him. And I was like, oh, my gosh, nothing could be farther from the truth. I said, I tell you what. If at any time I’m ever fussing at you for something that you’ve done that you need to take responsibility for, I want you to ask me, Mama, do you love me? And I said, and I will stop and I will tell you that I love you because that just broke my heart, that he felt like I did not like him. I did not love him, that I hated him when I was fussing. That changed my attitude. So you’re right about the way the children interpret through this lens of self.
[00:24:50.520] – Amy Nordhues
They’re almost supposed to they don’t have any other choice because it’s like we said earlier, it has to be us because we don’t want to think we’re in an out of control environment or that mom and dad are not in full control or that they’re unhealthy or that – our minds just don’t go there. Until we’re much older and then we can look back and see our parents as more human. But when you’re a kid, you can’t. It can’t be unhealthy.
[00:25:16.500] – Sherrie Pilkington
All the stuff you just listed makes me think if I were a child, how scary would that be? Because I wonder, even if trauma as an infant or a toddler is when your parents are screaming at each other, there’s fits of rage in the home, somebody’s putting their hands on somebody Satan loves to attach himself to trauma. And so here comes this baby who now has these fits of rage because of the level of fear that is in them and traumatic situations that infants and toddlers are trying to understand and process with what they’re just little minds. How ill equipped is that? That breaks my heart. You talk about the inner workings of the abuse process of adult victims. Can you elaborate on that? The inner workings of the abuse process for adults.
[00:26:02.450] – Amy Nordhues
There’S just so many different facets and layers that abusers use, and they’re so intertwined that it’s hard to separate them out and really see them when they’re happening. Grooming is kind of a general term for kind of the overall creating of the illusion or luring you in. They use all different kinds of tricks, mirroring. They find out what your weaknesses are and what your voids are, and then they magically fulfill those they magically become, that they become the father or the mother or the friend that you need. There’s something called love bombing. It’s hard for any human really to resist being lifted up and complimented and heard and understood and all these things, especially when there are things that are voids in your personal life. And a therapist has a front row seat to what your personal voids are. Gifts and flattery and another big one is they play on empathetic people, which I am very empathetic. They slowly, over time, share enough of their personal lives and their personal hurts and struggles so that you feel somewhat sorry for them or somewhat responsible for them, so that when they do hurt you down the road, you have a hard time hurting them because you see them as fragile. That’s how I saw this man who was 20 years my senior. I saw him as broken and fragile.
[00:27:19.580] – Sherrie Pilkington
Talk to us a little bit about how you were deceived. How did he groom you? And when I say he, I am speaking of the professional therapist and a man of God.
[00:27:31.680] – Amy Nordhues
He deceived by using some of those things. These evil sociopaths are not going to be typically going to be a creepy person. They’re going to be a very loved, gregarious, sometimes well known, well liked, charming individuals. So you have to start out knowing that he was kind of goofy grandfatherly, which threw me and threw a lot of people, actually, they start right away with little acts that I didn’t realize at the time were even grooming. For example, the first time I came in for a session, he looked at my outfit and then went to the cupboards and looked at all these Afghans he had and pulled one out that he thought maybe match what I was wearing in a goofy, silly way. And then came over and kind of played in a playful way, covered me up with it. Well, was I uncomfortable? Yes. But then immediately I thought, well, he’s probably just trying to be silly to put me at ease because this is an awkward situation. They start right away with small things that you can’t exactly pinpoint. I mean, my brain didn’t even really register that that was anything bad. They build slowly on that. Eventually he stopped charging me. So guilt was huge. I started then to feel like I owed him a little just because of that. Even though I wanted to pay him and he was the one not letting me. I started seeing him maybe in April or May. And it was around Christmas time he offered me a shoulder rub or a foot rub for Christmas. Now that was terrifying, but I had built up quite a rapport with him. I’d been seeing him every week for six months or so, seven months. And I liked him and I felt safe with him. And so although that threw me, I wasn’t really thinking from a sinister standpoint. I was just thinking again, I think he’s trying to be nice, but this is certainly making me uneasy. But again, I felt like I didn’t have an option three. So I picked shoulders. And then when he came over and started to rub my shoulders, I