Copyright © 2011 by Angela De Souza

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without prior written permission.

ISBN-13: 978-1456500801
ISBN-10: 1456500805
BISAC: Body, Mind & Spirit / Inspiration &

Personal Growth

Contents

Introduction

Every little girl wants to know that their daddy thinks they are beautiful! As we grow older that doesn’t change, our heart and soul still longs to hear the words, “You are beautiful”.

All my life I heard the words, “Angela, you are strong”, or “Angela, you will get through this - you know you are strong”. The words that caught me off guard one day were the words my husband, Eric, spoke to me. To my surprise the very words that I thought would cause me offense were the exact words that set me free. Quite simply, he said,

“Darling, you are not strong”.

Hearing these simple words caught me off guard. What do you mean? I have always been told how amazingly strong I am and how I can always get through anything because I can cope. Are you really telling me that I am not all these things? Why does this feel good?

Secure on the Rock is my journey in discovering the beautiful gift God has given me in making me the weaker vessel. He has shown me who I really am and set me free from the snare of controlling insecurity. No longer do I live life confused and unsure of myself; I know who I am and I love being me. I don’t have to be in control and I don’t have to feel insecure, I am totally free to be me. All my life I have longed for this freedom, believing it only to be a fairy tale, but today I can testify beyond reasonable doubt that this freedom is possible, it’s not a fairly tale and best of all you can have it too!

My Daddy

A Sandy Foundation

Daddy, do you think I am pretty? Daddy, watch me dance! Daddy, I love you. Daddy, why did you touch me there? Daddy, why did you kick Mommy down the steps? Daddy, what are you doing to my brother?

Sadly, not every little girl has fond memories of her daddy. Although I love my daddy very much now as an adult, I don’t have very many fond memories of him when I was growing up. I don’t blame my dad as he didn’t have a great childhood either. Who knows where it all started, perhaps my granddad had a horrible childhood too? My dad was the sort of dad that grew violently angry from time to time and on occasion took it out on his children. He also did many inappropriate things as a married man, but that’s his and my mom’s story to tell if they choose to.

From a little girl to a young woman

One afternoon I was in my bedroom having a cleanup and thorough sort out. I was a neat freak so took pleasure in having regular cleaning sessions in my bedroom. My dad came into my bedroom and sat next to me. I can’t really remember exactly how things transpired but I specifically remember his hand slipping under my nightgown and onto my breast.

Shock, horror, confusion and disgust filled me as he held a cheerful smile on his face. I cried and screamed internally as he continued to fondle me but didn’t have the guts to stop him. I could see that he was going to go as far as he could and I got really frightened. Although I wanted to scream ‘Stop!’ at the top of my voice, I couldn’t. A very quiet ‘Stop’ escaped my mouth. He continued a little longer but after I began to cry bitterly and mustered up the courage to tell him to stop again, he stopped. What hurt more than the physical violation was what he said afterwards. As I sat there sobbing uncontrollably, he looked at me with a grin on his face and said;

“Angela, I only did this for two reasons. One was to teach you about boys and girls and the other one was because I like it!”

He left my room and I can’t remember a thing after that, or ever mentioning it to my dad. I can’t tell you how that incident left me feeling and I can’t tell you the immediate impact it had on my life. I was fourteen years old. A young and tender age where my body was only beginning to develop physically and take shape and my mind was only starting to come to terms with the transition I was making from a little girl into a young woman. As you can imagine, this shattered the foundation of my life and my views on what a daddy is and does.

I never mentioned it to my mother, mostly because I didn’t want to hurt her, but also because I was confused and didn’t know how to name it. If it had been full penetration I could have said; “Mom, Dad had sex with me”. There was no sex though, just a mere fondling of my breast while I was in my nightgown, so I thought I was overreacting and chose to forget about it.

If you have experienced anything similar, you will understand how this messes with your mind. Perhaps if you’ve never experienced anything like this, you might find it really difficult to understand why it is such a big deal and why I even bother writing about it. I believe this was a significant turning point in my life, a point where I lost respect for myself and started hating myself for allowing my dad to treat me that way.

Sunday Night Fears

Sadly it didn’t end here; I continued to allow my dad to treat me in an inappropriate way. Sunday nights became a time of fear and anxiety, as he would drive me back to the boarding school where I boarded every week. The journey took about forty-five minutes and after travelling for about ten minutes my dad would put his hand on my knee as he drove, by the time we arrived at my hostel he would have worked his hand all the way up to the top of my leg. On occasion his hand got uncomfortably high up. I hated it but never did anything about it at all!

