Nowhere but Up by Pattie Mallette, with A. J. Gregory Page B

Father, our earthly perceptions of what a parent is like (based on our experiences with our own parents) often taint our view of God.
    Because my parents were distant, I imagined God was too. Because my father left, I imagined God as one who could, at any moment, decide to walk away. Because no one rescued me from my abuse, I imagined God as sitting on the sidelines, unable or unwilling to rescue me from injustice. It certainly didn’t seem as though He cared.

CHAPTER
Five
    When your true self—who God created you to be—is broken into unrecognizable fragments, you become fertile soil for lies. As those untruths get buried deeper and deeper into your heart, it’s almost impossible to get rid of them. They are so securely lodged there that they become a part of you that you cannot imagine living without.
    I was bound by so many lies by the time I was a teenager. At best, I had a skewed idea of love, worth, and self-respect; at worst, I had none. Instead of believing in myself, I knelt at the merciless feet of deceit, hanging on to every negative word spoken to me and entertaining every taunting thought of my own that surfaced in my mind.
    I recently read journal entries from my teen years, and I can’t believe the things I called myself. Lazy. Fat. Ugly. I even concluded someone must have been brain damaged to like me. When a boyfriend called me a loser or a slut, I had no truth with which to defend myself against the verbal assaults, whether they came from others or me, so they stuck like a mosquito in honey. I was so used to being taken advantage of as a little girl, I didn’t know how else to be treated. I wouldn’t have known true love if it socked me between the eyes.
    When it came to guys, I was always trying to find “the one.” But I couldn’t seem to make up my mind. I liked Guy X one week, Guy Y the next, and so on. I especially gravitated toward the boys who liked me first; they were the ones who would pretty much guarantee me some kind of affection.
    I didn’t flip-flop from one guy to the next simply because my teenage hormones were out of control, though. I was always searching, trying to find love. Trying to find something real. Trying to find the person who would love me back the way I thought I needed. Getting that from a guy seemed the easiest solution.
    I fell in love—or like, or whatever it was—easily. And when it didn’t last, I was crushed, nursing those wounds for a long time. When I was fifteen, I found a boy I thought I was going to marry. I’ll call him Joey.
    I liked this kid a lot. One night after everyone left a party at his house, we sat and cuddled for hours. In the still of the early morning, he started saying all the things a girl wants to hear. “Pattie, you are so beautiful.” “You’re so soft.” “You’re so amazing.” I swallowed his sweet nothings hook, line, and sinker. I was a hopeless romantic, and his words made me weak in the knees.
    We started kissing and ended up in his bedroom. I was nervous. I didn’t want this to end the way it was obviously going. Despite the amount of abuse I had endured, I was still a virgin. That part of me was precious and innocent. I wasn’t ready to give it up yet, not even to Joey.
    As we fooled around on the bed, he started trying to take off my clothes, slowly and inconspicuously. My body tightened. I squirmed around to get his hands away from certain areas on my body, but it was no use; he was much stronger than I was.
    “No, Joey,” I said, still fidgeting in the mesh of our intertwining legs and arms. “I don’t want to do this.”
    He whispered in my ear, “Don’t worry. I’m not going to hurt you.”
    I kept repeating “No,” and Joey kept saying, “It’s okay.” I didn’t yell. I didn’t scream. I didn’t beat him off me. But I said no. I said it so many times I numbly reverted back into abuse mode. I was still. Silent. Detached from my body. Detached from Joey. Detached from time. I just wanted to get