No One Knew

Dannah Gresh: Ashley had been hurt, but she remembers hearing someone share something that changed her perspective about it.

Ashley Gibson: The deepest wounds that you have become the well that you draw from to do ministry. It was in that moment that the Lord just turned me around and put His hands on my shoulders, looked me in the eyes, and said, “I’ve been here the whole time.”

Dannah: We’ll hear Ashley’s story today on Revive Our Hearts. It’s Wednesday, December 13. I’m Dannah Gresh, and our host is the author of Adorned, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: If you missed Revive Our Hearts earlier this week, we heard from a young woman named Mariah who ran from the Lord for a number of years but was miserable—thank God—under the weight of her sin until Jesus saved her. He turned her life around.

You can listen to Mariah’s story at ReviveOurHearts.com or through the Revive Our Heartsapp. Now, today’s guest is also a young woman who suffered, not so much from her own sin, although we all sin, of course, as much as from the consequences of someone else’s sin against her. In the midst of it all, she struggled greatly with her own concept of God.

Dannah: That’s right. We’re going to let Erin and Ashley tell the story. Now, I should mention that, while we’re not going to get into specific details, there’s mention of abuse in a family context. So, if you have a little one nearby who might be overly curious, be warned.

Now, Erin Davis is probably a familiar voice to you. She’s a co-host on our weekly videocast, Grounded, and she manages the Revive Our Hearts content team. Ashley Gibson is a member of that team. Both of them live in other states and work remotely. But not too long ago they were in the Revive Our Hearts offices for some meetings, and they sat down in the studio to talk. Let’s listen.

Erin Davis: Ashley, this is going to sound strange, but I love your story, and it makes my heart hurt.

Ashley: I get that a lot.

Erin: You do?

Ashley: I do.

Erin: I love the clear evidence of God at work in the hard places, but there are parts of your story that I wish had never happened to you. I wanted you to tell it because I know that you are one of many women who experienced the things we’re going to talk about.

So, let’s start way back. How would you describe your childhood?

Ashley: I grew up in what I totally thought was a normal Christian home. My parents were super involved in the church. My siblings and I were there every time the doors were open. The only exception was if you were throwing up.

Erin: That’s a great exception!

Ashley: That was the only pass out of church. (laughter)

I was Baby Jesus in the Christmas play like three times. We were always there, so I grew up hearing the Word of God. I grew up hearing the gospel. I don’t remember a time where I didn’t know about Jesus and the Word of God.

I came to Christ at the age of six, which is really young. I remember just sitting in a church service. The pastor was preaching, and something inside of me just clicked and said, “You know you’ve done bad things, too, not just all of these other people. Like, Jesus didn’t die for all of these people and not you. You need Jesus too.”

I just kept thinking about it and thinking about it. When we got home after church, I took my mom aside and said, “Mom, I want to be a Christian.” I remember she kind of welled up a little bit, and she said, “All right. Let’s go sit.”

She took me in, and we sat on my bed. She explained to me what it meant to be a Christian and to give my life to Christ. She prayed with me, and it was just such a sweet time. So I came to know Christ. I know for sure at that young age. There’s a lot of growing and learning, obviously, that you have to do when you come to Christ at such a young age, but I know for a fact that that’s when I came to know the Lord.

Erin: Oh, that’s one of the really beautiful parts of your story, that child-like faith that Scripture encourages us to have. What a mercy to know Him from a young age. Were you talking with your dad about God and Scripture in the gospel at all during those younger years?

Ashley: No. So, looking back on it, it is strange because the man is supposed to be the spiritual leader of the household.

Erin: Right.

Ashley: My dad was a leader in our church.

Erin: Okay. He wasn’t hostile to your faith? your mom’s faith? the church?

Ashley: No, not at all.

Erin: Okay.

Ashley: But just growing up, it was very much the church-him was church-him and home-him was home-him. And being so young, I didn’t know any different.

Erin: It felt normal.

Ashley: I just thought that was what happens. And so, yes, we never really talked about it.

Erin: Well, I’m going to get us to the hard, not because I want to talk about it, but it’s a really important part of your story. As the years went by, home-dad went from just somebody who didn’t want to talk about God to somebody much more dangerous. 

Ashley: Yes.

Erin: What did you begin to experience?

Ashley: It was sexual abuse. It can show itself in a lot of different ways. I thought it was normal. I thought, Oh, I guess this is just how things are. This is just what happens.

