Trapped: A Woman's Journey of Survival and Healing

By Dee J. Noble

Trapped by Dee J. Noble

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 10, 2021
• ISBN: 9781638441601

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Trapped

A Woman's Journey of Survival and Healing

Dee J. Noble

Copyright © 2021 by Dee J. Noble

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

This Is Where My Healing Journey Begins

Childhood

Adoption and Feelings About Myself

Trapped

First Marriage: Trapped

Second Marriage: Trapped

Trapped: How He Chose Me

Trapped: Mr. Wonderful Became Mr. Monster

Trapped: Through the Trauma

Trapped: Boiling the Frog

Trapped: No Escape

Ephesians 6:10–18 New International Version (NIV)

Life’s Disappointments: It Was Not My Plan

God’s Healing

Answered Prayer

Surrender

I want to share my story in hopes it will help you understand God’s Grace, Forgiveness, and Love. I- am sharing my struggles to overcome C-PTSD, Stockholm syndrome, traumatic events, and what it takes to truly be healed and set free.

My prayer is to show the reality that there is hope and healing, for all even in those broken places that only God can redeem and mend.

It begins with a young woman, sixteen, who got involved with a young man about twenty-one years old. She thought it was love. Why else would this good-looking guy be paying attention to her. It came to be that she found out she was pregnant. She told him she was pregnant, and he told her he was married with a child and one on the way with his wife. It was 1963, a time when young women didn’t just have a baby without being married.

When her parents found out, she was shipped off to a place for unwed pregnant girls and women. She was to stay there alone until her baby was born and then place her baby for adoption, which she did. This is where my story begins; the baby girl was me.

I want to dedicate this book to my family and all those who encounter this book. May God shine on them with his grace, forgiveness, and love. Through His loving kindness, heal all the hurts they hold on to.

With Love,

Dee J. Noble

Daughter, Sister, and Friend

I give praise to my Heavenly Father and my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, to whom all glory is given. I feel called by the Lord to share my story of healing. It is my desire to show what God can do with a life—when we turn to Him for healing with a willingness to not hold anything back.

It took me many times trying counseling during my lifetime. I am finally committing to healing and recovery after so many kinds of trauma. Trauma from childhood, being raped multiple times, marriage infidelity and issues, my children being abused, and domestic violence. I have had C-PTSD for years, never understanding what was wrong with me. In my yearly twenties, I was told I had PTSD; I never understood it. I was embarrassed thinking I was being told to get over it. I now realize it was the result of the trauma I had experienced, which led me to wrong relationships, being easily manipulated, unable to say no when I wanted to for fear of upsetting people or being abandoned. I feared relationships and people, afraid if people really knew everything that happened in my life, they would leave and/or blame me.

I grew up believing everything that went wrong in my family was my fault. I believed this in every situation. This carried over to relationships and marriages. This made it difficult to trust anyone with my innermost thoughts of who I really am, keeping them at arm’s length. My view of myself, feeling horrible about me and thinking I was like a black cloud everywhere I went. I hated myself, my body, and everything about me. With that being said, I did not believe any compliment given. I honestly believed people were just taking pity on me and were lying to me. Therefore I compensated in my heart, I believed in the good for and of others, by learning to focus on just that, others. Focusing on me, learning how to share that and who I wanted to be was like a child’s first steps.

After going through years of abuse, every kind imagined, by my last husband, I didn’t believe I would ever be okay or of sound mind again. I suffered amnesia because of the brutality I endured from my husband; I was treated like a prisoner of war. I lost all sense of self, with it I blocked out years of my life, which included years before that trauma. I suffered suicidal thoughts, hoping to end my PTSD. I didn’t want to live the rest of my life fighting the intrusive pictures, memories, and emotions. Reliving the trauma repeatedly, I felt the pain was too much to bear, and death seemed to be the only way out. I’m here to say it’s not. It is that very place God found me again; rather, I should say I found Him. Through much wrestling with God; the whys were endless, they never seemed to be answered. This left me feeling hopeless, helpless, unloved, and abandoned by God. Through all of this, I found my refuge in the storm and know I am not alone. All praise given to my Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