was so panicked. I said, Feet, feet rub. And he rubbed my feet. And it was so embarrassing. But my brain immediately was like, I always loved having my sisters rub my feet. I would beg them to do it and pay them to do it. And I was like, maybe I told him that. Did I tell him that? I bet he’s trying to make me feel validated and heard, even though it’s kind of weird, but I don’t know, I minimized it. And I made that excuse. And I thought, yeah, that’s probably it. Well, it was very weird. The first time he did it again, it was less weird. And then it became commonplace. And then I thought it was great. They just sort of weasel their way in slowly anyway, they can. And that is a good example of how they can take something that you said or shared or something that’s truth, and then they can twist it. Months down the road, I had mentioned imagining myself dancing with Jesus just in my mind, as like a father daughter dance. Well, then the next time I came in, he offered to dance with me. I panicked. Didn’t think no was an option, but I thought, Amy, hes just trying to, it was your idea. He’s just trying to offer you, like a therapeutic exercise. So it was sort of like everything had a way of being tied to did I bring that up first? They kind of manipulate that way. A slow process of he knew I wanted a father figure, so that’s what he was. He knew that I had a disconnected marriage. So he was someone that wanted to hear me and support me and listen to me. And he didn’t really. I thought, here’s this person that just wants to be there for me, like a cheerleader. And then it was a slow process of him getting physically close to me and breaking down those boundaries. So that’s how it started with the feet, because it’s just feet, right? You don’t really think super sinister. And then it was a slow removal of clothing that, again, was so slow over so many months that I didn’t fully see it because I was kind of flattered that he saw me more like a daughter and he could be more relaxed with me. Like, he wore a full suit and tie. Did he really need to wear a full suit and tie with me? No. So when he took off his shoes scared me to death because it was so strange. But then I was like, it’s shoes, we’re sitting here in chairs. It’s very slow, very insidious. You’re not able to link one thing to the next. So each thing is an individual incident, and each thing individually by itself is not that big of a deal. We were trained as kids, or we kind of defaulted as kids. It’s probably something in me that’s making me uncomfortable with this because he took off his shoes. If you’re scared, like, get a grip. I have this horrible, self hate voice that I talk about in my book that would just bash me for every time I felt that nervous feeling, it’s like, oh, please. So what’s the problem now? And that’s the message I always gave myself as a kid. If I was struggling with something, it was, what is the problem? What is your problem now? And it’s kind of the same voice that was still there.
[00:32:27.630] – Sherrie Pilkington
When you said before it had to be your fault, that it was happening. And so now you’re asking yourself, what’s the problem? You’re okay, what’s the problem? Shoes really. So you really begin to deconstruct yourself.
[00:32:40.070] – Amy Nordhues
Yeah, because that’s what I always thought about myself. And it’s taken till I’m 50 years old, and I can now finally accept myself for who I am and see those qualities as good qualities that most of my life I thought, these qualities are the reason that you suffer. It isn’t because of anything anyone did to you or your upbringing or anything. It is because you are too emotional, you are too sensitive. You are too whatever.
[00:33:08.510] – Sherrie Pilkington
I like you. You just said these are good qualities. I believe that the emphath has a direct connection with God’s compassion. I feel like the way he created people who are empathetic sensitive. They have a special access to understand his heart with compassion. But it’s also the personality where I see currently someone I know right now being overtaken by a narcissist. There’s another young man who relapsed in his addiction and overdosed because he could not save the world. It’s just sad that this beautiful quality is abused. It’s almost as if predators look for that type of personality, that type of policy.
[00:33:50.340] – Amy Nordhues
Because my abuser was the one who told me I was empathetic, that I was an empath. Looking back, I’m like, well, of course he noticed those are the ones he was taking advantage of, because we do feel things so strongly and so deeply, which yes. And I’ve told my son this, it’s kind of a negative, but it is also a positive. It comes with some drawbacks, but it’s a huge blessing that we also feel the good things. We feel those just as strongly as we feel the bad things.
[00:34:20.710] – Sherrie Pilkington
It sounds like there’s a need to steward it well, because I think from what I’ve seen, I do not experience that. But from what I’ve seen, if you can tell the difference between somebody else’s responsibilities and somebody else’s emotions and yours, and that’s probably just the tip of the iceberg, then that is helpful to be able to draw those distinctions.
