Our MISSION: to provide sexual abuse survivors with a safe opportunity to pursue healing, experience encouragement through God-centered community, and rest in the promise of the Lord’s presence and strength: for the Lord her God will be with her wherever she goes.
Our VISION:
We desire to offer sexual abuse survivors hope for healing, encouragement, and rest in their healing journey. We believe the promise in scripture that the Lord is able to do immeasurably more in us than we could ever ask for or imagine by His Spirit (Ephesians 3:20), and with that in mind we believe that as sexual abuse survivors we have no reason to settle for being “better” – better than I used to be, more healed than I was. We no longer have to cling to the coping strategies we’ve developed over the years or continue striving to merely survive under our own power. Instead we can embrace a deeper trust, a new dependence on the One is who is ever faithful to prosper His children in His time and in His way. We can courageously press on in our journey to complete healing from the trauma and wounds of our sexual abuse experience.
However, many sexual abuse survivors don’t feel courageous in their pursuit of healing, but are instead afraid – afraid to hope for freedom, hesitant to desire wholeness – because they can’t imagine what healing might look like or how it might be attained. Brokenness we understand. But wholeness? Complete healing? We don’t dare hope it’s possible. That’s why we need the encouragement that comes from a God-centered, truth-focused community. Scripture tells us that Christ is the head and we are His body, each part supplying strength to the others (Ephesians 4:15-16). Our faith, stories, testimonies, and breakthroughs are not for ourselves alone, but are to be God’s divine provision of encouragement and comfort to others with whom we are connected (2 Corinthians 3-4). In the same way, our brokenness is not to be carried alone (Galatians 6:2). In His goodness and grace, our Heavenly Father has provided us with community, a spiritual pipeline through which courage and comfort is poured into our hearts and then through us into the hearts of others, so that every need is met (Acts 4:34).
From community we draw the strength and courage to press on – to hope and to heal, but also to rest. Scripture exhorts us, “Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). Exodus 14:14 tells us, “The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.” Yet stillness and rest are not our go-to responses to heartache (or anything else, for that matter). Spiritual and emotional rest is a discipline, a learned response, that comes from spending time with the Lord, learning who He is and who we are in Him. Rest is trust in action: trust that He is strong enough to keep us close when our emotions make us feel distant, powerful enough to heal our deepest wounds yet loving enough to enjoy us right where I am, and faithful enough to keep working on us no matter how long it takes. Rest is a vital part of our healing journey, because it requires us to stop forcing ourselves to be okay by our own power, and to allow Him – the one who is able to do immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine – to make us more than okay: completely healed, entirely whole, perfectly secure in Him.
Thank you for joining us on our journey.
Hope for HER Ministries 