Why didn’t I just say no or simply remove his hand from my leg? Questions plagued my mind. Why was he doing this to me? What were his intentions, did he intend to pull over one Sunday and go ‘all the way’? What was wrong with me, why couldn’t I just say no and make him stop? Worst of all, because nothing terrible was happening I thought it was all in my mind, making things worse than they seemed, so I didn’t tell my mom about it.

One particular Sunday night I couldn’t face the journey. Fear gripped me. I pleaded with my mom to drive me to the hostel but she said no. I continued to plead with her, and even started crying but she just said, “Don’t be silly Angela!” So off we went once again, he did the hand thing and then we both got on with our week as usual until the next Sunday evening arrived. To be honest I don’t know if he meant anything sexual by it at all. If it weren’t for our previous encounter in my bedroom I may not have thought anything of it, but that scene was still fresh in my mind. I didn’t know what to think or who to trust any more. Worse of all, I didn’t know my dad’s intentions any more. Did he love me or did he lust after me?

Perhaps you are thinking ‘big deal; he put his hand a little too high up on your leg once a week’. I want to say to you that the impact this had on my mind was huge and the message this was sending to my heart was unbelievably destructive. My daddy was supposed to protect me, to love me and to guide me. These simple acts of inappropriate behaviour completely shattered my view of men to the core. I felt dirty, confused and alone, very alone. I describe the effect this had on me and my wild teenage years in detail in the first book in the Loving Life series called Hope’s Journey.

Needless to say, my view of the male gender grew increasingly negative. I struggled through my teenage years facing constant confusion and torment. My value was clear to me, I was dirty and worthless. Princesses only existed in fairly tales and men definitely didn’t help damsels in distress.

An Encounter with Step daddy

Life carried on and my mom divorced and remarried a few years later. His name was Johan. Even though Johan was my step father I was never able to see him as my father as he was quite young. Apart from the obvious hindrance that the age difference presented, I also could not see him as a dad because he was in love with me before he met my mother. Johan and I were friends before he wooed my mom and stole her away from my dad.

He even declared how much he loved me before he met my mom and when I refused his continued advances, he began pursuing my mother. Once they were married I thought I was safe to assume his affections for me had waned, but I was wrong. From time to time he reminded me of his affection for me and on occasion even made casual advances.

One bright sunny day, he came over to my home for a cup of coffee and a visit. We were standing really close for some reason and he leaned over and tried to kiss me. Shocked, I pulled away and asked him what he was doing. His reply was to grab me and push his body up against me to try and kiss me again. He was blatantly sexually aroused and this frightened me. Of course I didn’t let him kiss me and reminded him that both he and I were married. Paying absolutely no attention to my protest, he wrestled me to the ground and started rubbing himself up against me while loosening his belt.

At this point I was terrified but managed to wrestle free and run into the garden to scream for help. No one was around and he came into the garden to try and make peace. With the hope of keeping me quiet, he offered to buy me whatever I wanted. Naturally he didn’t want my mother to find out about this little incident but his negotiation didn’t work, I had no desire for him to buy me anything.

After watching him walk away I went inside the house and locked the doors. I was terrified! The details of what happened next are quite blurry. Sometime shortly after this incident, on the same day, I called my mom. I was so nervous that he would come back and I thought if I at least told her a little of what happened she would talk to him and he would stay away from me. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings so only told her that he tried to kiss me, the other details I thought would be too painful for her to hear.

That night, after calling my mom, he came over to my home again. My brother was living with me temporarily, so he had a key to my house. He let Johan in, completely unaware of what had happened earlier. As I lay in bed asleep I was woken by the sound of my brother coming home. I didn’t think anything of it so stayed in bed. The next moment I felt a really hard kick in my back. With steel cap safety boots I felt yet another swift kick in my back. Terrified, I turned to see who it was. It was Johan. He gave me the most awful, piercing glare and said to me in his strong Afrikaans South African accent,

“Why are you so stupid? Why did you tell your mother when I asked you not to?”

