I am born in Africa; Tanzania to be specific. Africa in general is patrilinael. Women are just discovering their significance. A woman`s voice is not often heard. I share my story not boldly and freely because I have not shared this with my family yet. I understand the fear of judgement and how judgement will belittle my experience.
Instead I share it with my sisters all over the world who have experience something similar. I started being molested from the age of three. I was molested by the house-helps who were in our home. They made me believe what they did to me was harmless and coaxed my little mind that what ‘we’ were doing was just a game. I believed ‘them’. They told me there was no need to tell mom because it was a harmless little game. I never told mom.
The earliest memory I had was a female house help making me play with her naked body. From the window of our house I saw mom coming. I was so excited to see mom I told her, ‘mom is coming home’. She stopped, I do not remember what happened after. This was before my younger brother was born, we are four years apart. My younger brother was born in our new house and I was the first to hold him when he got home.
There were house-helps in our new home. Whenever they were not doing anything at day time they would have loud sex every day. When I came home from school, I would not rest because they were doing it in the room I shared with the female house-help. I would hear the noises. I did not understand, I was left alone at the veranda. So I decided I would go to my friends house after I come from school.
At our new home I became friends with the neighbors children. We visited each other`s homes and played together. While we played we mimicked what mom and dad do in the bedrooms and we played it on each other. That was a very common game to play together. I even played the same games with a friend at school. An older boy called two girls to his room one day and taught us how to play with our clitoris, he taught us how to masturbate. I was eight or nine at that time. I thought it was still a game.
I eventually liked the masturbating game and I played it even when I was alone. I did not know why I wanted it to be a secret, I never told anyone. I became addicted to it. I have struggled with masturbation for at least twenty years of my life. It was until now my own secret.
At the age of fifteen or so I enjoyed reading books. I encountered a book that suggested internet pornography. I was curious. I went to my father`s computer and I typed porn and from then on I could not take my eyes of it. I became addicted to internet pornography. It was my secret, my guilty pleasure.
As I went to school and learnt in biology what sex really meant, I realized that it was not a harmless game after all. I was being molested, I was being exposed to sex at a very young age. I was being abused. I became angry. They robbed me of my childhood, they violated my innocence, they took advantage of me. I sought to revenge. I wanted to make them all pay. I was bitter.
One day at high school at the age of eighteen Sister Nerea organized a seminar, it was about forgiveness. I don not remember all she said but what I simply remember she is spoke about how bitterness and unforgiveness chokes and eats the one abhorring it. I couldnt hold the heaviness of my heart. I approached her after the seminar. I told her about my case, I cried in front of her. She became my counselor, I was always free to speak my heart to her. Through the prayers she gave me and her consolation I forgave everyone who abused me.
She called my mother, she spoke to her about my case. I remember walking into her office and seeing tears on my mother`s face. Mom opened up to me that she too was molested as a child by the house-help in her home. I knew it was a generational issue. I finally was able to come out of the sad past.
I was left with two shameful demons; masturbation and pornography. Although they are popular demons these days. I knew they were still demons and as a Christian, I could not love Jesus and do all those stuff. At the age of twenty one I was depressed, I wanted to get out of it. I started an intentional journey with myself to the core of who I was. Someone shared with me the book ‘Battlefield of the mind’ by Joyce Meyer. I learned I could control my own thoughts and I could say no. I was in charge now.
I started praying over these demons. I made declarations, I was able to say no to masturbation and pornography. However they kept coming back. When I got born again and baptized at twenty two I was able to conquer them for some years. Still they kept coming back. However these times less powerful than they were. I could no longer watch an hour video, I could not even watch a ten minutes video. I later could not even watch a five minutes video. Through so many prayers and deliverance I knew I was free. I just have to learn to forget the old habits. I am learning to unlearn them all and master myself.
To explain it better let me use the words of Apostle Paul. Philippians 3:12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been perfected, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13 Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have laid hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize of God’s heavenly calling in Christ Jesus.…
I share this to help someone out there, that they do not need to be ashamed of their story. I also want to share the freeing power of forgiveness and the healing that comes from it. I can never discount the help of my counselor Sister Nerea. Counselling helped me heal of my trauma.
I can never discount the power of the Word of God and continuous prayers. They are giving me the grace (power) to say no to sin and yes to holiness as a daily practice. I hope I can give you the strength to share your story, I believe you will turn out victorious on the other side if you are not already an overcomer.
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