00:00:01.020 Hello and welcome to MILMAC Musings, where Allison Miller and Gerard MacLellan reveal the intersection between God and science for living wholeheartedly. Now on to the podcast. Hi, everyone. Welcome back to MILMAC Musings. I'm here with Allison today and we're going to be touching on a very difficult subject. And this is for people who have suffered through it as well. We're going to be talking about physical abuse.

00:00:29.340 Before we start, Allison has a number of examples, but I just want to interject here that it does happen to men too, and it has happened to me in a past relationship. And as we were talking before the show, nobody deserves that. And sometimes you might have the other person who does perpetrate that act to try to blame you saying, if you didn't do this, I wouldn't do that. But again, I just wanted to again explain.

00:00:59.100 I know there's a smaller percentage of men who actually get abused by women, but as we were talking yesterday for the preparation to show, we're really wondering the statistic as to why it's so low. Is it because men really aren't answering that in a survey or they're not reporting it? But whatever the case may be, it does happen. And I've lived through it. And again, it's absolutely wrong. It's a crime. And we just want to let you know that.

00:01:30.060 Again, it's very important for our audience to know the difficulties that these things do to your mental health, to your physical health, as well as your emotional well-being. So with that being said, I'd like to kind of hand this over to Allison so she can take over and just give you some examples that she has. Yeah, and as I talk about it, I just want to share that, you know, physical abuse is something that someone puts on to another person.

00:02:03.540 They're either intimidating or physically harming another person. There are other aspects of abuse, but we're going to talk very specifically about physical physical abuse today and it can start in childhood and it can go all the way through if you don't know anything about boundaries or healthy limits in your life. I recall sitting in a courtroom one time and the judge looking over at me and saying.

00:02:35.520 Ma'am, I need you to understand if somebody just reaches over and touches your shoulder without permission, that that is a physical violation toward another person. So just so you know that and just to reiterate what Gerard said, I think when we go through these things, we do feel that we have possibly done something to deserve that, especially if we don't have that healthy mindset.

00:03:03.660 And so as I read through these things that I I sat down. Let me just back up a little bit. One of the things that has been really helpful for me, and I mean, it's been many years since these episodes happening in my life. And I've also been through a lot of counsel and healing and and I really could not remember every detail of everything that has happened anymore, which to me is God's mercy and grace.

00:03:39.240 But I did sit down and just started writing out some of the situations that I was in from the time I was a child and then all the way through into adulthood and and very unhealthy relationships. I'm not naming anybody. I'm not blaming anybody. This is evil that has happened. And we talked about evil yesterday and how, you know, that we are at battle.

00:04:06.780 There is a spiritual war that goes on with people and then it comes through people. So. One of the experiences that I shared when I was in kindergarten, I wrote this in my book and the title of it was kindergarten dropout. A little boy used to pull my hair and poke me every day that I went and I probably was only there for about a week or so. But I was uncomfortable with that and I developed stomachaches.

00:04:34.800 And as a result of developing the stomach aches, I didn't want to go to school. Unknown to my father, he had no idea why I had a stomach ache, only that I had missed a couple of days. And it was today you are going to go to kindergarten, whether you want to or not, or not whether you want to or not. This is your choice. You go to kindergarten or you never go back. And I chose to never go back.

00:05:04.860 And as a result of that, I became labeled as the kindergarten dropout. And I hear you miss a lot in kindergarten. I'd like to go back one day. But I'm just going to try to read through these so that it's a little quicker, but I don't want to. I don't want to discredit any of it because it is very much going on behind closed doors today and other homes and children's lives and adults lives.

00:05:39.240 Women and men. So this is my experience and so I'll just read. This is a little bit more of verbal abuse, but it was when I was in the first grade and the little boy that walked home from school with me every day used to call me all kinds of names and one of them was skinny bones. So I became labeled and began to feel like that about myself.