He pulled me out of my bed and started kicking me and banging my head violently on the floor. My voice failed me as I tried to scream. Frozen with fear I tried again but very little would come out. Eventually, knowing I didn’t have the physical strength to fight him, I pretended I was dead. I lay on the floor limp and didn’t move a muscle allowing him to continue kicking me. Finally the beating stopped, everything went eerily quiet. I heard the back door bang shut. It seemed that my fake death had worked, he had left. I lay there for what felt like an hour. I was terrified; really frightened that he would come back. My brother was nowhere to be seen, I really don’t know what happened to him. Finally I mustered up some courage to move out of my frozen fake dead position.

Slowly I moved my head to check if anyone was in the house. It seemed I was alone, so as quickly as I could, I ran out of the house and into the street. The fact that I was still in my pyjamas was of no consequence at this point, getting to safety was my only goal.

Thankfully I knew a church member who lived nearby. My heart raced, I could hear it beating as the blood pulsed past my eardrums. Focusing on what I was about to do, I realised that I had only met him once at a church event. Ordinarily you wouldn’t pitch up at someone’s home after only meeting them once, but I didn’t know where else to go.

Thankfully he and his mother received me into their home. After telling them what had happened they let me sleep in their spare room for the night. Finally I was safe. But sleep that night was restless as many thoughts plagued my mind,

“Dad, where were you, why didn’t you protect me from Johan? Are all men like this? It certainly seems that men are out to hurt me and it also seems that all men only want sex from me. I don’t think I can trust any man ever again. Where can I go to feel safe now? I am totally alone in this big, bad world.”

A Loving Father

As you can see, by this time my image of men was pretty bleak! I was a new Christian and had been told that God was my loving father but how could I understand what this meant? Explaining to me how much God loved me was like trying to describe a beautiful sunset to someone who had been born blind. As hard as you try it really doesn’t work, in order to truly appreciate the full beauty of a sunset, you really do have to see it. In the same way, no one could describe God’s love to me, I really had to feel it.

Many people who have a poor image of their father or step father often completely reject God. Thankfully I didn’t have this struggle; I was able to see God as God and not as a mean father figure or nasty male. To me God has always been God, in a special category on his own. Right from the start it was easy for me to love Him and to receive His love. Perhaps it was His mercy that allowed me this experience; I know many people can’t see God as any different from their earthly father. However, as time passed, He started to expose things in my heart in order to remove the pain and heal me.

Forgiveness

One of the first things I can remember God dealing with in my heart was my father. He gently nudged me to forgive him and to love him. To be honest, it was quite a struggle at first.

I struggled because I still wasn’t really sure what name to give the crime he had committed against me. I also struggled because I didn’t really realise how serious his crime was. You see, to me the way my father treated me was normal, surely most fathers treated their children like this? How could I forgive if I didn’t realise that there was an offence that needed to be forgiven? After all, he didn’t rape me. Now that would be an obvious crime but was what he did to me really that bad?

Knowing that I needed to forgive Johan was easier but actually forgiving him was more difficult. I know what Johan did was totally shameful and I really didn’t want to let him off the hook. He stole my mother away from my father; he cheated on my mother and was generally a jerk in my eyes, in every possible way. The crime was easy for me to pinpoint yet so much harder to forgive. It was about that time that our lovely pastors’ wife impressed upon me that forgiveness is not a feeling; it is an act of our will. She said that when you don’t feel like forgiving you need to ‘will’ to forgive. This may mean that you simply need to say it out loud;

“Lord I will to forgive Johan, I don’t want to but I know it is the right thing to do, so I choose to, despite how I feel.”

After saying this a few times, it got easier. I have found forgiveness can often be a process, you may will to forgive but then you take it back. Perhaps it’s the pain? Often the sting of the offence doesn’t go when you make the choice to forgive. I have learned to keep reminding myself that the offence is forgiven and then pray to God to please heal the pain. In time all wounds do heal and the pain does subside. Many people don’t realise that if they don’t forgive, they only hurt themselves and live in pain longer than necessary. I spent years forgiving my father because as I gained understanding of his crime, I gained more offences to forgive.

Today I have the best relationship with my daddy ever. Recently he came to spend two weeks visiting us. He stayed in our home and we had a lovely time together. A few people who know my story asked how on earth I can allow him to stay in my home and how I can love him the way I do.

“It’s easy”, I told them.

“He is my daddy!”

Yes, he has faults and yes, he may be a very sick man but I really do love him. It’s a choice I made long ago, to forgive him and to love him. If I judge him, I only bring judgement on myself, and if I don’t forgive him then why should Jesus forgive me?

