THE CAPTIVE HEART
By Yvonne Barbush

My father was killed 3 months after my first birthday. My mother never said much about that day, only that I screamed and screamed for hours and no one could quiet me down . Then she got the call, my father was dead. That was when the reign of terror began in my life.

I never knew the details surrounding my father's death. My Pappy told me it was because he was Mexican and that a lot of people despised them. Being Mexican through my father, naturally I reasoned, I was despised. I had already felt the twangs of this particular pain from my Mother's relatives, who thoughtlessly referenced our titles with “Mexican.” We were “the Mexican grandchildren”, “their Mexican cousins”. We were “the Mexican children” in the neighborhood. You see, we lived in an all white community in the sixties. We were the oddity. Back then, the term was “Spic”. This word was a bullet from a gun to me. It shot my father. The trigger was pulled and the bullet, the word “de spic able”, was projected. I could hear that word resound in my spirit, a sound so deafening, so final, like a decree going out to the world and all its inhabitants. I would want to scream from the pain that pierced my heart -- “Daddy, where are you?” My loud cry was: “DADDY, WHERE ARE YOU?” OH, DADDY!…DADDY!…DADDY ! Then weakly I said, “Where are you?”

The Lord in his great mercy, who sees the beginning to the end, found it in his heart to send the Good News to me at age 5. The course of my life was changed forever one incredible day. That day, my brother and I had the brilliant idea to roller skate down an extremely steep hill. Inevitably, I careened out of control. In an attempt to keep from rolling out into traffic I grabbed onto a thick clump of that kind of grass that cuts you like paper does. Fortunately, a lady was conducting a Good News Club on her front porch and rushed over to me. I don't remember her name, what she looked like, or which house she lived in, but I remember her cleaning my wounds and bandaging my hand. I don't remember the words she spoke or if scriptures were said, but I remember the name of Jesus and the feeling that followed. It was the feeling of something so big, so significant, something of tremendous comfort to the fatherless children. I felt loved and acceptable in a way that I had not experienced before.

I had felt that day as though I were in a marvelous dream. Unfortunately, those feelings were short lived as the predator came to hunt me. The raging wolf moved into my house. He had come to devour the newborn lamb. The slaughter of my innocence began. I was only six years old the first time my step-father molested me.

We had moved to Windber, a coal-mining town ten miles away from the romping of my childhood. We moved into an ancient clapboard farmhouse, a survivor from before the mining industry had boomed through the earth. My stepfather's family had been well established there. He was the proverbial “pillar of the community,” actively involved in veteran events, occasionally church, and always the “good old boy” at the local bars. Everyone knew him well and spoke highly of him. He was a charismatic popular storyteller. He had inherited his family homestead and its antiquity inside. To us it was both a great adventure and a ghastly curse.

We lived in the Allegheny Mountain Range. It always seemed like our house was perched a little too high, just waiting to be struck by lightning. Indeed it had been struck many times while we lived there. Miraculously, it never burned down. On one occasion the lightning had struck and pierced through the electrical outlet in the kitchen right between where my mom and I were sitting. We sat stunned as flames of blue shot up and down the wall. Other than a blackened wall and a burned out socket the house was fine. Another time the lightning struck the wall outside my bedroom window. I never even got out of bed because it was so routinely struck. As always, I prayed and God protected me, I fully believed, from physical death. I got up the next morning to see that an even bigger streak of charred wood down the side of the house. My mom kept her Bible permanently opened to the 23 rd Psalm.

Mom thought the house was haunted. I thought the house was a portal to hell from where my torturer's demons executed their exploits against me. I felt the presence of demons all around me. I would finish my homework and read and write the words of Jesus in my journal over and over so as to memorize them, and then my stepfather would come to my bed to hurt me; violently dragging me up by my ankles . This place was the birthplace of the evil that had seized us. My stepfather was born there. In my bedroom, his relatives had “laid out” their dead for viewing before burial.

My brother and I walked down into the valley to go to one of the few Protestant churches in a town that was overwhelmingly Catholic. In that little Methodist church, I thought I had imagined a stream of light had come down from heaven touching directly on me. In the presence of this light, I saw my Savior, face to face. My hope was in His face. My understanding, though unarticulated, was there. I never blamed God for not intervening in my abuse. I knew it was beyond my comprehension as to why this evil had violated me. Miraculously I was embraced by His love and desperately clutched onto Him. I trusted Him completely with my life. My God wrapped his loving arms around me and wept with me. I carved into the woodwork of my room the one thing I was certain of, “God is Love.” Love is a person. Love carefully wiped away all my tears.

One time, I left church early because I was feeling sick with my period. My brother stayed behind. When I got home, my stepfather attacked me. Adding to the defilement, he gave me a dollar for my usage and I felt he thought of me as a whore. It was so bizarre - from church to rape. It was a cyclone of confusion. I never breathed a word about the secrets for fear that he would one day. He would kill us all. He had described killing he had done during the war. Knowing that he had killed before reinforced his threats making them entirely plausible. He possessed swords, knives, and guns, souvenirs from WWII that he occasionally showed us.