00:06:09.600 When I was a little older, I was bullied every day by a next door neighbor, little boy, who punched me in the stomach every afternoon after school. And I had the breath knocked out of me every day. So I would go in crying. When I was probably in the 3rd grade, I believe I was walking up the stairs or no, let me back up.

00:06:36.600 I wasn't walking up the stairs. I didn't want to go up the stairs. I felt like the wolf was upstairs that was going to get me because we had had a situation with a peeping Tom. And I was scared and did not want to go. And knowing very little about how to manage that, I was spanked. One of my parents spanked me up the stairs, telling me to get up there and stop crying.

00:07:05.940 That was very traumatizing for me. Can I interject? Yes. That's one of the things when you have the mirroring of generations, too, is I'm just going to bring this into this just briefly. Yes. And secondly, the underlying issues, she had a stomach ache and other things. That's because of what was happening at school. So as a parent and adults, if we can see that, there's something underlying the behavior. That's all. Yeah. Thank you for saying that. Sure.

00:07:36.000 As a teen, I was taken out by a teen classmate in his new Jeep and taken back in the woods and was held down against my will. And the intent was to sexually violate me. When I was young, up until probably about the time I was 17 or 18 years old in our home, the style of punishment were spankings.

00:08:04.800 And that's what most parents did in that generation. And so I either was spanked with a belt or with switches and I hated it. And I mean, I know the feeling hatred in my heart or you know what I was going through and who was doing it to me. And I'll just tell a little secret. There was one time where my dad took me in the room and closed the door and he said, why don't you bend over?

00:08:34.920 I have the belt. And I said, yes, sir. You know, I was very respectful. And I bent over and my dad started hitting the bed instead of hitting me. And he said when I hit the bed, scream. And so I was like, OK, well, that only happened once, but I thought it was kind of funny in reflection to see that my dad was feeling like maybe it wasn't the best way to do things. So.

00:09:02.100 When I was in a relationship, there had been a disagreement of some sort and I think it had happened over the telephone. And I was getting in my car with her daughter, with my daughter and her friend. And I was getting ready to back out of the garage and. My spouse pulled up behind me in a very large vehicle and blocked me in where I could not get out.

00:09:31.320 And I was trying to maneuver myself out in every way and I could not get out of the garage. So I was very trapped and also had my children. My daughter and her friend in the car with me and it was very frightening for them as well. Another time I was punched in the face during a disagreement with someone who was addicted to alcohol and it was someone that I was seeing and.

00:10:00.600 You know, it came out of nowhere and quite a surprise and that was very frightening. Another time in that relationship, I was knocked backwards out of the blue, just came at me and totally pushed me down and I was able to catch myself behind me on my hands. But as a result of that, I ended up wearing braces on both of my hands and wrists and could not pick up a dinner plate for almost a year.

00:10:31.140 So it really injured my wrist, which I'm happy to say they're well now. There was another time and I I just want you to hear. I don't know if you can hear the progression and things that are happening here, but I was picked up by the neck after asking for some money. To go get my hair done. And I was picked up by my neck. I was carried across the hallway and slammed into a wall.

00:11:00.059 And I was able to get myself free from that. But as I got free, he was chasing me and I had to run in the opposite direction of my daughter, who was in the other room, screaming for me. So I was able to get away, but it wasn't a good situation at all.

00:11:23.940 One day when I was leaving to run an errand, I could not find my car keys and I was successful in locating my car keys that had been dropped down the pants of my spouse to keep them from me. And I was dared to get them and I did. And then I ran out and I was able to get away, but he chased me and came out and kicked my window of my car.

00:11:52.140 I was in the garage and thankfully I did not have my children there. But he kicked the window of my car. And as the garage door was going up, thankfully I was in a smaller type car and I was able to go out of the garage and leave and go get help. There was another time where I was going to donate some items.

00:12:16.020 And I was standing by my car after having put some things in the back seat and I was standing at the front door and he pulled the car door open on me purposely to hurt me and it left bruises down the side of my arm. So. All of these things are. They're really horrific. They really are.