Erin: Right.

Ashley: It was crazy because it was right in front of my face the whole time, but you can live it and just not ever see it.

Erin: Right. And, well, when something’s happening behind your front door, in your family, it can feel normal, or you can not have the language to express if it doesn’t feel normal. Right?

Ashley: Yes.

Erin: Abuse is a word we hear a lot, and I’m so grateful that we have an increased awareness of what power can do and how some can use power to harm others and that abuse can really be anywhere. It doesn’t always look like a woman with a black eye. It can look like a lot of different things.

Ashley: Yes.

Erin: All sin grieves the heart of God, and all sin impacts. I often say that our sin puts shrapnel in the hearts of those we love, it’s like bombs that go off. And so, you had some shrapnel in your heart. But Scripture even affirms that sexual sin can be different in its consequences. Sexual abuse of a child can have really far-reaching implications.

So, that’s happening. You’re still going to church?

Ashley: Yes.

Erin: Still smiling family on the outside?

Ashley: Yes.

Erin: You’re seven years old. You probably don’t have the language to even articulate how that’s making you feel, but it ends up coming to light. I know you want to be so honoring of many of the people involved, so I don’t want you to share any specifics that are outside of your story, but take us back to a little bit about that time when others discover there’s been this abuse happening.

Ashley: Yes. So my mom, she was so broken over it when she found out.

Erin: I’m sure.

Ashley: I’m so grateful because she was so believing of everything that was going on, and so seeking to try to keep everyone involved safe and honoring the Lord in this situation, which was a big blessing. She’s been such a rock through the whole thing.

But eventually my dad’s sin did find him out. And that’s scriptural, we knew it was going to happen. I’m grateful that it came out in the way that it did because so many others could have gotten hurt had it not.

Erin: Yes. Not everybody can go this route. Not everybody does go this route. But you all ended up pursuing legal ramifications.

Ashley: Yes.

Erin: Do you remember going to the police station? Do you remember meeting with the authorities? Again, you were little. I mean, probably a second or third grader. I can’t remember second or third grade for me, and I don’t have the trauma stamps on my brain that you probably do. But what do you remember about that time?

Ashley: A lot of it is really blurry for me, if I’m being honest. I do remember the first time we went to the police station, though. I don’t remember anything that happened other than sitting in the lobby. I just remember sitting in the chair, and my feet couldn’t touch the ground. I just sat there and swung my feet. That’s all I remember, honestly, from that time.

Erin: Thank you for sharing that image. That’s the part of your story that makes me have lumps in my throat of just a little girl . . . The people listening to this can’t see you, but you’re beautiful. You have wavy, blonde hair, and this angelic face.

I can picture you as a little girl, sitting in what I imagine was a sterile, probably scary police station, swinging those legs, having to come up with really adult language for something that you experienced.

So I know for sure the Lord was with you in that moment, but it makes me really sad that you had to face that moment.

Ashley: Yes. And one of the craziest things was I just remember being asked questions because it wasn’t me who came forward.

Erin: There were others that your dad had been abusing.

Ashley: Yes. And so I just remember being asked questions. There was so much that I didn’t remember. Like, my mind just did not have answers to the questions they were giving me. It honestly wasn’t until later in my life that I started remembering things and was, like, “Wow!”

I didn’t realize back then because I think I was just so young, and my mind was just like, “Oh, I don’t know. I don’t think anything is going on.”

Erin: Right. You’re giving away freedom probably without even realizing it, because those that experience abuse . . . It can be easy to think, Why didn’t they just tell someone? or Why didn’t they just get out of the situation? or Why didn’t they just ask their church for help?

But it’s rarely that linear, rarely it’s that clear at the time. And the brain fog and the inability to articulate and the normalizing all of that can be a common experience of those who are experiencing maybe even a particular sexual abuse. So, I’m grateful you’re being honest, of course you are.

But, fast forward a little bit, your dad ends up going to jail for his crimes.

Ashley: Yes.

Erin: And so, he’s outside of the home, and life goes on.

Ashley: Yes.

Erin: So, that moment where you surrendered your life to Jesus was real, you meant it. You hit the teenage years, and you start to have clearer memories of what happened. Your family has imploded. There’s implications of all of this. What wrestling, what’s happening in your heart at that point?

