Culpability

I feel:: accomplished
What song is on a loop in my head right now:: Tori Amos~Mother

I was thinking on my way home from Ryk's last night about my line of reasoning about who is at fault regarding the bad things that have happened in my life. I thought to myself,"Are the bad things only supposed to happen to non-Christians? What makes you exempt? Is God only supposed to protect Christians and no one else?" I realized that I was being arrogant in my faith. There are people who suffer worse things than I on a regular basis and still keep their faith strong. I don't know what is wrong with me. I suppose I just really wanted to blame God for everything because He is the creator of the universe. He is supposed to be in control of everything. I am not a Deist. I don't believe that God created the universe and just sits back in his recliner and watches everything that goes on here without intervening (Creation Television. I have a weird sense of humor, I know.). I believe that God is intensely interested in His creation. I believe that He is here with us all the time. If He wasn't interested, and didn't care about what went on with us, why sacrifice His own Son? Why have Him go through all of that torture and be separated from God the Father? If nothing else, that convinces me that God loves me and everyone else. I guess that was the starting point for me initially. I feel a little better about my relationship with God now, but I still have that little tinge of wanting to blame Him. (I guess I just had a breakthrough. Wow.) I'm still angry. But, back to the whole question of who is at fault: my grandfather, the four guys who raped me, the guy who assaulted me. I will take responsibility for my culpability in these matters. I trusted people I shouldn't have trusted. The only exception is my grandfather. I take no responsiblity there. I was only a child and he violated me in the worst way. It wasn't like I could tell him,"Take your hands off me! Take your finger out of my asshole!" It all started when I was about 2 or 3, so I couldn't fight him off. By the time I was old enough to tell someone, I had blocked all of that abuse from my mind. It only resurfaces now through dreams and flashbacks. I never see his face, but I can smell him. He smoked a pipe. I can also smell his hair pomade. I don't know what he put in his hair, but it was always jet black and slicked back. (There I go with the smell thing again.) My grandfather was a serial molester. He molested my mother and her two sisters for all of their childhood and into their adulthood. They used to have to sleep under their bed huddled together because they were so afraid of him. (Incidentally, I also did this to try to escape my mother.) He also beat my grandmother and was a raging alcoholic. (My grandmother wasn't a tiny woman. She was almost 6 ft tall, so she hit him back. One time, she even cut off his finger with a kitchen knife. But still, that's no excuse for violence. She was also an alcoholic. She died from it.) I don't know if he molested my cousin Shannon, but she did live with them until she was in high school. So, there is no telling. I would bet that he at least tried. Dysfunctional family? Yup.