00:12:44.640 And when you're in the moment of those things, you don't know what to do and how to respond. Sometimes you freeze, sometimes you want to run, sometimes you want to fight back. But, you know, it just depends on what the situation is and what you can do and who's around and what you feel safe doing because you sure don't feel safe at all. Well, that's really what they call a complex drum. Yes. Because you went through it over and over and over with different people, but the same people did it multiple times. Right.

00:13:14.880 So it's unfortunate. Again, just heartbreaks for what you went through. Thank you, Jordan. But, you know, the one thing that we're thankful for is we can bring what we've experienced out so you can understand this. And again, we're vulnerable so you can understand it that we have been there. Right. I mean, I don't know if somebody that is listening to this right now is going through some of this. And this, I just want you to know that it's not healthy, it's not right for you.

00:13:45.660 And there are ways to correct it. Right. For you. And you're not alone. Right. You are not alone. There was another time where I was chased out of my house with a gun. And I ran to a neighbor's house and the police were called and the police came and took five guns out of the trunk of his vehicle. And I had no idea that those were in there. But that is at a point in my life where I started.

00:14:17.820 Taking steps to find out how to protect myself and my daughters. Right. Exactly. You were the protective person there. Right. You were going through so much and you knew that they were going through things as well and you just didn't want that to happen. Right. Yeah. And, you know, and at the time I didn't have the understanding that my children felt my stress, my children, you know, were exposed to these things, generational mirroring, none of this stuff.

00:14:46.620 I did not know about it. I didn't even realize that it would affect my children. But, you know, I didn't even despite the fact that I went through the process of how to protect myself and I ended up going through a divorce. I still did not have the tools to know how to have boundaries. I've never heard of it before, how to have limits in my life, what truly healthy people look like, what safe people look like, what unsafe people look like.

00:15:18.240 And so I was in another relationship and there was suspicion on my part of him having an affair with someone else and an encounter that was happening over and over, and he was addicted to alcohol. And I went to find out for myself. And y'all, this is very graphic and it was a terrible moment for me in my life. But I went and when I went to the home, there was a party going on and he was with her.

00:15:49.620 And because I went in, he came and picked me up and threw me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, carried me out to the car, yelling at me and screaming at me. Things I don't want to repeat, threw me into the car down into the floorboard, pushing me down while I was screaming and crying and calling for help. And we were on a back road. And he got in the car and pushed me down and held me down while we drove away.

00:16:20.700 While he was screaming horrible things at me. That was. That was horrible, right? Exactly. It was horrible. And even though she's talking about it right now, we were talking just the other day. You still go back to this. You just see it and you visualize, you're trying to keep it away. But you know, as we're talking about for you to understand this, it's hurtful. Yeah, it's hurtful.

00:16:50.220 And there are triggers that come up in our lives that thankfully we can learn how to navigate. That's when when we get the right tools and we understand and we know how to put feelings and emotions around the experiences that happened in our lives and we can learn how to communicate it. But when you're in the middle of it, it's just like he hurt me. You know, he hurt me. Why would somebody that loves me hurt me? So, you know, I want to share just a few more.

00:17:22.200 I remember being out to dinner with some coworkers. And we had been having a team building exercise and so we all went to dinner together and I had said I would be home at a certain time. And I arrived an hour after time for me to be home. And he was sitting at the top of the steps from the garage to the house waiting for me to arrive.

00:17:48.780 And as soon as I got out of my car, he was there to take me upstairs and put me on the bed and start accusing me of being intimate with someone else and ripped my clothes off and rubbed them in my face. And I'm just telling you that this is so wrong and it makes you feel so little and so helpless and so powerless.

00:18:22.020 I had a tendency to choose men that were tall, big, bigger than me. And at the time in my life I was very petite. And, you know, these are all years ago and there's been years of healing and all. But these things happen. And I think I probably went for many, many years just kind of being away from all of that and working on healing and all.