Ashley: Yes. There were a lot of “why” questions of just, “Lord, if You are good like I’ve been hearing my entire life, then why are these terrible things happening?” I always heard, “God’s plan is sovereign and good.”

The only thing I could picture was God sitting and just smiling while all of these things were happening to my family, and that picture bothered me so much.

Erin: It should.

Ashley: Because I was, like, “Is the Lord sitting there and smiling while we’re falling apart?”

And so, I think one of things for me is since I grew up in the Word and in church, I knew that everybody needs God. I didn’t want to say, “I don’t need God.” My walk-around was, “I don’t want God. If God’s going to be doing these things, then I don’t want anything to do with it.”

But no one knew that I was falling apart on the inside. I went to a Christian high school. I was in church all the time. I knew the answers. I knew the right words to say. I knew how to walk around when people would say, “Are you okay?” 

Like, “Oh, I’m fine. I’m just tired. I’m just having a rough day.” Like everything’s fine, but internally I was imploding, and no one knew.

I so wish that I would have reached out to someone and said, “I’m falling apart on the inside. Can you help me?” Because I think Satan likes to back you into a corner.

Erin: Absolutely.

Ashley: He likes to make you think you’re alone.

Erin: Right.

Ashley: I was, like, “No one is going to understand. No one is going to believe me” because I’m just now remembering these things ten years down the road. And so, for me, I was just like, “Okay, this is just something I have to work through by myself.”

I started getting really bitter with the Lord. I stopped praying. I stopped reading my Bible. I was just, like, “I don’t want anything to do with this.” But no one knew.

I don’t know, that’s just some of the crazy parts about it. No one knew.

Erin: You’re touching on a paradox that all who suffer and all will suffer have to wrestle with, which is: if God is sovereign, if He really is King over all things, if He really is in control or on the throne (those are some of the churchy ways we describe, but it is clear in Scripture that God is sovereign), “How could He let this happen?” or “Why didn’t He step in?” or “Was He somehow helpless to stop this?” and “If He’s sovereign, if He could have stepped in, but He didn’t, how can He be good?”

Ashley: Yes.

Erin: There’s not easy answers there. I think sometimes you’ve mentioned that you knew the answers. You’d heard them.

Ashley: Yes.

Erin: God is good all the time. Right?

Ashley: Yes.

Erin: We hear that. And yet, there was this complex wrestling happening. I know there’s going to be people listening, and what you just articulated is what’s happening on their insides right now—for any number of reasons.

I mean, you didn’t physically wear the scars of sexual abuse, so it would be very hard to look at you and understand the complexities of what was going on inside of you.

Last night you and I were just hanging out, and we were talking about our teenage years. I described how I handled rebellion, which is, like those who throw their fists up in the air and say what you described, ”God, I don’t want what You have to offer.” 

And you said, “That’s where I was. I was so close to high-hand rebellion.” What shifted?

Ashley: Yes. I went to Cedarville University for college. We have a missions conference. Every spring missionaries come in, and they speak in chapel. They do breakout sessions, just to kind of show, “These are options that are out there.”

Erin: I don’t want to interrupt you, but I am curious why you chose to go to Bible college even during this internal wrestling?

Ashley: I think it was just the grace of God, because I very much wanted to know more. I wanted to know why I was still hanging on to what I believed. It had to be God hanging on to me, because I had opened my hands and had let go of Him.

Erin: Now, deconstruction is a buzzword, but we’ll use it because it describes a phenomenon often rooted in some sort of deep hurt. They are now saying, “I can’t believe what I was taught as a child. I can’t believe that Jesus loves me, this I know, anymore.”

Ashley: Yes.

Erin: You chose to continue walking toward Him even despite this internal wrestling, which again,.I love how much glory you give God in your story. That is such a grace.

So, you’re in Bible college. Your inside is a mess, but you’re in Bible college.

Ashley: Yes.

Erin: By the way, everybody else at Bible college, their insides are a mess to some degree. But, anyway, you’re at this mission’s conference, and the missionaries are beginning to speak about what?

Ashley: Yes. So we had a missionary come in. She and her husband were missionaries in Africa.

Erin: Okay.

Ashley: Her husband got sick and passed away on the mission field. She was talking about wrestling with the Lord of, “Why did this happen? We were doing so much.” It just kind of took her feet out from under her.

I just remember sitting there, and she said that the deepest wounds that you have become the well that you draw from to do ministry.