[00:34:41.250] – Amy Nordhues
I didn’t even mention gaslighting. They do start to make you get so confused and doubt your own reality. And there’s lots of different ways they can do that. My therapy was so bizarre. It was on a spiritual plane. I never knew if I was criticizing God or if I was criticizing him. So I stayed very open minded to it and in ways I thought it was helping me. I thought I was having emotional breakthroughs, spiritual breakthroughs. But it was so weird that I couldn’t talk to anyone else about it. And so we ended up in this, our own little bubble, which is another way they isolate you in various ways. And it got to where I didn’t have any else I could really talk to about it. So then when he started hurting me, he was the only one I could talk to about it. I did reach out to a close friend. I had told her lots of these things along the way. Little red flags that I didn’t think there were red flags. I wasn’t calling them red flags at the time. I just thought it was sweet that he offered to rub my feet. That’s how naive I was. And she seemed like it was sweet, too. She knew him well. She had recommended him. She was the pastor’s wife at my Church, and this therapist was an elder there. I don’t blame her at all for not seeing red flags that I didn’t see either. But eventually I did tell her of a blatant sexual assault, and she chose not to believe me and not to deal with it. So, I did try, but when she didn’t believe me, I was closest to her and my abuser. So, when I lost her, it left me with him. It was sad because it was like he was the only person I could go to for the pain that he was causing me.
[00:36:16.730] – Sherrie Pilkington
What a little cycle there, a vicious little cycle.
[00:36:20.240] – Amy Nordhues
They know that you are an adult and that a lot of people aren’t going to believe you anyway because you’re an adult. And they also know that having sexual abuse in your background, you will assume that at least most of it is your fault. So, if you are an adult, married or not, but especially married, are you going to tell your spouse something that’s happening that you feel that you know you don’t want but you don’t understand why you have to participate. And if I can’t understand it, how’s my poor spouse can understand it?. And that is the confusion and the mind blowing, gas lighting, I guess you would call it that they can do on you, that they know they have you completely trapped.
[00:37:07.990] – Sherrie Pilkington
How does one get free of that? It’s a nasty little cycle that keeps you trapped. No one wants to believe you or your pastor’s wife doesn’t believe you. But again, you set up the scenario where if you’ve got abuse in your background, here’s this professional man who’s active in Church, surely he could not possibly do these things. When in fact, that doesn’t mean nothing as far as being in the Church. How do you break out of that?
[00:37:33.300] – Amy Nordhues
Oh, my gosh, I didn’t think I could I finally, I mean there was only so far I was willing to go. I had already done things so out of my character that I was just mortified and I just hated myself that I hadn’t left. But there was a line I was not willing to cross. And when it got to that point where I realized this is where we’re heading and I can’t fix it because for a while I thought, no, God, I can fix it, because when he realizes he’s hurting me, he’ll stop. And then I can just go back to being good and safe because I thought that this therapist was a gift from God. So, I thought, well, the first part was good. So, I don’t know what’s happened here at the end, but I’ll fix it. Well, anyway, I eventually realized I couldn’t fix it. And yes, I was so trapped I didn’t want to tell anybody. I thought I was telling by myself. Look at these terrible things that I did that are the worst things I’ve ever done in my life that I have no answer for why I did them or continue to do them now. I mean, I had some idea and I knew deep down, but not 100%. Eventually I realized, okay, I’m going to have to tell somebody else because I cannot get out and break this tie by myself, which was my first plan, I ended up telling my pastor, my friend was the pastor’s wife. I told her and then her husband back to back and he said, what do you need? And I said, I just need someone to sit with me through one of my sessions because they were 3 hours long and the doctor would call or cry, I would just start to feel guilty and I’d start to think that again, I can fix it. See, he feels bad and I’ll fix it. So, I sat with them for about 3 hours and the doctor called nine times in the first 2 hours. And I almost did feel like caving because I started to feel guilty because I heard sadness in his voice. And heaven forbid I make somebody else feel sad, even somebody that’s hurting me. But after that three hour session ended, I could feel I knew that I broke that tie, just the tie that I didn’t have to go back anymore. There was still a lot to untangle, and I still felt a sick connection or an unhealthy connection, but at least I knew I wouldn’t go back. That’s what it took for me. There may be some people out there that can get out on their own, but I couldn’t. I mean, they’re very skilled predators and skilled at keeping you trapped. So, my advice to everybody is to tell and keep telling because oftentimes the first person you tell will blow you off or they won’t want to deal with it, especially if they’re close to the situation and it affects their life and it’s going to make their life inconvenient or uncomfortable. We all can relate to that. But I had other friends that said, Amy, if you had told me half of that, you would have never gone back. There was a reason I didn’t tell those people earlier on. It was because I felt I needed it. I needed it. I couldn’t lose the connection. For whatever reason, they become a lifeline. And it’s illusion of something you think you can’t live without.
