Stormie: A Story of Forgiveness and Healing (21 page)

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Authors: Stormie Omartian

BOOK: Stormie: A Story of Forgiveness and Healing
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I was unprepared for the response. A flood of people who had been through similar experiences came up to me afterward. I had no idea how great was the need of emotional healing for those who had been damaged in childhood, and also for people who were carrying on the tradition with their own children. Everywhere I went the response was overwhelming. I received hundreds of letters from people crying out for help who had been victims of the past and were now trapped in their present circumstances, with no vision of hope for their future.
“If there was deliverance and healing for me, then there is for you too,” I told them. “You
can
get free of the past and the paralyzing hold it has on you. Things
can
be different. But it can only happen through Jesus. In the Bible it says, ‘From
the Lord
comes deliverance!’
14
He is the deliverer. He is the healer. Without Him I would not be whole.
“The way it happened for me was by simply spending time in God’s presence,” I continued. “God asks us to make Him the center of our lives and to continually seek His presence. When we do that, His presence answers our every need. In His presence there is deliverance, for the Bible says, ‘Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.’
15
The Bible also says, ‘He will deliver the needy who cry out, the afflicted who have no one to help.’
16
Just by my repeatedly crying out to God, He met me in my need each time. He is there for those without a counselor, without anyone to talk to, without someone to understand.”
“Why did it take 3½ years?” people often asked me.
“Deliverance from child-abusing tendencies took time because I needed to learn a new way of thinking,” I explained. “I needed to learn to seek God’s presence
before
I looked for any other solution. When I didn’t understand, I turned to Him for understanding. When I didn’t have the answer, I turned to Him to find it. When I was confused, I turned to Him for clarity. It was a
walk
of life that had to become a
way
of life. It’s good to seek counseling, but no one can live in a counselor’s office. We have to become better acquainted with
The
Counselor. So when you don’t know what to do, seek God’s presence in prayer and worship,” I advised. “Stay there long enough to let Him love you into wholeness.”
I laughed at myself for the calm manner in which I gave advice. My healing process was “gradual” but it seemed “endless” at the time I was going through it. My first deliverance from suicidal depression and destructive feelings of worthlessness was instant. The deliverance from the fear of speaking and singing came as I obeyed God and entered into praise and worship of Him. It still goes on. The deliverance from child-abusing tendencies was a process of 3½ years. As long as it seemed, it did have a beginning and an end. During that 3½-year period I felt God walk with me step-by-step. I felt His love reach down and heal me little-by-little. Up until that time I thought He only loved other people, or that He loved me sometimes, depending on whether I was good or said and did the right things. In the end I fully believed that God loves me all the time. After that I was sure God had taken care of every area in which I could possibly have problems. What was left for Him to do except restore the relationship between me and my mother?
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE REWARDS OF OBEDIENCE
Growth, growth, and more growth came over the next year. Michael and I had a new house built, and the building process took much longer than we expected and cost more than we anticipated. I related the whole experience to the Lord building us: The process takes longer than we think it will and the cost is greater than we expect. But, just like with the house, the rewards are far beyond our dreams and well worth the wait.
Lately, as I spent time with God, I had one consistent request: I asked Him repeatedly to heal my mother and restore the relationship between us. However, it seemed that every time I prayed for her, expecting God to do something, she got worse.
Dad retired from working at Knott’s Berry Farm, and he and Mother moved to a five-acre farm in central California. It was perfect for him, being the farmer at heart. He loved to raise cows and horses and plant gardens. With no more city stress and pollution, but rather leisurely working outside in the clean air and eating fresh fruits and vegetables from his garden, I could see his life being extended by this way of living.
At first the move appeared to be good for Mother too, but as always before, her surge of normality was only temporary. This time she sank into her fantasy world even quicker and deeper than before. Her bitterness and hatred was now all directed toward Dad. In her hysterical moments, Dad’s method of coping was to calmly walk out of the house and leave her to fight by herself. This incensed her so much that one day she picked up a dead tree branch, crept up behind him as he was stooped over pulling weeds in the garden, and sent it crashing across his back. Another time, on a freezing winter day, she turned on the garden hose and drenched him with water.
As her actions became more openly hostile and violent, I became more concerned about Dad. I asked the church to pray about her condition at one of the services. Thousands of people prayed, and I thought God would answer and Mother would be healed. However, instead of getting better, she got worse, this time with a new twist.