This Is Where My Healing Journey Begins

My lightbulb moment happened when I was praying to the Lord for some truth in how He sees me. He says He loves me in His word, yet I’ve not been able to accept that as the truth for myself. All I have been able to see are all the wrongs, devastation, shame, blame, unworthiness, and horrible memories that never stop or give me a break. I asked the Lord to forgive me for not being able to accept or believe that His Word is true for me. I asked Him to give my heart eyes to see Him in my doubts. I asked Him to let me see things from His view, not mine. I asked the Lord if what you are saying is true, I beg you to let me sit in your lap and hold me so I can see from your view.

I am angry at all that has happened in my life, the choices I have made, and those choices that have been made for me. I don’t want to be in this place. I want to be one with you, Lord, with your heart, mind, and words. I want to see not only your love for others, but for myself for the first time. I want you to truly be in my heart, Lord, and change my view of me. I don’t want to hate myself anymore! I ask you to forgive me and wash me clean of all the lies I believed as truth and anything that is not of you in my heart. Erase these things, making my heart whiter than snow, and write the truth in my heart. Heal my heart, my mind, and spirit so that I can believe.

I had a dream… In this dream I was in a castle sitting at a long table. What I thought was a jester approached me with a large bowl of porridge with a large deep spoon, and he wanted me to eat.

I stood up and yelled, I am not eating, swallowing, or accepting any more lies and stories from others. I will only accept the truth!

I realized, at that point, something I never had before. All those years when I was told things were my fault, I was to blame for everything, and I would believe it and feel it in my soul, stomach, and heart. Even though these things were untrue I felt guilty as charged. The feelings I was feeling were horrible, and eventually, I believed the guilt I had felt was my subconscious telling me over and over that it was true, even though it was all twisted lies.

I asked the Lord to show me the truth from His view, and He has truly begun to do that, restoring hope that He can and will restore and make beauty from the ashes of my life.

The most important words to remember are the words of the Father. I will never leave you; I will never forsake you.

I pray that my story of healing, overcoming horrendous abuse and trauma, will help pave a path of trust and help in your healing process. To know you are not alone and there is hope and healing. The impossible is possible with God’s grace, love, forgiveness, and mercy. All praise and glory to God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Childhood

I grew up in a house with two professional parents. From the outside, we looked like the perfect family. What no one knew was it was full of abuse: physical, sexual, rage, to lies, and many, many secrets. We moved a lot, running from all my father’s affairs. We all paid a price especially with lost friendships, which as a kid was as hard. Watching and hearing my father abuse my mother and brother is a picture that never leaves your memory.

My sexual abuse started in my early childhood. I remember around five years old I was being abused by my brother, my father, a baby sitter’s boyfriend, and several neighborhood boys. When I was around six, my father caught one of the neighbor boys molesting me, while my sisters and a neighbor girl were right there; the boy had been taking turns with each of us under the blanket. My dad came outside and pulled the blanket on the slide back and saw what the twelve- to thirteen-year-old boy was doing to me; he didn’t know that he had been doing this to each of us. My dad blamed me. I was six. He beat me, ripped my favorite PJs while he was shaking me, holding me in the air, and yelling at me.

Prior to this, I had gotten in trouble with my mother for drawing a penis and giving it to my teacher. I was reaching out for help. When confronted about the picture and asked what it was, It’s a banana, I replied. These two incidents sent a very clear message to me and were the reason that for the rest of my life, I could never tell or talk about anything that happened to me.

A few significant things happened when I was in the second grade, and living in Traverse City, that truly show the way my mother treated and felt about me. By this time, I had been sexually abused multiple times by multiple people. When I played with Barbie and Ken, they did inappropriate things, acting out what had been done to me, but instead of