I protected my mom from the knowing about the abuse, because of losing my father I had decided that I couldn't risk losing her, that was more than I could take. We were not close to any other relatives. My mom was all I really had. Besides, I genuinely thought no one would believe me over him, after-all, this was his town .

He gradually increased his sexual activities with me, until he died when I was 13. For me, his death was a deep spiritual experience. It was the culmination of the war between love and hate raging within me. The understanding of the love of my Savior for the very one whom attacked me warred against the hate of his loathsome deeds. The day of reckoning was coming for the both of us. I wrestled deep within while fully realizing my Savior's arms of love were stretching out to embrace this man; this most pitiful man. As I watched his life diminish I prayed for Him to be saved. Just before he died I saw him struggling to go up the steps; so I went to help him, but he pushed me away. He didn't even look at me. It was my last contact with him. His dagger of rejection cut agonizingly through me.

The day he died I cried, not for myself but for his soul. I took all the money I had saved and I bought a delicate mosaic cross. I walked to the funeral home from the store. No one was there, as I approached his casket. I touched his cold skin as I wrapped that chain around his withered hands.

In his last year he had quickly aged and greatly suffered physically, he no longer looked like the same man. He was only 58; his weight was about 80 pounds at the time of his death. He had died on one other occasion and was revived. Before his death he screamed out in a shrill death voice “I'm afraid to die, I'm afraid to die!” I prayed , “Lord, I forgive him! Lord, save him! You died so that none should perish, even him.” I thought about having to see him again in heaven. It was not a comfortable thought.

Spiritually, I could not understand the contradictions of my life. I learned early that church and an open bible were not magic charms that would ward off evil spirits. A mosaic cross could not save a wretched soul but my Loving Savior never refuses to. I learned that there was, however, a protected place that evil had no right to penetrate. That place was within my heart. Evil choices could defile and destroy my flesh but my heart belonged to the Lord. In my heart, I found my purity. In my heart, I remained a virgin daughter of the Most High. In as much as the enemy had taken my flesh captive; my Savior had taken my heart captive.

“Grace to Survive” - This is my blessing from the Lord, for whom I am eternally thankful for his great love, mercy, and understanding. I thank him for the grace to survive, the grace to continue to live, and the grace to testify of His redeeming powers experienced through the Holy Spirit . I realize that there is a wonderful place to live, in this corrupted world, it is called wholeness that is why I write to you today.

“Because my redeemer lives I can face tomorrow!”

I HAVE GROWN UP AND BECOME A BEAUTIFUL JEWEL

“So I wrapped my cloak around you to cover your nakedness and declared my marriage vows. I made a covenant with you, says the Sovereign Lord, and you became mine.” (Ezekiel 6:7, 8) 

I am his betrothed! I belong to him! I am his Bride! Out of the ashes of my childhood he fashioned an exquisite crown of beauty. He bestowed on me this crown for our wedding day; I wear it as my pledge to him. It surely testifies of our great love for each other. He is my beloved and I am his. “My heart is overflowing with passion and desire for you my Lord” I live and breathe these words. “I will have none besides you!”

My hair is woven with strands of gold, the precious metal refined and processed in white hot fires of tribulations and persecution. To be holy, to be set apart for your fancy, is my heart's desire! I am ready to do your will! I listen for your voice in the morning. I look for you to return earlier than expected, because I long to see your face.

In the evening I light my lamp to go out to search for you. I don't want to miss your return. I sing to the heavens and the earth about our love, high praises to your name. I am not ashamed. In my mind I hear your voice because the two have become one. I shout your words from the mountain top, making loud declarations about your greatness, your goodness, your strength, I go on and on…

I am in you and you are in me, we abide together, though we are not face to face. Nothing can separate us; our love is too great! Our love knows not the boundaries of this world; the mountains are not very high, they are but gentle hills; our love traverses them easily and quickly. Time passes unnoticed as I make our wedding preparations. You have told me what you want from me. I willingly give all that I am to you to do all that you require of me. You have made me into the Bride of your desires.

I keep your commands, I hold fast to my purity in thought, word, and deed. I stay hidden in our secret place where no harm will come to me, in the place that you have met all my needs. I do not want. I do not fret. I am busy with all our wedding details…

I must keep my bridal dress cleaned and pressed. No wrinkles or spots for my husband ! I fill my lamps daily. His words I have hidden in my heart; I rehearse them constantly so I will know exactly what to say and do when he comes for me , his beloved bride in whom he delights.

“Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to Him for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His bride has made herself ready. And it was given to her to clothe herself in fine linen, bright and clean; for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. ” Rev. 19:7-8 NASB

The Bride of the Lamb is all of you who have fully submitted your lives to the Lord, and who seek His face continually.

For years I have been praying, “Lord, my heart's desire is that I would fulfill the calling on my life to the utmost fullest!” Paul said it this way:

“Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended. But this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God, in Christ Jesus.” Phil. 3:13-14 KJV

I choose to forget those things that are behind, my abusive childhood!!!!!

I press on toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God, in Christ Jesus!!!!!!!!!