Anna Richey © 2013
“For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.”
~Jeremiah 29:11 NLT
Many rape survivors have a difficult time realizing the truth of this verse. We cannot understand how God, who loves us enough to send His Son to die for us, could plan for us to endure the nightmare of rape. How could this horrible thing give us a future and a hope? One of the most difficult things for a rape victim to see, especially in the time soon after the rape, is that our hope and our future is not based on our circumstances. Our hope is in Christ, and in Christ alone.
The harsh truth is that we live in a fallen, sinful world. Because of this one simple fact, bad things happen. But, as stated in Romans 8:28, God uses these bad things to create good things. That does not mean that He desires for evil to happen, only that He is powerful enough to take something horrible, and turn it into something beautiful.
Jeremiah 18:5-8 tells us that God is like a potter, continuously molding and shaping us to be the people He designed us to be. He alone is the creator. While rape is one of the hardest tests that a person can endure, those of us who come through the other side, are stronger for it. We’ve been through the fire, and God has refined us like gold.
Those of us who were blessed (yes, I said blessed!) to conceive through our rape, have had ample evidence of finding redemption through our destruction. Out of one of man’s most hateful acts, we found a love beyond compare. We found joy, beauty, and healing through the children that God gifted us with. This is what God spoke about when He said He would bring beauty from the ashes.
As we have loved our children, and healed from our abuse, we’ve been able to see that our Lord was with us the whole time. He not only walked with us, He carried us the many times we were unable to stand on our own. He heard our cries, and wiped our tears. We never left the palm of His hand.
I am a rape survivor. I love my child, and I am blessed beyond comparison that God gave my daughter to me to love. Because I had to fight harder for Josey than any of my other children, she is special to me. My daughter is the hope God gave me at a time when I had none.
The nightmare I endured years ago, was such a small thing compared to the joy I have known being her mother. I firmly believe that God gave us these beautiful children because He knew that we needed to see tangible evidence of His love, at a time when we could see only darkness.