Luke 6:37

"Judge not, and you shall not be judged. Condemn not, and you shall not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.

I have never spoken to my daddy about what he did to me and how he made me feel. To be honest, I think even if I did bring it up he would either deny it or would have genuinely forgotten it or most likely he would still not see it as wrong. I really don’t know and really don’t want to know. What I do know is that even though I had a very rough start to my relationship with my daddy it has all worked out for good. My daddy in heaven works all things together for good¹. No matter what has happened it will all work together for good to give me a bright future and a hope².

Perhaps you are puzzled at this point, wondering how I can love my dad or even men in general. I once heard a father say that he believes his job is to affirm his children’s identity. They will know who they are because he will keep telling them who they are. His daughter firmly believes that she is a real princess, that she is precious and that she is safe because her daddy keeps telling that to her. His actions line up with his words so there is no reason for her to think otherwise. This little girl is going to grow up thinking that what her daddy had told her is normal. Similarly what my dad said and did, firmly established my foundation as a little girl and I grew up building my life on a foundation that was quite the opposite to the truth that God wanted me to know.

God, my perfect daddy, helped me undo the lies that I grew up with and He lovingly helped me find the truth and rebuild my foundation on those truths. The chapters that follow unfold the amazing journey that my real daddy, the one in heaven, took me on. He fixes everything no matter what part of my life has been broken into pieces.

God restored my image of a daddy by revealing Himself to me as the perfect Daddy. In that amazing love and grace I was able to find love for my earthly daddy. What I feel for my dad now is only love and occasionally pity as I see how he hasn’t yet found the love and grace that God is waiting to show him. I love my earthly daddy with the full measure of my love and whether he changes or not doesn’t affect how much I love him, I have committed to loving him with all my heart based on no condition that he needs to meet. I am able to do this only because my Daddy in heaven showed me how to love him in this way. Not only does this sort of love set my daddy free but it also sets me free.

My True Daddy

Tenderly He gazed into my eyes and looking deeply into my soul, with a tear in the corner of His eye He says;

“Angela, I love you. You are the apple of my eye and I will defend you³ and keep you safe, if you will let me? I have always loved you; before you were even born⁴ into this world I was smitten with you. Right from the very beginning of time I have watched over you and provided light to your path⁵. Even when the way seemed tough and you felt alone, I was there with you⁶. I know you; I know all about you, I know your ways⁷, your desires⁸, your dreams and your fears. I have always been your Father⁹ even when you knew not what a Father was. I love you more than any earthly father could ever love you and My love is constant.

If you would only let me be all this to you and more, your heart would be full and your life complete. Heaven and earth will pass away but what I have said to you today will last forever¹⁰.

I love You.”

These words come straight from the heart of my Father, who is also your Father. I know this for sure because it says so in the Bible – I didn’t make it up, I simply copied and pasted it directly from the Bible. If you really and truly want to get to know what your father in heaven thinks of you then read your bible as a love letter from Him to you.

It has always been all about you

Right from the beginning of time it was always about you. Creation was for you!¹¹ God created the heavens and earth and every tiny detail all in preparation for your arrival. When a mother is pregnant she, along with the daddy, spends the time of pregnancy in preparation for the new arrival. They paint the baby’s room, buy the cutest little clothes, they lie awake at night dreaming and fantasising about what the little baby will look like. The entire pregnancy is centred on preparing for this little precious person to arrive into the world.

Father God is no different from expectant parents. He was so excited about you and I and he spared no expense in making this earth as beautiful as possible for our arrival. Have you ever considered the great detail that God put into this creation for us? Have you ever really taken the time to examine this beautiful earth? On a cool dewy morning find a spider’s web and take a close look at how beautiful it is. On a hot summery day take a walk deep into a forest and see all the amazing colours and details hidden away for us to discover.

If you live near the sea take time to absorb the powerful crashing of the waves and if you are lucky enough, go snorkelling and gaze at everything beautiful under the water. Have you ever managed to see the amazing detail of the tiniest butterfly or the incredible patterns and colours of flowers? What about sunsets or the stars at night or the taste of certain foods or the fragrance of flowers? I could go on forever about all the amazing intricate details of nature. There is no way that I could ever attribute such incredible details to a random big bang. Nature is way too specific and so intelligently designed. Most importantly it is very intentionally all about you and me.