00:18:48.540 And then I then the same thing, not the same, but small doses of things began happening in my life. You know, we've talked about the common examples of abuse. We've talked about the power people feel when they are abusing and we've talked about how they create dependency on you. And then there's the physical abuse part of it. And, you know, I thought I was free from all of this stuff.

00:19:17.700 I didn't realize the triggers that would start coming back. And so I remember hanging a picture on a wall and just trying to get it straight from my perspective. And I was knocked out of the way, literally physically pushed out of the way, told I wasn't doing it right. And that that was taken away from me. I could not do that. And the same very similar thing that happened tending flowers in a garden.

00:19:50.820 Flowers that I had grown, I love gardening and. I was putting a border around the edge and he came out and said they weren't straight and was yelling at me and pushed me out of the way. And in his anger, he was crushing all my beautiful flowers that I had nurtured. And so but he took over and I was not able to to take care of my flowers in that moment.

00:20:23.940 You know, I sat down and put some words around all of this. And of course there there are so many emotions that come and there are so many things that you can't really encapsulate it just sitting here talking to you. But I want to read to you what I wrote down because these are the things that I felt during that time. In every single one of those situations, I felt attacked.

00:20:51.840 And I felt fearful. I felt afraid. And those are actually two different things. I felt very threatened. I felt intimidated. I felt helpless. Because I couldn't. I wasn't strong enough to fight back and I couldn't get away at times. And then in many of these situations, I felt terrified for my life. I didn't know if I would live or not, and I didn't know if my children would live or what would happen to them if I didn't live.

00:21:22.859 But you know, as I said earlier, there was a time where I just I could not put words around what happened to me. All I knew was the fear. All I knew was really kind of looking at, well, I mean, I guess this is just what relationships are. I don't know. But even though inside of me, I knew that I didn't like the way that I felt. I didn't know how to get that feeling out of me. And I didn't know how to overcome that.

00:21:51.540 And I didn't know what to do. In other words, it feels hopeless. Totally, yeah totally hopeless. You know, sometimes when I would be a lot of these things either came suddenly just because there was anger out of the other person, evil really controlling them, basically evil.

00:22:18.119 And I'm not saying that I didn't do anything to make somebody feel a certain way. But even if I did, there is no excuse. There is no nothing that says it's OK for somebody to put their hands on you in a way that's going to harm you. Nobody has that right at all. Yeah. And I mean, I was embarrassed, you know, for people to see what I had gone through.

00:22:46.260 I didn't want people to know what was going on behind closed doors. I didn't want them to know what was happening in my life. And, you know, there were times where I would just I would escape. I would leave and I would move on, but I never did any of the work to heal myself. And I spent a lot of time doing the work. And then again, you know, the triggers came up and I didn't know what to do with that.

00:23:15.540 And so I'm much better able now to navigate this. I have a wonderful support system, people in my life that love me, that want me to be whole, and they want me to be. And I do think I am whole. I believe I am. I believe it's just the triggers from the things that happen. Right. But now you recognize. Yes. 100%. I mean, I know who I am. And I know that I don't deserve that.

00:23:45.540 And I know that I was created for more. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's very sad to hear all that you've gone through. So from my perspective, after listening to it, my heart breaks for people going through that, particularly for what Allison went through. Nobody deserves it. There's no right for anybody to do that. It's evil. And I'm just going to call it evil intelligence too. It creates these issues.

00:24:11.640 And when you're in that place, and I've been there, from a physical abuse perspective, you're just so confused. You don't know why it's happening. As you were saying, you're just like, why is this happening? And you're not just sitting there pondering like this, you're fearful, you're frightened, you're afraid, and you're not sure what's going to happen next. How deep can this go? Am I going to be killed? Are they going to take a gun? Are they going to hit me on the head with an object? And this is very real.