[00:40:19.950] – Sherrie Pilkington
Is that a trauma bond?
[00:40:21.770] – Amy Nordhues
I think so. But I need to do more research on that because I’m not exactly sure.
[00:40:26.890] – Sherrie Pilkington
I’m not sure exactly what that is other than going through something very traumatic with someone surviving. But I listen to all of this trauma that you’ve been through and still your mind wants to make sense of it. I wonder if you received any sort of awareness from the Lord beforehand when we seek God out and we ask him, Is this for me or is that for you? And sometimes the Lord says no. And I’m like, Lord, I hear you. It’s a no, but I’m going to turn it into a yes. I’m going to work hard and I’m going to make it a yes. If we had just laid it down when he said no, we end up fighting with it. For how long? Until we finally lay it down. We end up where we were anyway, when we should have laid it down, and now we’ve wasted years on that. So, I’m just wondering, do you make any connection with that? Did God say no and you tried to make it a yes. Is it just the fact that the sexual abuse turns everything into mush or chaos?
[00:41:25.550] – Amy Nordhues
Well, it’s funny when you said I’m going to turn into it, yes. It just reminded me I still have this thing that I do where I assume God wants me to do it. And I begin and then I ask him. When I start to sense I don’t know if this is right. I don’t know that I ever even ask God if this is what he wanted me to do. And then I go back and pray, which is just ridiculous that I still catch myself doing that. But I get so gung Ho. And I think this is also part of what God’s wanting me to do in this Ministry. My faith was very new and naive in the sense that I had just discovered that God was very real and very personal and that he could interact with me on a personal level right before I started seeing this doctor. So, I was sort of in this excited, naive state of everything that’s happening is a God thing, like this is another God thing. And I was very gullible in that way. God had told me there is validity in this. He had told me years prior when I was really struggling and I was clearly doing the same thing, trying to find the solution that I knew God wanted without asking God. And so I was going down all these rabbit trails, and I was on one of those rabbit trails and I heard him say to me, Amy, you’re on the wrong journey. Your journey is a spiritual one, and then I can use you. Well, I didn’t know what a spiritual journey was. That was one of the first times that I even realized God could interact with me. I thought I just wait till heaven and I ask him all my questions, then fast forward and I started going to celebrate recovery, and I started going to this new Church. And then I find that here I am in counseling with this Christian elder and leader. And I thought this was the spiritual journey. Now it was not, but that’s what I thought. And so it was just kind of my naiveness and my not asking God first. But to answer your question, once I got in deeper and I started realizing I might be in trouble here with this therapist because I didn’t dream there would ever be any kind of sexual abuse. But I thought he’s crossing boundaries in an emotional way that is not making me comfortable. And maybe he’s trying to lure me into an emotional affair or something. I thought that was horrific right then that’s when I was starting to ask, Is this relationship a gift from you? Or is Satan trying to take away something that you gave me that’s good? Or you’re trying to tell me to run for the Hills? And this is bad. I was so confused. And I was stuck there for a long time, and he did everything in his power to help me get out and to show me that. So, yes, God started giving me a lot of nos. And I started saying, but wait, it was a gift you gave me. And it’s just now it’s gotten bad. And so I’m going to turn it into a yes. Little things. Like, he started showing me the word adultery, but I was like, but I’m not committing adultery. I would never commit adultery. He knew how conscientious I was. And if I thought that’s what the doctor was doing, that I would leave. It got so comical that I thought, Well, I just won’t read the Old Testament for now, because that’s where I would see that word. I’m not committing adultery. I’m not going to do that, and I’m not going to let that happen. Then I started seeing in the New Testament, and I was like, Are you kidding? And then I stopped reading my Bible. And then he had somebody randomly, not randomly loaned me a book. And I saw that word again. I was like, no more reading until God, just give me a second. Like, give me a second. So, yeah, it was the connection that then I was attached to. God, I don’t know if I can just give me a little more time and I’ll fix it.