God was so very excited about putting us on this planet and in all this excitement as an expectant parent, He went all out in making our home the most beautiful place imaginable.

If ever you feel far away from God and desire to get closer to Him but don’t know how, get closer to nature. I am not one of those big outdoors people but I am so deeply amazed by creation and can easily spend many minutes examining the details of something in my garden. The closer I look at a flower or a little tiny lady bug, the closer I feel to the One who created it. The more I marvel at the intricate details of something that may only live for a few days, the more I marvel at how amazing my God is.

Not only did God create this amazing earth for us to live in, but He also takes care of it. He makes sure that the plants and animals have what they need to survive and then goes on to say that we are even more valuable¹² than this gorgeous creation that He has made. Isn’t that a beautiful thought? When looking at the awesome detail of something in nature, take time to consider that you are so much more valuable to God than all of creation. It was all created just for you!

It has always been all about your pleasure

Close your eyes next time you eat your favourite food and savour the taste of it. Take a moment, linger longer than usual next time you embrace your loved one with physical touch. Breathe deeply when you enjoy something that emits your favourite fragrance. Listen closely to the details of your favourite music or the sound of the birds singing outside your window. Linger a little longer as you gaze at a beautiful picture or take a moment to absorb the priceless beauty of your precious little one sleeping in bed at night. Take your time in using your five senses and each time you enjoy using them; know that God made it that way to please us. He made everything imaginable for our pleasure.

Earth, and everything in it, is created to delight us, to charm us and to create excitement within us. Our father in heaven, our real and true daddy, dotes upon us. He is besotted with us and longs to see us happy. Expectant parents not only buy clothes and food for their expected arrival, they also buy teddies and toys. They do this because they want their baby to have fun and to enjoy his life. God is just the same, He is a daddy that wants to see us giggling with delight. He LOVES our laughter and gets great pleasure out of our smile. The happier we are, the happier He is.

What parent enjoys seeing their child cry or feeling sadness? God is a daddy too and feels the same about us in every possible way that an earthly parent does. He loves us so deeply because we are His, just as a parent loves a child just because the child is theirs. For that reason He longs to give us pleasure.

Have you ever considered that eating need not have involved pleasure? It could have been a simple daily routine like brushing our teeth. Making love need not have involved pleasure either; it could have been an act that was purely done to procreate. Even the simplest accidental brush of a young girls hand over a young boy’s arm can cause a rush of intense pleasure to surge through his body. We are most definitely created for pleasure in every possible way. Many times when I am happy or am enjoying the pleasures of life I tilt my head ever so slightly to acknowledge my daddy’s presence. I know He is right there beside me with a huge grin on His face as He takes delight in my delight. Now that is what a true daddy does.

It has always been about your future

Many earthly fathers go to great length to provide for their children’s future. Some children even have an education fund from the day they are born and have their name on the best schools waiting list before their first birthday.

Other fathers have family businesses that they hope to hand over to their children in their old age and other fathers perhaps have skills and talents that they long to share with their children when the time is right. No matter what, most fathers are mindful of their children’s future in some way. Sadly, some fathers really don’t care and don’t think ahead. Thankfully our heavenly father is perfect in every possible way and has dedicated his life to our future. Before you and I were even born, He realised that there was no way that we were ever going to be able to join Him in heaven without His help, so He made a plan for our future. He sent Jesus to create an accessible pathway for us from earth to heaven. God saw all the things we were going to do wrong, all the mistakes we were going to make, and all the times we would reject His offer of love. He saw it all before we were even born and decided to plan for our future so that when we did finally understand things we would still have hope¹³.

This very significant major event, Jesus’ death on the cross, is our ultimate security. When we were little children we didn’t know whether or not our earthly father had an education fund or not and neither did we care. We were so much more concerned about playing with our dolls and eating our favourite ice-cream. It was up to our earthly dad to do the worrying about things we knew nothing about so that we came of age and started to understand things, we would also be able to understand that we really have nothing to worry about. It has all been taken care of.

Our heavenly Father did the same thing. He took care of things way before we even realised that they needed taking care of¹⁴ so that when the time came and we fully understood the reality of heaven and hell, He could present us with a future and a hope.