00:24:39.780 And you know it's something that the church itself just doesn't really have a handle on that. And I'm not blaming anybody, but from our perspective, it's a trauma-related issue that we have trauma awareness and that this is something the church needs to do and understand. So why I'm saying all that is because there are people out there and the resources that we provide for you to help with issues and things that Allison went through and I went through to give you the correct way of dealing with the tools, finding the tools, the correct way of really becoming whole.

00:25:18.240 And again, it doesn't happen overnight, but at least you make that step and you continue on. Those baby steps grow into just regular steps. And then you get to the point where the more of the, you may feel that you're at the wholeness level and something triggers something. But again, when you can step back and understand that, that allows you to live a whole lot of it. It really does.

00:25:42.840 Yeah, understanding who you are, understanding if somebody is saying something in that moment that's making you feel a certain way, you're able to just kind of sit with that for a moment and look back on your feelings, identify with your feelings, take care of yourself in that and know that you're OK. It's not happening again. It's great to, as Allison pointed out too, it's to support people.

00:26:11.760 You need support. You need a supporting group that allows you to understand that it's not just you. They bring insight into the situation from an outsider perspective in a way that's true. And they want to help you. They want to make sure that you're moving forward in the right direction. So that's really important to have the support group with you, whether it's the counselor, the ministries like ours, or friends, or even family members who you can allow them to speak into your lives.

00:26:43.859 It's to support people that truly love you, that you can embrace. And when you do that, and you have the right group in your mix, then it really makes all the difference. Yeah It really does. 100%. And you don't have to look back over your shoulder all the time wondering, you know, I mean, you really have a very clear, clearer understanding of how to have a relationship with someone who who are the good, healthy people that I can turn to for support, who who are the people that I can trust with my heart because your heart is so precious.

00:27:22.260 And if you share something with somebody and they tell you that it's not true, what they've done is just take you back through the experiences of what happened in your life. Again, it's a major trigger, major. And so you don't want that in your life. You want people that are healthy minded and that can help you in that. Whether like George said, if it's friends, just make sure that they have your best interest at heart, that they want to see you grow, they want to see you heal.

00:27:49.619 They want to make sure that you are the focus of what needs to be healed. I mean, whatever needs to take place for you. Make sure they're there for that. Yeah, the one word that he always keeps coming up through in these podcasts is empathy. Yes. So when you have people who are coming alongside you with empathy, again, it's not I'm here for you. It's I'm here with you. We're going to go through this with you. And those are the people that you can open up your heart to.

00:28:19.380 And it takes time because what you've gone through or are going through is devastating and you don't know who to trust. But when you have people come alongside you, listening to you, not trying to tell you what to do, but just listening to your heart, listening to the anguish that you've gone through and you're still suffering from. You'll know that. In your heart of hearts, you'll know the people who are with you in this. And those are your go-to people who are more than willing, who love you to be with you as you walk through this.

00:28:52.320 Because we as a human race and you know with interpersonal relationships, we know what's right and wrong when we're healthy. But when we're not healthy, when we're in a situation where there's unhealthy people involved in our interpersonal relationships, it's terrible. It really is. I know it's a heavy subject we're bringing up, but it's important to understand that any area of abuse, you know, it's kind of like we were talking, it kind of leads up to it too.

00:29:21.780 Some people go all the way to physical abuse because it's a control mechanism. And, you know, having that, you know, that wantingness to control another person is just evil. Right. It's just pure evil. Yeah. I had a thought that I wanted to share, but it has escaped my mind, which is not unusual.

00:29:44.820 But I do want to say that, you know, having Gerard and I having experienced these things, I know personally, Gerard and then other men who have experienced abuse in their lives by women. Like he said, the statistics are not as high for men. Embarrassment and shame are two of the things that will keep men from doing that.

00:30:14.460 And a lot of what will keep women from doing that too. But I'm telling you, it's the best thing you can do is bring it out to help you. And that's what we're here for, for the ministry and to help bring trauma awareness in a higher level, at a higher level, to the church to help them to understand that these type of things take place. Nobody's above it.