It was now normal for Mother to sleep all day and prowl the house at night, fighting imaginary enemies. One morning she woke Dad at three A.M. She had been cooking since midnight, and had a full meal prepared and the table set for eight people. She told Dad that her voices had informed her I was coming for dinner. Now they told her I was lost. She wanted Dad to drive her into town to search for me.
He accommodated her, as he always did. Anyone else would have hit her in the head or had her committed, but not Dad. He put up with her for reasons that only he can understand.
At 4:30 in the morning, I received a call.
“Stormie?” the voice of my dad questioned.
“Yes, what’s wrong?” I quickly wakened.
“Your mother said you were coming for dinner tonight and that you were lost in town. We’ve been looking for you since three A.M. this morning. Are you coming?”
“Of course not, Dad. I’m still here in bed.”
“I want you to tell your mother so she knows.” He handed the phone to her.
“Where are you?” she said gruffly.
“I’m home in bed. Where am I supposed to be?”
“You told me you were coming for dinner.” Her anger gained momentum.
We hadn’t spoken in weeks and had not seen each other in months. The farm was a four-hour car ride away, so it was not the kind of trip anyone would make just for dinner.
“I never told you that. I haven’t even talked with you. Where are you hearing these things?” I said, knowing full well where she heard them. I had long suspected that she heard the voices of demons and that they controlled her personality. I kept trying to point her toward the realization that she was listening to lies, but she refused to see it. She was actually blinded and
couldn’t
see it. Her own personality was suffocated beneath thick bondage and she was unable to entertain rational thoughts. She hung up on me in total disgust.
In all my life I never saw my mother forgive anything or anyone. She was an injustice-collector of the highest order. She had on the tip of her tongue the name of anyone who had ever wronged her and could tell you the complete incident in full detail. She could relive it with all the intensity of feeling as when it first happened. And so, just as she never forgave Dad for suggesting that she go to a mental hospital, she never forgave me for not coming to dinner at three A.M. that morning.
About three months later Michael and I took Christopher to visit my parents. Immediately when I walked in their house I noticed the dining table.
“Why is the table so dirty?” I whispered to Dad. “The dishes are filthy. There is a quarter-inch of dust on everything and cobwebs on the glasses.”
“Your mother set that table the night she called you and she refuses to put anything away,” Dad explained. “She won’t let me touch it either.”
When I met Mother’s cold stare, that familiar look of venom, it was clear that I was back on top of her hate list. She barely spoke to me, although she tried to be civil when others were in the room with us.
Michael, like many people, had thought of my mother as “such a nice woman” when he first met her. However, when we stayed with my parents for a few days one Christmas early in our marriage, Mother couldn’t keep up the front. She had to communicate with her voices. She prowled all night speaking hateful things to those who were trying to kill her. She complained of people shooting her with laser guns and electronic rays and watching her through windows and mirrors and the TV. The FBI tortured her sexually, she said. I couldn’t believe my ears. I had never heard her say the word “sexually” in my entire life, and here she was being tortured sexually by the FBI! “Imagine how surprised they would be to hear that,” I thought to myself.
Michael was initiated early to Mother’s insanity, but he never saw her in a fit of rage. Only a select few people had ever witnessed that, and it was definitely something they never forgot. I had seen it repeatedly as a child, far more than anyone else. Michael was spared.
Mother’s hatred of me persisted throughout the day we were there. I tried to ignore it, but it was impossible. When it came time for dinner I said, “I’ll set the table.”
“The table’s already set!” She spit out the words at me. “It’s been set for four months, and you’re going to eat off of it just the way it is.”
“But it’s dirty,” I protested like a little girl trying to hide bitterness behind innocence. What was the matter with me that after all these years and all my healing and deliverance she was still able to reduce me to the most base emotions? I was supposed to be a Christian adult and a leader in the church, yet I felt like slugging this mean old lady. It appeared that the only time I could have pity on this poor, emotionally deformed person was when we were not in the same room. I was not able and would never be able to cope with her hatred of me in person. Michael and I cleared the table, washed all the dishes, and set the table again. Then we all sat down to a very solemn and tension-filled meal. When we left the next morning I said to Michael, “I can never go back there.”
I called Sara Anne as soon as I arrived home and told her what had happened—how Mother devastated me every time I saw her and how upsetting the visits were for my whole family. I wanted to obey God and honor my father and my mother, but I was having a horribly difficult time.
