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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781496930460 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 11/20/2014 |
| Pages: | 108 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.26(d) |
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The Seventh Floor
By Debra A. Deardorff
AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2015 Debra A. DeardorffAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4969-3046-0
CHAPTER 1
SECRETS
It was the summer of 1983. I was attending an annual church camp meeting. Record-breaking crowds were anticipated, so the meeting was held in the Civic Center. The days were filled with life-changing teachings and the evenings electrified like the "old-time camp meetings."
I had talked my mother, sister, husband, niece, and a close friend into joining me at the conference. Our family went to church but I had never been to anything like this. Our expectations were high, and we were not disappointed. Seats were scarce, so we journeyed to the "nose-bleed section." The atmosphere was charged like that of a race at the moment horses bolt from the gate. On cue, over 9,000 people erupted in a symphony of singing that was so different it was beyond anything of this world. The presence of God filled the room hovering over us like a thick cloud. I had never been so overwhelmed. I began to cry. I could feel His love in such a tangible way, it seemed He was pouring it down on us like rain. He pulled me from the depths to respond with tears flowing freely down my cheek.
The moments of our worship seemed to last a lifetime and then the speaker for the evening stepped up to the podium. The message he spoke was powerful. Intellectually, I knew what he was saying was for everyone; but inside I knew the truth. Each word was like a sole arrow piercing the bull's eye of my heart with unfathomable love. At the end of his message, the minister gave an invitation and asked for anyone who wanted to receive what he called the "endowment from above" (which is a call for baptism in the Holy Spirit), to come forward. So many people responded the aisles were flooded with what seemed to be a sea of people. The atmosphere was so alive with anticipation that no one appeared to notice the endless lines and no one seemed to care. Before I knew it, I was in line with them.
By the time I reached the front of the line for my moment to be ministered to, the speaker suddenly stopped and asked "Is there any woman here who has had an abortion?" Everything and everyone froze. A silence descended that seemed to linger in the room. Abortion was a subject no one spoke about--never in public--let alone in front of thousands of people on live TV. Abortion was illegal and carried a stigma that would forever ruin a woman's reputation and that of her family.
Not moved by the crowd's reaction, he went on to say, "The anointing of God is present to minister and heal you." My face flushed hot and my mind began to race wildly. I wondered how he knew. Who told him? Was this a coincidence or did God stop an entire service just to talk to me about the darkest secret of my heart? A secret hidden so deep it was never, ever to be spoken of. My parents knew. Our pastor knew. But the tragic events that had robbed me of my innocence and exposed my life to darkness--- we had kept hidden beneath a wall of silence, shame and fear. All those years of carrying this heavy weight, a weight that grew heavier and heavier day by day, the thing we had labeled the "dark family secret," had taken a terrible toll on my life. My mind still racing, I knew I couldn't go any further. The fear of being exposed paled in comparison to the burden of carrying the secret. This was my chance! Maybe Jesus could fix this and maybe, just maybe, it would be okay. Slowly, I moved into the new line.
In the 1960s, when I was a teen, it was common for high-school students to have part-time jobs. I was no different. We were a middle-class family and while we had the necessities, if I wanted other things like clothes or spending money, I would have to pay for them myself. When I was sixteen, I was given the opportunity to work at a national department store chain, in the children's department. I would be working there each day after school from 5:00 PM to 9:00 PM and all day on Saturday.
Next to the children's department was the men's clothing department, where a handsome young man worked. We began to talk during lunchtime or on our coffee breaks. For months, we chatted about work and enjoyed the simplicity of each other's company. Not long after, we went out on a date. It went well and ended with a nice, short goodnight kiss at my front door. I liked him. He was pleasant and from a churchgoing family like me. We dated for a couple of months when I mustered up enough courage to ask him if he would take me to my high school Valentine's dance. Even though he was four years my senior, he said yes.
We had a great time at the dance. Driving home he said he'd like us have a couple of drinks. I thought to myself, "What harm could it do?" While my parents never drank socially, they would have an occasional glass of Mogen David wine. As for me, I had never taken a drink of any kind before, but I was curious and decided to join him.
He pulled the car over somewhere along the route home and brought out a single glass and a container filled with some sort of alcohol as though he had planned it all out. Soon I was intoxicated. With only a couple of sips, my senses became numb. It was as if I were someone else and somewhere else, in a surreal world that was foreign to me. We began to kiss. That was nothing new; we had kissed before. Suddenly, it felt different, and before I knew what was happening, I found myself overpowered and underneath him. We were having sex.
When he was finished, he started up the car to drive me home. In the awkward silence of the drive, I kept saying to myself, "Just keep quiet. When I get home, I'll be safe; it'll all be okay." I was not experienced with boys or men. I had had only one other boyfriend in my life before this young man. My first boyfriend and I had an honorable agreement that we would kiss and nothing more, so that we would never place ourselves in a position that would tempt us to compromise my virginity or our relationship. We dated for well over a year and never broke our promise to one another.