00:30:41.640 And so we just want to be there to help you and to show you the direction that you may need to take, or at least have the resources to help you become more informed as you're going through the process of healing and trying to figure out what's best for your life as you move forward. Right. Just to touch on to add on to what you were saying about the church. Thank you so much for mentioning that. I hope we're getting better at that.

00:31:11.760 But I know my personal experience was not being accepted when I made choices to leave certain relationships. And I was more or less rejected and rejected by church leaders, by church people, by friends in the church. And that that is where we're we're messing up.

00:31:40.260 We we really need to come alongside people and understand because, you know, all of this that I just read to you, all of the experiences I've been through in my life, Gerard, you, all of these things are symptoms of things that are deeper and evil, of course, coming at us. And so to come beside people in a loving, empathetic. Seeking to understand way.

00:32:08.700 Is the only way that people can begin to heal from this. Right. You know, that's a great way to put it. And the church itself, that's what our mission is as well, to help the church become aware of it and to help them to know the resource that we are and others that we can have as resources for our ministry too to help everybody. Because not every situation is exactly the same.

00:32:33.420 But anyway, the overall heart of our ministry is to make you aware of what we've gone through, how fortunately for us that we were able to overcome it through wonderful people the Lord's brought into our lives and to understand the true love of God. And again, some of you out there right now are going through things and you're not believing in God or where is God in this, but He's there with you.

00:32:59.460 And I know that it takes time to be with people to truly see the love of God working through that person for you. And I think it's 2 Corinthians 1:34. And that's what you've been going to. Would you like to? No, you can. Okay. I'm going to have to bring it up. I'll bring it up. Yeah, I'll bring it up. It's a great scripture that we've been trying to mention. And again, we want you to know the love of God, but we're not forcing this on you.

00:33:31.200 We just want you to know that there is a loving God out there and he's there for you. And he's going to be there with you as you go through all of this. And that's just basically a message we have for today. So this is 2 Corinthians 1. I'm going to start at three. Sure. The heading for this is the God of all comfort.

00:33:59.580 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us, comforts us in all of our affliction so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. Right. And that's the truth. That's the absolute truth.

00:34:26.700 Whether you believe it or not, there are the Lord is working through us to help you to see His love. And it's all His love. I mean, if you look at regular normal worldview people, that doesn't come through. It comes through from him. And that's why we're mentioning this so often. But it is part of the healing process, but we do understand of what people are going through who have never seen a true image of God.

00:34:56.160 And we are His images. We're not perfect, but He works through us. Yes. And wear His hands and feet to help you. That's where our love comes from. Yes. And everything I just read to you is not love. That's for sure. It is not of God. And it is not His design and how you were created to be loved. Right. Exactly. Well, do you have anything else? That was pretty heavy.

00:35:19.860 Yeah I think it's important though that you really get a true understanding for the depth of what the abuse is and what Allison shared with you, the vulnerability of listing those things. And again, it does create triggers. However, these things we are doing here to help you. I can't emphasize that more than enough.

00:35:43.800 Just understand we're here for you and we just want to make sure that you truly, you know, just reach out to us and just any help you need, feel free to call to contact us at Mail Map Musings at gmail.com. Yeah. And we do have resources on our website, mailmat musings.org. And I mean, not questions, but if you're actually experiencing something right now that you have a question about or you want to share with somebody and you just need somebody to listen to you and love you, we're here for that too.

00:36:20.400 Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, thank you again for joining us today. Once again, we understand this is a heavy topic, but we felt it was really needed to help you and just understand if you're going through it. We do know what you're going through. So we just want to say that. And we want to thank you again for joining us today. And do you have any other thoughts? Well, I'd just like to say that I believe I'm a miracle and I believe Gerard is and I believe you are too. And we all say amen. Amen.

00:36:49.800 Thank you very much for joining. Thank you. Okay. Have a great day.