“You don’t have to go there to be destroyed by her,” she counseled. “Honor her from your home. Call her, write her, send her gifts, pray for her, and love her from a distance. When God heals her, you will be able to visit. Of course go if the Spirit leads you to, but don’t feel guilty if you are released to stay away for awhile. Give yourself time to be healed.”
Michael and I agreed this was sound counsel, and I tried to explain it to Dad.
“Why don’t you just walk out and ignore her the way I do?” he responded.
“I wish I could, Dad, but it just doesn’t work that way for me. Here I am grown-up with a family of my own, and yet I feel the same way around her as when I was a child.”
He understood why I found her too upsetting to be around, and he agreed to come to
our
house for visits.
Now my prayers intensified.
“You’re a Redeemer,” I reminded God. “You redeem all things. God, I pray, redeem this relationship with my mother. The most basic relationship anyone can have has been denied me. I’ve never had a mother-daughter relationship. Lord, heal her, I pray. Make her whole so that this part of my life can be restored.”
Then, as clearly as anytime in my life, I heard God speak. He said, “I
am
going to redeem that relationship. I’m going to redeem it through your own daughter.”
I blinked. I shook my head. I swallowed hard and said meekly, “But, Lord, I don’t have a daughter.”
The silence was deafening. As I waited for God’s reply I thought, “I’m almost 40. My first pregnancy was horrendous. I don’t think I can live through another one. I’ve always been defensive with anyone who suggested that we have another child. God does not require of me beyond what I’m able.”
I continued to fight the idea for a long time, until I realized I was fighting the will of God. I knew that God would love me whether I had another child or not. But if I wanted all the healing, wholeness, and blessing that God had planned for me, I had to lay down my life and again surrender my will to His. Once Michael and I made the decision to obey God, I felt immediate relief.
My relief turned to joy as I asked God not to let this pregnancy be like the first one, and He responded by comforting me with the words “I will see you through it.”
I was shocked, devastated, and overwhelmed when this second pregnancy turned out to be physically even more severe than the first. Again violent nausea took over my body and I began losing weight immediately. The pain was as if someone had poured boiling water through my veins. Unable to stand or sit up, I stayed flat on my back.
“God, why?” I cried out. “Why this again? Have You deserted me?” But His words came back to me clearly: “I will see you through it.” I realized that He never said this time would be different; He never said that in this world we would have no problems; He said that in this world we would have trouble, but
“I will see you through it. ”
My condition worsened and I was admitted to the hospital and fed intravenously. My doctor, one of the best obstetricians in the city, tried everything possible. He refused to give me any medication for pain or nausea for fear that it might endanger the baby. I was grateful for his decision because I was sick enough that I might have taken anything for relief. Finally my veins gave out, and as soon as they removed the I.V.’s my condition got worse. I knew I needed a miracle, but I was too sick to pray anymore. All I could say was, “Help me, Jesus.”
Every hour seemed like a week because of the pain and extreme nausea. I couldn’t sit up. I couldn’t read or watch television. I couldn’t sleep. There was nothing I could do but lie in my hospital bed and cry. There was no relief.
Sara Anne visited often and read Scriptures to me hour-upon-hour. She massaged my legs, the only part of my body I could stand to have touched, and her eyes overflowed with compassion as she watched me getting worse.
One day I cried to Sara Anne, “I was a fool to go ahead and get pregnant after what happened the last time. Why did I do this?”
She reminded me of the truth the pain had blinded me to. “You did it as a step of obedience to God, remember? There is great reward for obedience, you know.”
“I’m sorry, Sara Anna,” I sobbed. “I just can’t see it right now.”
Then I heard God’s words again. “I will see you through it.” I didn’t know if this meant that I was going to die and be with the Lord or that the doctors were going to have to take the baby to spare my life. Those appeared to be the only two alternatives, and neither was my choice. I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving my little boy, and I knew if I lost this child I would probably never be pregnant again.
That night I dreamed about holding a beautiful baby girl, with dark hair, sparkling chestnut-brown eyes, and long, dark eyelashes. The picture of her was so vivid and lifelike that it gave me happiness just to think of it.
When my doctor determined that there was nothing more he could do for me in the hospital, arrangements were made for me to go home. Pastor Jack called me that night before I was to be discharged. He was very upset that I had regressed and even more upset about the possibility that they might have to take the baby.

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