[00:44:46.080] – Sherrie Pilkington
God is so good like that, because he knows the history and he knows the bonds that are created under stress, abuse. He understands your fears. He knows where they come from. I think that’s one of the reasons where God asks us not to judge other people, because we don’t know what you’ve been through. We don’t know what your childhood looked like or what your current status is with your husband or your therapist. We just don’t know the weary, mind, emotional, physical journey that anybody’s on. And so we can’t judge them.
[00:45:16.530] – Amy Nordhues
Right?
[00:45:17.080] – Sherrie Pilkington
You point out something very valuable. And I think that’s part of the maturing process is when we run ahead of God and we assume we know what God wants, we assume we know who God is based on the lens with which we have created to see the world around us, our experiences, the pastor in the pulpit, the way we interpret the word. But we don’t slow down enough to ask God, Is this right? Is this wrong? In my experience, childhood traumas rarely ever leave completely because I feel like Satan uses them a lot of times to throw them in your face and try to challenge you again. Because in all honesty, we don’t really know what our triggers are until we’re tested, until there’s pressure and then it comes to the surface. And I believe one of the reasons that God allows us to be under pressure is because when these things come to the surface, that’s what he wants to heal. That’s what he wants us to bring to him so that we can be healed. So to me, it’s still the lovingkindness of God, even in the trauma of this life, that he enters into that and says, hey, Babe, you want to give that to me? I love that you’ve pointed that out, that we get ahead of God while we’re in the midst of something. But we think we know who God is, but we need to give him time to tell us who he is, right?
[00:46:26.320] – Amy Nordhues
Yeah.
[00:46:27.450] – Sherrie Pilkington
You mentioned some red flags when they start crossing these boundaries and they start blurring things. And even one of them you spoke of a minute ago, you couldn’t tell anyone else about it. Do you consider that a red flag that you could not share what was going on? Or you just think that was your abuse pattern, just trying to survive, doing those survival skills, trying to cover, trying to make yourself not bad?
[00:46:49.930] – Amy Nordhues
I think it’s a little of both. I think that the perpetrators know that again, especially since we’re adults, but even as children, that we’re going to wonder what our piece of it was. Even if we aren’t sure, we assume that there was some part of us that caused it or allowed it to happen. So, therefore, everything they do, if we tell, we’re kind of telling, like what a loser we are. That’s how I felt. When eventually he sat next to me. I wasn’t going to tell anybody that I liked the physical nurturing. Now, it scared me at first, but he built his way up to that. I’m not going to tell anybody that because then I’m telling about everything that’s broken in me and defective in me. So, we can’t tell the truth without telling on ourselves. We have all these faulty beliefs about ourselves, that these needs that I have are defective. Well, no, they’re not. They’re human and they’re natural. Now he’s taking advantage. But the fact that I enjoy that nurturing, there’s nothing wrong with me in that. But I thought there was because I thought, well, I’m too old to want that. Normal people my age wouldn’t want that. Well, of course they would. If we can’t accept those things in ourselves, that is why they can trap us, because we have to admit something that we think is bad in ourselves to tell the truth.
[00:48:12.300] – Sherrie Pilkington
When you look at it that way, like you have flaws and you’re broken and you shouldn’t have liked that. And all the definitions that we put on ourselves again, this lens that we create through our experiences, did you see God during this time when this man of God, of the Church, let’s put it that way. A man of the Church and a professional therapist. Was God giving you strength?