And it makes me tear up, because it was in that moment that the Lord just turned me around and put His hands on my shoulders, looked me in the eyes, and said, “I’ve been here the whole time.” It was just so sweet.

He was never rough with me. He never slapped me around. Like, this image of God that I had was to have heavy hands all the time.

Erin: Sure. You saw God as an abuser.

Ashley: Yes. And He was just so sweet and so loving and just turn me around and say, “I’ve been here the whole time. I don’t like what happened to you.” And it was in that moment that I totally shifted.

Erin: Well, my eyes are teary, too. They leak every time I hear you tell your story. It’s because I’m so grieved that you experienced that abuse.

But also because I know you are a representative of many who’ve experienced something similar and who do wonder, Where were You, God? Were You on some shiny throne, smiling down at us while my father was sexually abusing me?” or “while my father left our family?” or “while my mother was cold and mean?” Or insert a number of childhood experiences in there.

What do you think God was doing during that abuse?

Ashley: (Heavy sigh) I don’t know. I just know that the Lord has brought me to a place where I feel like I can share my story, and I feel like I can make much of Jesus in it. And despite everything that happened . . . I might never this side of eternity understand what God was doing, but I know that He was doing something, and I know that He is good, and He does good.

Erin: Yes.

Ashley: On the hard days, I cling to that. “God, You are good, and You do good.” I might not understand right now, but one day when I stand in glory, it’ll all make sense.

 

Erin: It will. I think He was weeping. II think Scripture makes it so clear that sin breaks the heart of God. Everybody that was touched by that situation in your family is a child of God, made in the image of God. I think the grief you’ve experienced, your mom’s experienced, others in the situation have experienced, probably pales in comparison to the Lord’s grief. That’s its own kind of comfort. He wasn’t indifferent to it.

Ashley: Amen.

Erin: So, you begin to turn around in that you understand that the Lord loves you.

Ashley: Yes.

Erin: You understand that He cares about what happened to you. You begin to have this desire to use the yuck to draw from those broken places to minister to others. 

But there was part of what you’d grown up reading and learning that you weren’t so sure about and that is His design for men and women—biblical manhood and womanhood we sometimes call them. And this idea that God’s design is that men lead—I’m generalizing here, simplifying—but God’s design in the home is that men lead and women submit.

Tell me why that part of the Bible still felt pretty repulsive to you.

Ashley: Yes. So, I was in some women’s ministry classes when I was at school.

Erin: Okay.

Ashley: That’s the first topic that they hit on: biblical manhood and biblical womanhood. They mentioned submission, and just the hair on the back of my neck stood up, because in my mind, submission hurt.

Erin: Right.

Ashley: Like, if I’m willing to submit to your will, I’m going to get abused. I’m going to get bulldozed. I’m going to get hurt. I’m not going to have a voice at all.

Erin: Because in your situation there was a level of submission, admittedly, not as God designed, where you were supposed to submit to your dad’s will, and your dad’s will was sinful.

Ashley: Yes. So I just remember thinking, In some circles submission might be a good thing. But in my circle, submission can’t be good. There’s no way.

And so I had a professor, and she told me, “You need to read the book Adorned

Erin: Did she know you were wrestling? 

Ashley: She knew a little bit that I was wrestling with it. Some of my papers, I wrote, “Well, this is this view, but I don’t really know how I feel about it.” 

So, she had just been talking to me after class one day and said, “I really think you need to read Adorned by Nancy. 

I was, like, “Okay.” I’d never heard of Nancy. I’d never heard of Revive Our Hearts.

She was, like, “You need to get it.” So I go on Amazon. I get it. It was on sale, which was fun.

Erin: Hooray!

Ashley: I get it. It comes. I read it in four days.

Erin: Okay. Let’s pause there, because this is not a small book. It’s not a four-day read for most people.

Ashley: No.

Erin: Because in that book, Nancy really lays out a lot of the things you were wrestling with.

Ashley: Yes.

Erin: She points to Titus 2, which gives us the model for discipleship that is manhood specific and womanhood specific. And Adorned comes from that through submitting ourselves to God’s plan, we adorn the beauty of the gospel. (I’m giving like the even shorter than the Cliff Notes or Wikipedia version here.) It’s really a treatise on what Scripture says about some of these things.

Ashley: Yes.

Erin: So, for you to read it in four days, it’s pretty amazing. Did you sleep?

Ashley: I did. But I was up late reading it.

Erin: Okay.