I thought this is what all men were like. It never occurred to me that other men would not be as honorable in protecting my reputation or their integrity. How could I have been so stupid? I knew I had done nothing wrong but I still felt dirty, dark and despicable. How could I have been so naive?' In an instant, a hatred of myself began to take hold that would last many years beyond this event.
As we arrived at my house, I ran from the car intoxicated, frightened, bewildered, and ashamed. Safe inside the sanctuary of my bedroom, I pulled the covers over my head and said to myself, "I'm home, I'm protected, I'm safe. What should I do? I know--I will never talk to him, see him, or go out with him again. I'll pretend nothing happened. I'll vow to never drink again and just go back to my normal every-day life."
You see, in our home, the standard coping strategy was denial. If you believe it didn't happen, it didn't. We rewrote history, made up our own reality and believed it. We lived this strategy; it was woven into my family's DNA. Therefore, using the coping skills of my childhood, I convinced myself it didn't happen and I was still a virgin.
But despite my vow to myself to put it all behind me, this man had a hold on me; a mental and emotional pull that kept me tied to him even though I stopped seeing him, wouldn't return his calls and never went out with him again. It was choking. He was nowhere in sight and I still couldn't get away from him. He was always lurking in the shadows of my soul. The only way to get away from him was to bury him, along with the incident, as deep as I could in the farthest recesses of my heart. I did just that; I buried him as though he were dead and with him, myself.
My new pretend world was going along just fine until the doctor spoke the words, "you are pregnant." The room began to spin. My world shook violently. It was as though a 9.0 earthquake had devastated every part of me, and knocked out the power. Darkness flooded my heart and mind. "Traumatized" simply isn't a big enough word for my pain. Parts of this nightmare are still so vivid I can recall them with sure accuracy, while there are months or even years of time that have been erased from my memory as if they vanished into thin air.
My family went to church every Sunday, but we never really "knew" God. I have no recollection of whether my parents prayed and asked God what to do, or even if we had a discussion of any kind about whether to keep the baby or put it up for adoption. My only conscious memory was traveling in the middle of the night to an out-of-state abortion clinic recommended by our pastor.
As soon as I walked in the door, my senses were in overload. It happened so fast, yet I knew I would never forget the overwhelming smell of disinfectant, the blinding bright lights over the table, and the words "it's a boy." My mind was clouded. I was paralyzed; I was numb.
On the way home, my parents treated me to lunch at our favorite chicken restaurant. Each bite was like a mile of distance we put between ourselves and the glaring horror of the events from the clinic. By dessert, we had so distanced ourselves from the "dark family secret" that finally it was locked deep within the recesses of our minds, never to be acknowledged again. Without a word being spoken, this, we had silently decided between us, would be our new reality. Once home, we contentedly continued our old lifestyle of "if you pretend it is not so, it is not so." As with the other things my family decided didn't happen, the incident was never talked about again.
I did not know that secrets birth darkness, and darkness births torment. Torment becomes a private jail cell where our emotions and a part of one's true self are locked away: no visitors allowed. The dark family secret was buried forever inside a seventeen-year-old girl, a junior in high school--with no one to talk to, no one who would understand, and no one who cared.
Thirteen years later, a married woman with a deeply buried secret stood in front of 9,000 people, live TV cameras rolling and her family staring from the stands in betrayal and disbelief. With the speaker's words still ringing in my ears, I realized what I'd done. But I didn't care. Yes, everyone there and everyone on the other side of the television cameras would know what we'd sworn would never be spoken of again. But I could not ignore that God stopped an entire service for me so He could heal my broken heart and set me free. I wrestled to grasp: "Could God actually love me that much?" No one had ever loved me that much. I couldn't refuse to respond. I decided in that moment this would be my day of reckoning, forgiveness, and deliverance. The minister moved slowly, patiently down the line to pray for each one of us who came forward. I knew in my heart there must have been many more like me who'd also had an abortion but were too scared or embarrassed to come forward. I have no idea if I would have come forward had I been sitting up in the stands when the invitation was given. I would have likely been trapped between my mother and freedom.
Was I the brave one? No. I was rescued. I was so grateful and relieved that God would offer me His rich forgiveness and healing. As the minster began, a breath-taking, sweet presence descended in the arena. The love of God was tangible, hot, and overwhelming. His peace swept over me like the billowing waves of the ocean. As the minister placed his hands on my face, the radiant heat of God's healing power flowed into my body, and suddenly my feet went out from under me. God penetrated the wall that had encased me in darkness, flooded my heart with light, and healed me with His marvelous mercy.