[00:48:35.010] – Amy Nordhues
Yes. When I kept praying that prayer that I mentioned earlier when I was just struggling back and forth with, Is this a good thing or a bad thing? And how can I not figure this out? How can I not tell is God’s voice or Satan’s voice? I didn’t understand why I couldn’t grasp that. And I think I couldn’t grasp it because there wasn’t necessarily anything bad happening. I guess maybe that’s why I didn’t understand what God was so urgently wanting me to run from. Because it’s not like there was anything that I thought was bad going on because I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t see the bad that God saw that was happening. Right? So it didn’t make sense to me, but yet I wanted to do the right thing. And God knows that I want to do the right thing. So I was just praying and praying and I went to this. It was a celebrate recovery meeting and God knew exactly how to word it for my analytical mind because I could loophole it or find a little flaw with it or whatever. But this person said it does not matter if something is moral or not. If it’s right or if it’s wrong, if it’s messing with you or your relationship with God in any way, then it’s wrong. And I just got chills and I wrote it down and I knew that was my answer because that’s what I was wanting to know. God, is this right or is this wrong? Because if it’s wrong, I’ll stop. But I don’t think it’s wrong. But yeah, I don’t want to read my Bible anymore. And I’m kind of struggling to pray, but still I don’t think it’s wrong. I was like, oh my gosh, the Bible that I read every single day, I can’t read. I’m kind of struggling with my relationship with God. It is absolutely interfering with my relationship with God. And that’s a problem. That was a huge answer to prayer. When I finally got to the place where I was ready to try to tell my close friend again, it was guilt that was holding me back there at the end. How could I turn on him after he done all this for me? How could I leave him? He wasn’t even charging me. He meant to do good until he started to hurt me at the end. And I remember I was just sitting at my computer and I heard God speak. He said, Amy, he is not your problem to fix. And I said, okay. And I picked up the phone and I called her and I said, I’m ready to talk. And I drove to her house. God knew what the exact last little hook was, and it was guilt to tell on him or turn him in.
[00:50:48.380] – Sherrie Pilkington
And those are telltale signs of Satan is at work. The confusion, the guilt, none of that is gone. Those are fingerprints of Satan.
[00:50:56.220] – Amy Nordhues
I lived in, like, two or three months of total, utter confusion. It was maddening because my brain is analytical and wants to solve it, and I could not solve it. It was horrible.
[00:51:07.150] – Sherrie Pilkington
Well, what a gift you gave yourself by continually pressing into the Lord. You weren’t really safe going anywhere else with anything you had to say, but you’re safe with him. He reveals things just when we need them in the way we need them. He’s good like that. What do you think could have been different for you had you understood how childhood abuse impacts adulthood?
[00:51:28.740] – Amy Nordhues
If I had known the lies that I was still accepting as truth about myself and about a lot of things, I would have been horrified to look at them on paper and think, I’m accepting all of that. That’s crazy. It’s hard for us to see those things that we’re believing. It’s like all we can do is look at our behavior and kind of go backwards from there. How did I allow that? And we have to identify that little voice in our head that’s behind that. For example, a person in authority doesn’t make poor decisions. If you’re uncomfortable with something they say or do, then the problem lies with you. Well, we can hear that and think, well, that’s ridiculous. They do stupid, bad stuff all the time. It’s on the News 24/7. Yet if we’re honest and we stand back and observe ourselves, we have to admit that that is what we accepted as truth. I think a lot of us are walking around with those lies and beliefs about ourselves that have gone unchecked, and they are driving our behavior, but we’re not even aware that they’re there. It’s a huge problem because it allows us to be taken advantage of again and abused again. God bless me and allowing me to see these things when I went through this abuse and wrote out my story so I could understand what happened and allowed me to see them very clearly. And then the way he brought me healing was I combatted all of those lies and faulty beliefs with his truth about who he says I am and what he would say back to that. And for me, I wrote love letters from him to me over and over until it started to sink in, because even though intellectually, I’m like, I know, God loves me. He loves all of us. But I didn’t allow it to take root enough to weed out all these lies and faulty beliefs. That was the huge piece for me, the healing that I feel like only Jesus can provide. There’s a lot of other things I’ve done to heal, but that was a big one because it gets to the very root of who we think we are. And when we know who we are and we’re confident in that, we’re going to make different choices and we’re not going to allow certain things.
[00:53:34.450] – Sherrie Pilkington
The fact that you had the courage to hold your pain up, to see what God had to say about it, to see what his word had to say about it, and then engage him by asking him, what does he have to say about it? That’s life changing. Clearly, you’ve given us an example of that, how you’ve overcome sexual abuse, even from infanthood. We are creating in our mind based on our relationships and the people that impact us, how we’re to look at the world. And yet God sets us free from these limitations that we inherently grab a hold of and believe is truth. And so I think that’s the single most powerful thing of setting people free is to really engage God and find out who does he say we are coupled with his word, granted. But sometimes he speaks that personal word into our life and into those intimate moments with Him, and it’s forever changed hearts and minds. One of the things, too, that you just mentioned about God’s voice, that was one of the things I had to learn between. Is that you got, or is that Satan? Is that me speaking, Lord? Or is that you? Because God’s voice is fatherly, loving and kind. And I get it that if you didn’t have a good experience here or you don’t have a good experience with an earthly father, I get it. How that may be hard to overlay onto God, but he is always for you. He’s loving, he’s kind, he’s encouraging, and he does not judge you, reject you. He is constantly drawing you into who he created you to be. He wants you to discover who that is through the lens of his heart for you. So that’s very exciting to hear that that transformation took place for you in that intimacy with God. What are some of the things that you see in adults, habits, relationship skills, maybe coping skills that they use when they don’t get the help to heal? What’s something that somebody can look for that says, Wait, I need healing.