If you don’t know Jesus, you really won’t know what I am talking about, but you will feel that lack of security in your future right now and you most certainly won’t have too much hope. Don’t panic, like I said, your heavenly Father knew this day would come and He has already made provision for this very moment. If you can’t wait until the end of the book to find out about this amazing gift that your heavenly father has for you, jump ahead to the end of the last chapter now and see how you can receive His precious gift right now.

If you have already accepted Jesus into your life but still don’t have a sense of security, then please take time to meditate on the fact that He loved you first and did everything He could possibly do before you even knew Him. There is nothing that you did that earned His love and forgiveness which means there is nothing you can do now or ever to earn any more love or forgiveness from Him. Simply rest in the knowledge that His love for you has and always will be the most it can ever be, nothing you do or say can ever change that. He loves you because you are His, not because of anything that you have or haven’t done, just because you are His and He is your daddy.

It has always been about your potential

Another way that our heavenly Father cares for our future is by gently moulding us into the best possible version of who we are. He is like a potter and we are the clay. We all start out as clay but He lovingly moulds each of us into someone totally unique and special.

Earthly daddies may dream about their children becoming great musicians or amazing sports stars but our heavenly Father doesn’t put any pressure on us to be anything. Unlike our earthly fathers, He knows exactly who we are going to become because He made us with all the potential already inside of us. If you remain true to what is inside of you, you will never let your daddy down. The one way we let Him down is by trying to be someone we are not. We struggle and strive and work so very hard to be like someone else. This breaks His heart and leaves us feeling out of breath and discouraged. Most of all I think it must be a real insult to our heavenly Father, as we are basically saying that we don’t think who He made us to be is good enough.

I know what it is like as I spent years trying to be someone I was not. In my defence, I never really knew who I was and what amazing potential was inside of me. When I realised this I yielded to Him like a lump of clay to a potter and then the process began. First He intentionally broke me. He shattered all of my falseness and false identity. He shattered me from a very ugly looking vase back into a lump of clay. Thankfully God can do this!

Next He added some water and started kneading me and then threw me onto the potter’s wheel. Yes, the process was painful and yes, it took a very long time. My daddy didn’t give up on me though. Once He moulded me into the real me, He put me into the furnace.

Isaiah 48:10

Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tested you in the furnace of affliction.

I have read that only once pottery has been fired is it fit to be used. The Bible refers to the fire as a means to refine and purify gold and silver too. No matter what you would like to be compared to, you will need to go through the fire if you want to be the real you and reach your full potential. Yes, it does burn and yes, it is worth it. All the rubbish gets burned away and only the beautiful and pure you remains. In my experience you go through this process quite a few times in life but it is so very worth it.

A good parent will watch their children from young to try and see where their natural gifts and talents lie and then encourage them in these areas throughout life. Children raised like this very seldom have a crisis when they have to choose their subjects at school or when deciding on which further education to pursue. This is because their parents have understood the importance of uncovering their natural potential.

Our heavenly Father is not only much better than our earthly parents; He also knows for sure what our full potential is as He has already mapped out our entire life for us. How exciting is that! He knows who we really are and He knows who we can become. That’s what a real daddy does which makes life so much more peaceful and enjoyable.

Do you feel extremely loved right now? I feel so unbelievably loved and valued as I write down how much my daddy loves me and values me. There was a time when I didn’t know who I was and didn’t feel the safety of a father’s love. Now I know who my daddy is, I know where I come from and I know where I am going. I also know who I am and I know that my life is not an accident, there is a plan and a future and a beautiful hope. I am secure in my daddy’s love for me which is why I sometimes lock my bedroom door and dance and twirl before Him. I love being His little girl, I love just being me, knowing that He knows it all so I don’t even bother trying to fake it anymore.

I dare you to try it, twirl around like a little girl and feel the warmth of your daddy’s smile. Open your arms up to heaven and feel his cuddly daddy hug. He is your daddy and you are his little girl and nothing on this earth or in heaven can ever take that away from you. Know who you are, so you can be all you can be.

I saved the best little gem for last. Do you know who your daddy really is? He is the King of the Universe. Guess what that makes you? A real princess! Yes fairy tales are real and you really are a princess - the daughter of a King.

