Don’t Let Trauma Be Your Normal

SURVIVAL SKILLS 

Penny Maxwell grew up in a home where she was physically, emotionally, and sexually abused. Her mother had problems of her own between three marriages and took her anger out on Penny and her brother. Penny was the least favorite of the two kids so she got the brunt of the physical and emotional abuse.

Her father was pretty much a crude ladies' man that relished sleeping around and went through five marriages. Penny didn’t even realize that she and her brother had different fathers until she overheard someone saying it. 

From an early age until about the time she was eleven, Penny’s grandfather molested her. She was terrified of him and tried everything she could to stay away. Penny explains, “If I wasn’t feeling well, my mother would call my grandfather to pick me up, and I knew what that meant. So I went to school even if I felt sick and tried to hold it together.”

One day when she was sick at school and threw up everywhere the teacher sent her to the nurse’s office. “Crying, I kept saying, ‘I feel good. It was an accident. I didn’t mean it.'” She would eventually work up the courage to tell her family who didn’t believe her, called her a liar and made excuses for him. When other victims came forward they were forced to face the truth.

Penny had to face him in court and point him out. He was convicted but his stay in jail was short-lived when Penny’s mother bailed him out. This experience cemented her feelings that nobody cared for her and that she couldn’t trust anyone. 

JEKYLL & HYDE

Because of the anxiety and fear that plagued her, Penny admits, “It may sound hard to believe, but the sexual abuse was not what harmed me most from my childhood. The hardest thing was having Jekyll and Hyde for a mother. The unpredictability caused crippling anxiety. With my grandfather, I knew exactly what was going to happen. There were no surprises. But with my mother, I never knew if she was to lash out at me or praise me.”

Things began to look up when Penny’s mom married for the third time. He was a wealthy entrepreneur who was cold and annoyed with Penny and her brother, but Penny admits that at least he never beat them. Being thrust from poverty to wealth, she quickly realized that having that money didn’t solve their problems, it only magnified them.

“I can honestly say that having wealth during that time in my life taught me two good things: First, my Father in heaven will always care for me. Second, money and things are just not that important. Relationships are.”

When Penny was at her friend’s homes and saw how a normal family interacted—parents loving and nurturing their kids--she would have traded all the money in the world, just to have that kind of love from her parents. 

FINDING REFUGE

Even though she lived through the unimaginable, Penny never blamed God. She realized from a young age that the only place she felt safe was when she went to church and felt the love of the Lord. At the early age of four years old, when they lived in poverty, a church bus would come to their neighborhood and little Penny would board the bus and go by herself. That was the beginning of her relationship with God and giving her life to Him.

MOM GETS SAVED BUT NOT SET FREE

When Penny’s mom got sick, she began to seek God as well and got saved. Unfortunately, her mean and controlling personality just got masked behind self-righteousness, spiritual manipulation, and becoming more critical of others.  A few examples are when she approached Penny one day saying the Holy Spirit showed her that Penny was on drugs. There was nothing true about that statement and Penny tried to explain it to her mom but no avail.

Another was when Penny was super excited about an upcoming Christian concert. But when Penny used the clothes dryer to try to shrink her jeans, her mom was outraged that Penny would waste electricity on drying only one pair of jeans. Even though they were wealthy at this point, she refused to allow Penny to go to the concert. She was crushed.

Penny was not allowed to go with her friend to a Baptist church because they were not good enough and her Jewish friend was not allowed to park in their driveway or come into their home.

When Penny finally grew up and left to attend college, she became a healthier person. She met and eventually married Troy, who also grew up in a dysfunctional family. Penny thought Troy would be her prince and save her from anything bad. She soon learned that things didn’t work that way. Troy had to tell her that he would be a great husband but couldn’t be Jesus to her. She realized that he was right and that they both had to learn to allow God to heal them from past hurts for their marriage to thrive.

RESETTING BROKEN BONES

The Lord began to deal with Penny regarding her fear and anxiety. He asked her if she would allow him to reset her broken bones. “I knew by then that I had never fully grieved the loss of my childhood. I had done some work here and there, pulling weeds out of the garden of my heart. I had made progress in dealing with things such as bitterness over my loss of innocence and the lack of protection I received. I had forgiven people. But God wanted to renovate my garden entirely. No more pulling weeds—the Lord was asking me to till the soil and plow things under… He was envisioning a complete makeover.”

Once she agreed, the memories came back and she allowed God to help her truly grieve and show her how to process through the pain, learn to trust again, and give Him her fear of abandonment.