[00:55:18.770] – Amy Nordhues
Repeated cycles and relationships. I would continue to stay with people that didn’t treat me nicely, and I didn’t think that leaving that relationship was really an option. I’m not sure why. So, I think a lot of it we can see in our relationships who we choose to be around. And then, of course, addiction and compulsion, those are definitely red flags that something isn’t right inside. For me, it was always more an eating disorder. And the need for control, even the need for control in small ways, is another sign of fear and anxiety.
[00:55:51.850] – Sherrie Pilkington
It’s interesting that we try to control something other than what we should be controlling. Drawing boundaries on that’s really, in my opinion, why it’s hard to heal from things like this, because it really doesn’t make sense. It flips everything upside down.
[00:56:09.380] – Amy Nordhues
I know. And it’s so hard to pinpoint. You have to really be self aware to catch these things because it’s funny. Sometimes I’ll start obsessively decluttering. I only do that in my house when I feel that way on the inside. Otherwise, everything that’s around me does not bother me at all. When it starts to bother me and almost feels suffocating to me, that tells me I’ve got some emotional things going on that I need to deal with. Or obvious things like when we start to lash out or behavior starts to change. But then I started to think, what is going on with you that you need to look at.
[00:56:42.990] – Sherrie Pilkington
That you need to take to the Lord.
[00:56:44.830] – Amy Nordhues
Yes.
[00:56:45.720] – Sherrie Pilkington
When it comes to a victim telling the truth, exposing what’s going on, what’s the worst thing in their own minds? What’s the worst thing that can happen? It keeps them from actually coming forward.
[00:56:56.500] – Amy Nordhues
Well, a lot of things for me. I had a good reaction from my pastor in the beginning, but then it eventually went into protect the congregation image mode. So, you face losing your Church, your friends, because they’re still friends of mine that really didn’t want to fully hear it. They wanted to be there for me, but not at the risk of looking at the realities of what went on in the Church.
[00:57:22.570] – Sherrie Pilkington
So it will cost you a lot.
[00:57:24.020] – Amy Nordhues
It’s going to cost you a lot and draws a line in the sand. You might lose your marriage, hopefully not. What would come with that would be you could be losing your family if through a divorce, you could lose your image. People are going to look at you differently if you are going to come forward and tell the truth, like say, I have done, you have to accept the fact that there’s going to be people that believe you and people that don’t believe you, people that judge you and people that don’t judge you. You get no control over that. It’s terrifying. There’s always going to be the abuser side of the story and their followers. You’re going to have to endure the gossip mill, which I did. Then you hope that you are believed by the medical board or the licensing board that you go to. And in my case, I was and that was positive. I was able to find an attorney who believed me and fought for me. But the first ones made me feel horrible and asked me why I went back and treated me like I was just so it is not easy to tell the truth.
[00:58:15.970] – Sherrie Pilkington
If someone’s listening, who has been or is being sexually abused, what can they do right now to make a difference? Whether it’s to protect themselves in the environment or leave to find safety, what’s something in action they can take right now?
[00:58:29.090] – Amy Nordhues
They need to reach out and tell someone. And if they are not heard, they need to keep telling and they need to tell until somebody listens. And then they’re going to need help breaking that tie, whatever that looks like for them. For me, it was not going to an appointment one time. And then continued support because abusers will guilt you back in, lure you back in, threaten you back in. And so I just feel like you really need to kind of put that support around you, one person or two people before you make the decision to tell, because there’s going to be a lot that comes with it.
[00:59:01.300] – Sherrie Pilkington
That’s good. Put a support system in place before the fallout happens. And then they’re coming at you from every direction.
