Easter As It Is

It is easy to look back over the things that happened to us as children during Easter and see the lies and inconsistencies. I do not believe we died and faced God's judgment. I do not believe that any of this was a part of a grand plan to become the Second Coming of God on earth. I do not believe that it was in any way a sacred or honourable thing to endure suffering. I do not believe we had any power to control what was done to us. I do not believe a lot of what we were told was the truth. And I do not believe every adult there was caught up in the lies as well. Maybe some of them believed in the words, saw the glory of God in what was happening. But I also believe that for many it was a way to torment children, to find sadistic pleasure in the suffering of those without any real power. I can sit here and say these things because I am an adult that is removed from the experience, I watched it through layers of defences that enabled me to see but never really be a part of that experience. So this knowledge came easy to me without the struggles others here face.

Easter has just past, and the memory of it is still fresh in many of our minds. Easter always approaches like a storm coming in. Pre-Easter is ominous and the air heavy, like the animal smelling the approaching storm we can all feel the pressure of Easter drawing near. It seems wrong sometimes, to be afraid of dates on a calendar, for now that is all Easter is to us, we are free from that violence, and have no spiritual or present day connection to the holiday. But it is wrong to say it is just a date on the calendar. Or maybe it is just wishful thinking of a time in the future when the past won't have a stronghold over those dates. We feel Easter coming with the first touches of fear. Now we recognise the fear is about what happened in the past, but for a long time it was simply fear, fear of something bad, something coming and we would wonder what it was, always on the outlook for something bad.

They say this is recovery, the knowledge and recall of events in your past. They say this is a part of the journey towards that elusive wellness. Sometimes I wonder if recovery is all it is cracked up to be. For now we have memories that linger, we aren't able to push the events, and the people that lived them aside and carry on with our lives. So Easter hits and the suffering isn't limited to those that lived the event. We bare witness to those that suffered in our place and have a bitter understanding of the compulsion to nail ourselves to the wall, destroy our body or whatever other compulsion hits. We see there are those still trapped in their past, in that time when abuse and violence was the only form of life. And we experience the pain as our body relives. This is recovery, I have to accept that, and hope there must be more along this path.

There are things we are all trying to learn now, in the present. There was no glory in suffering, there was no greater good to be served. We suffered because they, adults with full responsibility wanted us to. They planned and organised this suffering. It aroused them, it made them feel powerful. God, if he exists, or whatever form he actually takes, didn't command this suffering, he didn't make these adults do this. They knew what they were doing was wrong. It wasn't hidden from the world because of Satan's hold and all the sinners that lived in it, but rather it was hidden because if it was known, someone would have stopped it, someone would have removed us children, and dealt with the adults. It was illegal their activities, once again, not illegal like a forbidden religion, like the origins of Christianity, but illegal because they killed, abused and committed other crimes.

Wanting the pain to stop isn't a sign of evilness or the Devil's hold over your heart. There is no sin in wanting to be safe and free. There is no sin in hating people that are hurting you. And there is no shame in hoping that you are left alone. We did not want others to suffer, when we were grateful not to be chosen. It was that not me we were glad for, not that it was them. These choices we were told we had to make weren't choices of our free will, they were designed to make us feel abhorrent, to make us believe we were in control. We chose to survive and that is never something to be ashamed of. So when we cheered the torture of others, we knew to make that choice would give us one more moment of life, one more moment of being safe.

And we need to learn there was no judgment. No one looked into our soul and saw filth there. Those words made us feel dirty and rotten. Those words were to keep us from feeling we had a right to life, a right to be safe and loved. Those words were ties to keep us bound in silent shame. And what happened wasn't because we had failed or because we were sinful. What happened were the adults wanting to degrade a child, wanting to watch her shame and fear. There is nothing so bad within us that it makes right that treatment and nothing so bad that it makes it impossible to be cared for. They never expected any other outcome. It wasn't a failure it was what was designed. The lessons we were taught were never going to change that outcome, no matter how well we might have learnt them.

We need to know this stuff, we need to learn new lessons now. Ones that empower us, ones that bring safety and worth into our lives. I do not think we will ever remove the fear and pain of Easter from us. Those experiences were too dramatic and life altering to be placed forever in the past. But to find a life now, a life we find worth living, we have to reframe it, understand where the responsibility lies, and see through the lies that were taught us. It isn't easy. I can write these words with ease, but even in writing them a fear grows on me. It's hard work this recovery.