Ashley: I would finish my homework, and then I would go back to reading it. I just couldn’t put it down. Something about it was just so compelling to me.

Erin: You weren’t reading it. It was reading you.

Ashley: It was.

Erin: That happens sometimes with great books.

Ashley: When I finished it, I just remember sitting there with it in my hands and just thinking, Okay, God, if this is really what You want, if this is really the design for womanhood, I’m going to open my white-knuckled grip and say, “Okay, I will trust that this is good.”

It’s been just so beautiful. Like, the Lord just wooed me over, showing me that His design for women is good, and it is to protect them and to love them, and that He values women so greatly and allows them to do kingdom work. That is just so amazing because I think of the times like the Old Testament and the New Testament, and women were not valued at all.

Erin: No.

Ashley: But you look at Jesus’ view of women, and He invites them alongside of Him to do ministry. It’s amazing. So I took a step back, and I said, “Okay, submission is biblical. Submission is good. And somehow, the Lord is glorified through it.” It was just really sweet.

Nancy: That’s Revive Our Hearts staff members, Ashley Gibson and Erin Davis, talking about how God worked to adjust Ashley’s wrong thinking about Him. On a human level, it’s understandable because of how she’d been treated by her own father.

Ashley and Erin will go into this in more detail on tomorrow’s program, but I want to just mention here what they’ll talk about tomorrow, and that is that when God’s Word calls us to submit to human leaders that He places over us, that does not mean just passively allowing any kind of abuse to continue. For example, depending on the situation, you may need to get to a place of safety. Or if laws are being broken, the police or other civil authorities need to get involved. And, again, you’ll hear more tomorrow the steps that Ashley needed to take in her situation.

But, Dannah, just with what we’ve heard so far, Ashley’s life is a wonderful example of how she’s learned to distinguish between the world’s misconceptions, misunderstandings, and even outright lies and what God has beautifully designed, the order that He’s put in place.

Dannah: Yes, so good. And how cool is it that He used your book, Adorned, as part of that process!

Nancy: Yes, Dannah. I remember being so touched the first time Ashley and I sat over dinner, and she shared this story with me.

Dannah: By the way, we have more information about that book linked in the transcript of this program. You’ll find it at ReviveOurHearts.com.

Nancy: You know, a passage that comes to mind as we think about what Ashley shared today. It is a prophecy from the book of Isaiah in the Old Testament. He’s talking about the coming Messiah, the Servant of the Lord, and he said of the Messiah, “A bruised reed He will not break, and a faintly burning wick He will not quench. He will faithfully bring forth justice.”

I love that verse because it shows two important things about Jesus. First, it shows the sweet tenderness of Jesus who doesn’t just break bruised reeds or snuff out faintly burning wicks.

But it also shows, in the same verse, the strong, faithful justice of the Lord, the justice that will be exercised against all evildoers.

It may be that your story has some common points with Ashley’s. You may feel like you’re a bruised reed or a faintly smoldering candle. Remember this: Jesus will not break you. He won’t snuff you out. He’s gentle. He’s kind. He’s compassionate. He’s caring with hurting people, and that includes you.

And, if wrong has been done against you, don’t forget that the Day is coming, as surely as you’re hearing my voice right now. The Day is coming when our Lord, the righteous Judge, will return. The wicked will be punished. He will right all wrongs. He will make all things new.

He’s faithful. He’s strong. And, in fact, the very next verse in Isaiah 42 says, “He will not grow faint or be discouraged until He has established justice in the earth.”

And you can take that to the bank.

Dannah: Amen! Thanks for that powerful reminder, Nancy.

Now, again, we’ll hear more from Erin Davis and Ashley Gibson tomorrow on Revive Our Hearts.

And a quick reminder that we’re in the middle of our year-end matching-gift campaign. So any donation we receive in December will be effectively doubled by a group of folks who believe in what we’re all about here, and who want to challenge you to give. We’d love to hear from you.

To make a donation and have it matched, just go to ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1-800-569-5959.

Tomorrow, Erin and Ashley continue their conversation. We’ll hear a little bit about Ashley’s relationship with her husband, and she’ll share this impassioned message with you.

Ashley: I just want you to know that whatever happens in your life, God is so good, and He will redeem what you’ve been through. You might never see it this side of eternity, but He will.

Dannah: Yes. Please be back for Revive Our Hearts.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth calling you to treasure your freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

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