MARJ LANTING
I hated my father

About 11 or 12, I started running away from home. In grade 8, I started using alcohol and inhaling glue. In grade 9, I got into street drugs, and skipped a lot of school.

At 13, I ran away from home, hitchhiked to Preston a couple of hours from home and met a guy on the street who invited me to get warmed up at his brother’s apartment. I was so glad to have somewhere to go. It was an apartment full of college guys. They gave me so much drugs and booze that I thought I had died and gone to heaven. I thought, “This is so cool!” I was higher than a kite, and then they gang raped me.

That night I died inside. My life was shattered. I was a little kid, and they were grown men. I carried that secret for years; I believe my parents knew what had happened, but you just didn’t talk.

My mother died soon after that trauma. I’ve always felt cheated because I don’t remember much about her. She is like a dream, as if she had never been. (I do remember her wrestling me to the floor, sitting on top of me and praying for me because I was so wild.) I so badly needed someone to talk to, and there wasn’t anyone.

Shortly afterwards, I was charged with possession of narcotics and got parole. My father took me out of school, and I became the full-time wife and mother. I went through years of incest by my father. I was not the only one in my family to be a victim. I hated my father. We were always plotting ways to kill him. For 11 years, I was physically held a prisoner at home. I wasn’t allowed to go out or talk to anyone. I remember hiding when I saw someone coming. I was always hiding, always scared. My father’s anger was so great that when he hit us, he couldn’t stop. I remember pushing a dresser against my bedroom door, and prying a chair against that so he couldn’t get me when I was sleeping.

I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how God was love. My father called himself a Christian. My only reason for living was to protect my little sister, Connie. Connie and I would go to church for any service at all (even if it was men’s fellowship) – just to get away from our father. Church to me was a safe place. I knew what was right and what was wrong, but I hated God for the mess I felt He had created.

When Connie got kicked out of home, I lost my reason to live. I got into drugs and alcohol more. I could never get enough. I needed to escape my pain. I needed to stay numb, just not think! I was crying inside for years, and nobody could hear me. I remember yelling and swearing at God, telling Him to kill me.

I was about 27 years old when a lady from the church stepped into our family affairs and begged me to get out of the house. I was the last one left. I was afraid to leave because I was so afraid of my father. But I was drunk enough that she convinced me and got me out. She took me to a detox centre. From there I went to a psychiatric hospital. I must have been in shock, because I had shut right down. I wouldn’t talk. It was like I was dead.

I had gotten freedom, yet I was still imprisoned in my mind. I went wild. All I wanted to think about was where I was going to get my next high. I traded sex for drugs. I became a thief, stealing anything from anyone. Everything meant nothing to me. I couldn’t feel the pain as long as I kept stoned. I saw myself as a freak, I hated myself, and there was nothing in life to give me pleasure.

For years, I was in and out of institutions and treatment centres. When I’d get out, I’d do okay for a week or two, and then it was back to doing what I knew best – escaping my pain. My life was a mess. I tried to kill myself again.

My sister told me of a friend who was getting help through Niagara Life Centre, a Christian counselling agency in St. Catharines, Ont. I called. Helen got my call, and I asked if she would help me. I drove three hours one way once a week for about six months to get help. A short while later, I met with Libby, and it was decided that I would move into a shepherding home run by the Centre.

I pretty well stayed in a drugged state when I first came – no longer on street drugs for the most part, but on prescription drugs. I fought the rules. I always wanted to sleep and not think. I was very angry. I would fight Helen, cut myself, be self-destructive. I was obnoxious, my language was bad, and I’d say nasty things, lashing out at Helen. But she kept loving me. For the longest time, I thought she was just saying she loved me. Like who could? It was all very strange to me. We’d go canoeing, hiking, biking, shopping and driving. I felt like God had given me an opportunity to enjoy and grow to love a mother.

I began counselling sessions with Libby. At first, I slept through many sessions. I didn’t understand what I was doing. Yet Libby was so patient, kind and caring. How could she even care? Why should she? It was beyond me. Never in my life had I witnessed such godly women, truly sincere women who for some strange reason believed in and loved God with all their hearts. I didn’t know why, but I started to talk and to trust Helen and Libby.

I thought it was hopeless, that I would never experience healing. There was always that restlessness and blackness. I could never get my life together, as hard as I tried. I couldn’t believe in God, Jesus was far from real, and the Bible seemed like an alien movie, just stories made up. I questioned the whole Christian way of life.

Yet, at the shepherding home, my past started to drop away a little at a time. Loose sex: It had to go. Stealing: It took me a long time to stop that, but repaying money for things I didn’t really want or need was getting to be a little much. Heavy metal music: I really didn’t want that to go – it always spoke to me – but I let it go. My tranquilizers: I couldn’t possible live without them, but again I was obedient. Losing all that pretty well left me standing naked.

But God! God has been so faithful! The God I hated – loved me. I started obeying the Bible. I kept quoting a verse from the Bible, Jeremiah 17:14: “Heal me, O LORD, and I will be healed; save me and I will be saved.” How I trusted Jesus is still a mystery to me. After a little over two years in the shepherding home, living in turmoil, blackness, emptiness and restlessness, not really expecting anything to happen in my life and wanting to die so badly, something happened on August 22, 1997.

God powerfully, yet gently changed my heart. He filled me with a peace and a joy that makes me stand in awe every day. It was a transformation that no human could have ever achieved. It was truly a miracle. I am healed, made whole! Who would have ever thought? I still want to pinch myself. I am so grateful for what God has done for me. I have come to realize how the Heavenly Father loves me, and cares for me, like no one else ever could. He will never hurt me, and He is nothing like an earthly father. He is all love and all powerful, and He looks at me as His child, without sin. God is so good!

Marj Lanting was baptized Dec. 18, 1997 and is now a member of Fairview Mennonite Brethren Church in St. Catharines, Ont. She returned to school and in June 1998 graduated from grade 12. She is now living in St. Catharines and studying at Emmanuel Bible College in Kitchener, Ont.