Testimony—My Shattered Heart

When I was eleven, I read the Bible story called ‘Amnon and Tamar’ for the first time. The core was told in three verses “But…he grabbed her and said, “Come to bed with me, my sister.” “No, my brother!” she said to him. “Don’t force me!…Don’t do this wicked thing. But he refused to listen to her, and since he was stronger than she, he raped her.”

The nine final words destroyed me more than a lengthy descriptive paragraph would. They shattered my crystal heart, clear with innocence and purity.

The fear has never left me.

I never knew it until I was 17, when Mom lovingly set her hand on my arm and I jumped away. I started crying.

I knew that I could never stand sitting in the middle seat, that I only felt comfortable if I was posted in the corner of a room, able to see the doors, out the window, the entire room before me. I knew that I was extremely uncomfortable if people came within a three-foot radius of me. But I never knew the fear in which I lived since that day I was eleven, and I read the raping of Tamar.

“She was helpless,” I choked as Mom tried to comfort me with soothing words, “There was nothing—nothing she could do.”

She asked if anyone had done anything to me.

I shook my head. “No, I just read the story. I’m always terrified that I’ll be put in a situation when I can’t do anything to—”

She hushed me. She told me I was strong, that she would teach me how to live safely. She reassured me that none of my family would do that to me. Each of her loving promised wound through my soul like long veins of gold and carefully reassembled the pieces of my heart. The light shines through and the glass-like shards reflect it outward, gleaming off the interior golden threads.

My heart is as healed as it can be.

But the wound is still there.

The fear has never left me.