[00:59:07.600] – Amy Nordhues
Right.
[00:59:08.560] – Sherrie Pilkington
When you think about one of the darkest moments that you experience, what is something beautiful God pierced that darkness with to give you hope.
[00:59:16.300] – Amy Nordhues
He did something really amazing after this abuse. About a week after I told my pastor I had this preplanned vacation with a friend in Canada. And when I was up there, he sent me somebody that was like an angel who was my same age and who had told me out of the blue that she had just experienced abuse by her therapist. We were going through the exact same thing. We talked about how we both were new believers and we both were experiencing God in nature now, and we never really noticed nature before. And now he was alive for us and we’re both photographers. So, she told me she would take me to one of the local beaches and show me, oh, she told me God was sending her heart to nature and she was taking pictures. And I was like, well, that’s so cool. I said, no fair, I want one. And so she took me to a beach the next day. And just because I had said no fair, I want to see one. God flooded me with hearts. And I’m talking magnificent. I’m talking the clouds in the driftwood in the waves. I took hundreds upon hundreds of really neat heart photos over the next three days was just me and God alone. And I called it like a magical play date. It was the most blissful time of my life, really just being him and me. That was it. And all I did was talk to him and thank him and tell him I’m sorry and let him talk back to me. That has become our little thing, our little love note that he does for me. I came home and I can remember leaving, thinking I was leaving that all behind and leaving God behind in that way, that personal way. And I saw a heart in the trees as I was leaving Canada. And I could hear God say to me, do you think I only lived in Canada? And I was like, well, I guess so. That has been our special thing. It’s been really neat.
[01:01:00.950] – Sherrie Pilkington
Amy, share one of your love letters that you wrote that God would have given to you.
[01:01:06.630] – Amy Nordhues
Okay, this is one of them. It’s called The Very Best. Father, why did you make me? I’m not like all the rest. You knew I’d never be good enough. Even at my best, I deserved to die. You saw what he made me do, even though father, I didn’t want to. But that doesn’t matter. There’s no point in living failing as I am. Speak to me, Father, and answer. I demand, my child, I hear you. You think you are a disgrace, but give me just a minute. Now let me see that tear-stained face. These people who are telling you who you want to be. Let me ask you, do these people, do they know you as intimately as me? Did they form you in the womb? Every intricate part. Child, these people who are defining you, can they see your heart? If you can answer yes to that, well, perhaps this talk is done. But if the answer is actually no, well, then I think it’s just begun. What I make is beautiful without fault and strong. So these messages you’ve been getting, well, they could not be more wrong. I am angered at what they’ve done to such an innocent one as you. For their sins, they will pay. My child, I am not through. For I intend to show you who you really are. You cannot take a blanket and cover up a star. Your light is still burning although you cannot see but child, oh, how I wish you knew just how you appeared to me. You are magnificent for you radiate shimmering light. And for you, my precious one, I will put up quite a fight. And I won’t give up until the day that you can look up to the skies and see yourself as I see you and know the rest were lies. And child, you are correct when you say you are not like all the rest. For you, my special daughter. I have saved the very best.
[01:02:45.870] – Sherrie Pilkington
Elohim the God who created us, who knows us intimately with the breast that he filled our lungs with and the way that he did us together on our mother’s womb. We’re going to end on this sweet note, this reminder that no matter what this world tries to throw at us, put on us, do to us that God is writing a much bigger love story with us as the individual that he created us to be. Thank you so much, Amy, for your time today. What a deep, deep revelation it has been for me. I deeply appreciate you.
[01:03:15.530] – Amy Nordhues
Thank you so much.
[01:03:16.820] – Speaker 4
Thank you for your time and for sharing this experience with my guests. I hope you have found encouragement for today and a deeper revelation of God’s heart in the midst of pain and suffering. We’d love to have you as a subscriber to finding God In Our Pain so that you can be connected with all my guests as they share their personal experiences and professional knowledge about pain and suffering. And because this podcast is a division of the website a Life of Thrive For more information and the various ways you can connect with us, please visit the website ALifeOfThrive.com. I look forward to sharing more transparent stories from the hearts of women who intimately know what it means means to have their world flipped upside down, their authentic struggle to make sense of it and what recovery and healing looks like. Til then, sweet woman, remember you are not alone and that God speaks the most beautiful things in the dark.
