Don’t allow fear to ‘blot out’ God’s blessings for you
By Dwight Wilson, M.Div., M.A., LPC, RPT
Perhaps you can’t explain it, but it won’t seem to go away.
Fear sometimes is faceless horrors that lie waiting in the silent darkness of night. It is unreasonable phobias that exist in the furthest reaches of the mind and approaching shadows that threaten to blot out all light. All are contained in the worthless scripts known as fears, a terrible script that must be re-written and erased to pave the way for a rewarding, satisfactory life.
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Alisha sees 'hope at By Bob Murdaugh
“At first, he let me talk before he would talk, and he kept bringing his Bible out and showing me the scriptures,” Alisha says. Her sessions with Dwight sometimes lasted longer than their scheduled hour. There was a time when she'd refuse to leave her bedroom at home, yet she'd drive herself to Dwight’s office at Colbert-Lauderdale Baptist Association and eventually started looking forward to the visits. “I felt like I had been down in a hole for 41 years, but with Dwight's help, I began to be able to look up and see hope at the end of the tunnel,” Alisha says. She developed enough courage to make a public profession of faith in Jesus Christ at her church and walk the aisle on another Sunday to put money in the offering box on her birthday. Dwight encouraged her to fill a major speaking role in an Easter play and help care for children in the church nursery. In Fall 2004, she bravely testified against her father in the week-long trial while family members sneered at her. The court proceedings led to his imprisonment. Alisha knows her father cannot hurt her physically or sexually anymore, but she says she continues to feel like she's trapped emotionally by the fear with which she has lived all of her life. The beatings she witnessed and took herself at the hands of her father until she left home at age 19 have made scars that can never be erased, she believes. “I felt like I had been down in a hole for 41 years, but with Dwight's help,
About four months after she starting coming to Dwight, Alisha made him aware during one of their sessions that she had a gun in her purse. She was deeply depressed and was considering suicide. “What surprised me the most was that Dwight was willing to sit with me for a long time that day and calmly talk with me for as long as I needed,” Alisha recalls. “That’s really when I realized that I could trust Dwight 100 percent. That day, I wrote in my journal that I could not understand how this stranger could care more about me than my own mother cares about me. “Dwight was the first counselor to say that my mother should have been the protector of her children,” Alisha says. One of her most painful childhood memories is of the day her father dragged her to the woods near their northern Alabama home and forced her to watch as he brutally killed a neighbor’s dog. “I came home with blood all over my clothes, and my mother never asked what happened or showed any concern for me,” Alisha reports. “I don’t know why my daddy didn’t kill me and bury me in the woods that day. He could have easily made up some story, because most men who knew him were afraid of him and would not have done anything.” The eldest of four children, Alisha was always the protector. When she and her siblings heard their father’s car coming up the driveway, they would rush to their bed, huddle under the covers, and Alisha would lead them in prayer that God would spare them from more abuse. “When Daddy pulled into the driveway and was drunk, he would push the horn, which meant for me to come and get him out of the car,” Alisha remembers. “He could not walk by himself, and it was me that Mother hollered for to go bring Daddy in. I was about 5 feet, 4 inches tall and weighed about 130 pounds, and he was about 5 feet, 10 inches tall and weighed 250 pounds.” Dwight frequently encouraged Alisha to try to think of the greater purpose God has for all of her pain. He reminded her that God wants to use her life history to help others overcome abuse. “Alisha is a brilliant lady, and I do admire her tremendously, ” Dwight says. Acknowledging her desire to become a writer, he has encouraged her to pursue a college degree. “She talks about how I have helped her, but we don’t talk much about how much I have gained through the time I have listened and cried with this courageous lady,” Dwight says. He comments that his sessions with Alisha gave him insight into the evil in the world and the hope of Christ. “When I first saw Alisha, I thought, `Oh, dear God, this is way beyond me. I think I was more scared than she was,” says Dwight, an Alabama Baptist pastor for several years. “Then I realized that is why God put me here, and that’s why I have to depend on Him. Alisha caused me to grow as a counselor, a Christian, a husband, and |
Soon after her first visit with Dwight at his Sheffield, Alabama office, Alisha wrote in her journal at home, “Oh God, he’s a man!” But Dwight’s compassion eventually dispelled all of her concerns.
“My mind has to picture these memories every day that my feet hit the floor. Normal people cannot possibly know what it is like to live in fear,” Alisha says. “My daddy told me that I had no value and that my opinions didn’t matter. Even being married to a man I deeply love and being a mother, I’ve had to constantly deal with feelings that I’m not capable of hugging my husband and children, correcting my children, or deciding how money is spent.”
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