While on the floor, I heard the minister say to the woman who had been standing to my right that the abortion she received caused her to lose her reproductive organs, but God was going to do a creative miracle and give her back her missing body parts. Still lying on the floor, I thought as the minister spoke, "A creative miracle? Is that possible? I didn't know God could do that!" I was consumed and simply saturated with His goodness. What deliverance! What compassion! What forgiveness!
As I made my way back to my seat, my mother and sister spoke not a word. My husband, Dick, hugged me and thanked God for my healing. What happened to me was not a secret to him. Before we married, I had shared the entire incident with him.
Several months after that night in the stadium, as I was praying one day, God asked me a question: "Debbie, why are you still carrying a record of this event in your heart? You have forgiven everyone but yourself. In Heaven, there is no record of what you've done. I forgave you, so you must now forgive yourself."
You see, although I knew God had forgiven me for my naïve indiscretion and the abortion that followed, and I had forgiven the young man who took advantage of a simple girl's innocence, I didn't realize I had not yet forgiven myself. As I experienced the presence of the Holy Spirit there with me, I spoke to that seventeen-year-old girl within me and said, "Debbie, I forgive you." Just saying those words aloud with conviction released me. Peace and joy filled me again. What had been a horrible nightmare could truly now become a distant memory. The painful darkness, the secrets, the agony, and the pretending were really over. Never again would I have to hide the truth or from the truth. I was free! Glory be to God forever!
It was in revealing my innermost secret before God that I was able to be free. He knew my secret all along! I was the one who was hiding from the only one I could ask for help-- God! I learned Satan is an equal-opportunity destroyer. Darkness is the place where he resides and wins. Protecting a secret just causes it to take root and grow until darkness envelopes the one who carries it. God was always there with His loving arms open wide to forgive me. My darkness didn't frighten Him. It wasn't bigger than He is or greater than He is! He was the only one who understood my brokenness and had the power to destroy it. As 1 John 1:9 states: "If we tell Him our sins, He is faithful and we can depend on him to forgive us our sins. He will make our lives clean from all sin." (NLV) The problem wasn't what was going on outside of me; it was the war that I was waging with myself inside of me. My family may have given me the tools and materials to build the wall, but I was the one who decided to use them to wall myself within my new fabricated reality. Whether to stay in darkness or come into the light was always my choice. When I was faced with the decision of doing what I was taught by my family, hiding in the darkness, or run to God, I ran to Him!
CHAPTER 2HOPE AGAINST HOPE
With my secret exposed, my past forgiven, and a renewed sense of hope in my spirit, Dick and I started to build our life together. At the beginning of our marriage, our careers were our focus. Everything else, including children, could wait. But in the back of my mind always lingered the thought: Would God give me another child? Would it be a boy? Could God trust me to be a mother again?
Dick is five years my senior. By the time I entered my early thirties, we decided to get serious about having children. After ten years of marriage, I had not yet conceived. Being practical and logical, our next decision was to consult fertility doctors to diagnose our problem and recommend a course of action. To our dismay, we faced alarming news. I was barren, and tests indicated Dick had a less than 1% chance of fathering a child. The doctor told us that "his sperm count was too low, and they were not swimmers." Disheartened and disappointed, we left the doctor's office not knowing exactly what we would do next.
Despite the bad news, the doctor spoke one word I couldn't shake. "BARREN" ... The very sound of the word brought feelings of dryness, emptiness, and hopelessness. As the weight of the word sank in, I began to think more broadly about its meaning. It didn't just apply to an inability to conceive a child, it could apply to any situation in which we experience darkness, emptiness or despair ... robbed of the good things God has planned for us, convinced that barrenness is our unchangeable destiny. I thought about people who were living in poverty, those who were jobless, in debt and facing bankruptcy, those in loveless marriages, those fighting life-long addictions or diagnosed with terminal illnesses, those in prison or mental institutions, or those living under tyranny and corruption, with their lives in constant danger. In my mind, the list of those who could be called barren was endless.
I still considered myself a fairly new Christian at that time, but I knew that I did not want the label "barren" to be my destiny, and I did not want to give Satan the satisfaction of isolating me from God's promises or what He had planned for me. I set out to explore every avenue to change this "destiny," immersing myself in God's Word.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Seventh Floor by Debra A. Deardorff. Copyright © 2015 Debra A. Deardorff. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Dedication, v,Foreword, vii,
Introduction, xi,
Chapter 1: Secrets, 1,
Chapter 2: Hope Against Hope, 15,
Chapter 3: Build an Ark, 35,
Chapter 4: The Cry of Faith, 43,
Chapter 5: The Positive Test, 47,
Chapter 6: The Great Darkness, 51,
Chapter 7: Manifested Victory, 63,
Chapter 8: Final Call, 71,
Chapter 9: The Light Has Come, 77,
Letter to the Reader, 85,
Appendix A: Prayer of Salvation, 87,
Appendix B: Baptism of the Holy Spirit, 89,
Notes, 91,