My Darling

Freedom from controlling insecurity

Despite growing up with the absence of a healthy male role model I still longed for romance and the big adventure. As a little girl I found it in my childish games with my dolls or by acting out movies in the back garden, where I was the gorgeous leading lady in a romantic, adventurous soap opera. As a teenager I searched for love in boys, hoping that one of them would notice me for who I really was and that he would treat me like a princess. Many boyfriends came and went and I realised that this fairy tale was never going to be a reality. Slowly I gave up, and submitted to the harsh reality that I was not a princess but perhaps merely a prostitute. Harsh? Yes, perhaps that is a very strong word to use but it was definitely how I felt most of the time. I would trade sex for just a drop of love, I would use my body to fill the deep, dark void in my heart. I would lay there and take it in the hope that at the end I might get a cuddle.

Sure, I wasn’t paid any hard cash, but my hope was always for some form of reward. The more I searched for love, the more I collected hurts, and the more I tried to fill the emptiness inside of me, the more I realised how deep the emptiness went. Even marriage didn’t take that emptiness away; it only forced me to face the things I didn’t want to face. Synonyms for darling are sweetheart, wonderful, gorgeous and lovely. With every fibre of my being, I longed to be all those things to some charming man, believing that he would make me complete.

Two halves don’t make a whole

A broken young seventeen year old girl from a messed up background cannot be made complete by an equally broken messed up nineteen year old boy! Two halves don’t make a whole. Two broken people don’t make one complete person. What they do make is a mess.

With all my heart I firmly believe that you attract who you are. Messed up people don’t attract healthy people who have got it all together. No matter how much you try to fake it, the real person hidden underneath all the layers attracts another real person hidden underneath all the layers. Your façade won’t fool nature!

Layers of insecurity

Marriage has a funny way of bringing out things that perhaps could have remained covered up as a single person. My brokenness reared its ugly head in many ways during the years of marriage in many colourful shapes and sizes. The most significant of these was the underlying root of insecurity. Insecurity was the heart of many other issues in my life and it took a good twenty years to discover this. Insecurity can suck the life out of you and if you are not careful, can actually kill you.

My precious baby girl was getting to the age where she enjoyed bedtime stories and her daddy was at the stage where he enjoyed reading them. Lorah and her daddy sat in bed together having a nice cuddle while enjoying an Enid Blyton book. A healthy, loving bond was forming between a daddy and a daughter.

Outside the bedroom was where I sat. I was sitting in the hallway outside the closed bedroom door crying my eyes out. Why on earth was I crying? I was crying because I was riddled with fear and insecurity. Fear that my baby girl was being molested by her daddy. Trapped in this insecurity, I was too afraid to go into the bedroom for fear of what I might find. Too paralysed to move away from the door and too scared to go into the room.

Was Lorah being molested? No, of course not, her dad would never dream of doing such a thing. So why did I have such an unreasonable fear? My foundation was set on the wrong things, my view of men was based on my past experiences and my view of daddies was based on my past experience with my daddy and step daddy.

Thankfully I met Jesus before Lorah was born and although I had a long road of healing ahead of me at least the process had started. This incident with me sitting outside Lorah’s bedroom door was a part of the healing process. It was essential that my perception of men was undone, that my expectation of men was changed and that my foundation was re-laid so that God could rebuild me into a healthy whole woman. As time went by, I was able to change my mind about Lorah’s dad and see that all men don’t abuse their daughters.

Next came the layer of insecurity in the area of intimacy. How was it possible to be married and do the intimate things that married people do whilst all the while feeling like a dirty prostitute? For me sex either felt like rape or prostitution or on occasion reminded me of my dad’s hand on my body. How could this possibly be God’s plan, why did God come up with this horrible thing that we have to do for the rest of our lives? It’s so dirty and so horrible. As the years went by I was able to totally destroy this horrible perception and fully understand the beauty of two flesh becoming one¹⁵.

Of all my insecurities, this next one took twenty years to uncover. This one subtly hid inside of me totally undetected through marriage, through a successful career, through church leadership and through years of day to day life. Insecurity about other women ruled me, controlled me and ate me up from inside without me even realising that it existed. It reared its ugly head from time to time but I never managed to deal with it until it was fully exposed.

For me it was a given that my husband would be attracted to his female co-workers or bosses. There was no way in my mind that a man could go to work and be alongside women and not want to be with them sexually. At one point it was so ridiculous that I even thought my husband was having an affair with his homosexual colleague! If he was five minutes late home from work I started to panic, instantly thinking that there was another woman involved. This caused me to cause such a scene when he ever came home late so my poor husband was left with no choice but to be home on time or else.

Purchase this book or download sample versions for your ebook reader.
(Pages 1-29 show above.)