Right in the Middle but Left Out

By Philip Raymond Cook

The central theme of this book is how to identify and deal with the realities of incest. Most of the time incest victims have a great deal of emotional, physical, and sexual pain. Too many times it literally takes years and years for a child to work through all the tormenting, and too many times all they can do is subdue it, which makes them deal with it in their thirties and forties. It has a way of compounding all relationships, especially in marriages and parenthood. For the victim, it is frightening and extremely painful as memories keep rushing in. For them, there are self-help books, but for the families of victims, they are victimized by the abusers of the victims. It just becomes a horrifying adventure of not knowing what is going to happen next. Confusion and instability keep everything within a family structure to go into chaos, especially between spouses. There are so very few books for the families of victims, and especially any that deal with Christianity or other religions that have special moral expectations. By no means is anyone ever beyond God's understanding and love, but each person has to deal with these issues for themselves. We are not to judge or demand how anyone else deals with their relationships with God. The problem is, everyone in the family feels too much responsibility, guilt, and anger. The anger is the hardest thing to deal with because it reaches out to others and inward toward oneself.

Each chapter deals with different issues and how everyone is affected by everything that goes on, and that includes both good and bad decisions. My hope is each person learns how to love themselves and everyone else in the healthiest and best ways. The main problem has to be dealt with by the victim, or everyone in the family automatically becomes a victim as well. I wish everyone to gain some form of understanding and appropriate ways to love the victims of incest. Not all times do things always work out the way we would like, and so each of us has to take responsibility for ourselves. Each person has to know themselves and learn to love no matter what happens.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 13, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503517066

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Copyright © 2015 by Philip Raymond Cook.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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NRSV

Scripture quotations marked NRSV are taken from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, © 1989, by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Rev. date: 11/13/2014

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CONTENTS

Who In The World Is Philip Raymond Cook?

What In The Name of God Is Happening? (All the Invisible but Visible Signs)

What in the Name of God Caused This?

How Do We Live with This?

Why My Wife, My Family, and Me?

Is Sin Real?

What Happened to the Men in the Group?

The Sins

Now A Special Message for the Children

Now What Is Required of Me?

WHO IN THE WORLD IS

PHILIP RAYMOND COOK?

B EFORE I GET too deeply into a story of a heartbreaking time, I feel I must let you know who I am as a person. My parents used to define themselves by what they did for a living, but I believe each of us is a whole lot more than what we do for a living.

So when I go to explain who I am, I can honestly say I am a husband, a father, a grandfather, a son, and a brother who is loving, kind, compassionate, understanding, and a fun human being. As Paul Simon said so wonderfully in a song, I’m still crazy after all these years. In spite of a lot of difficult times in my life, I try to keep a great sense of humor, roll with the punches, and look for the silver lining even in the midst of the darkest cloud (most of the time). I am a person with all kinds of faults, but through Christ, I can even forgive myself and actually love myself.

The story you will read sounds so sad and difficult, but each of us will see what we need to see. For me, I need to see hope, peace, love, understanding, joy, and redemption from all I have been through. The good news is I have found all the above through Jesus the Christ.

In spite of who I am and what I have done in and through my life, I can still celebrate because of the great amount of unbelievable blessings God has given me every day. As far as a profession, most of my adult life I was a United Methodist pastor. Just like everyone else, I know I had my times of griping and complaining, but mostly, I have been blessed with one remarkable life full of love, kindness, compassion, understanding, and many wonderful times of just pure fun.

I have come to believe redemption is a much misunderstood concept theologically. Because we have the understanding of what I call an Americanized understanding of the scripture, we miss the blessings that surround us all the time, even when we go to hell and back, for God is always with us. Redemption is more available than most of us would ever believe and yet is much less spectacular than what we in America have come to expect because of Hollywood. Most of the time, God’s loving hands are in the midst of our situations, and we don’t even see them, but they are there by faith, not by seeing, but by believing.

My grandpa and grandma Jones were the people who first taught me about unconditional love. They always believed in me, and I somehow always knew it even if they said so or not. In many ways, I can say they were the right kind of anchor in the midst of the storms of my life. Grandpa was my first hero! He laughed a great deal of the time and always loved no matter what happened in his life.

As you read through this book, you will also see how much my sister meant to me and how she helped shape and form me. Now, like everyone else in this world, my grandparents and sister, none of them were perfect, just open to be used by God to be a blessing to me when I needed it the most. This is how the scripture explains to me that all of us have our opportunity to be an angel for someone else, but we also have the opportunity to be the tempter and corrupter of others as well. It is all in how we behave and how God chooses to use us to touch someone else. God is so powerful that even the worst kind of touch by someone can be redeemed to be the best lesson we ever needed to learn in order to become who we can fully become.

The most important things I remember are good times and people who touched me in the most loving ways. The prayer I have for each individual is for them to have the opportunity to know Jesus the Christ as their Lord and Savior and through him be positive and full of fun no matter what circumstances they may find themselves in. Circumstances don’t really have the power by themselves to have control over us, for we have to give our circumstances permission to have that kind of power over us. Disappointments, difficulties, broken dreams, and promises will happen to each and every living person, but it is how we allow it to affect us that makes all the difference in the world.

In spite of all his problems and flaws, I still love the apostle Paul for he knew what made life worth living. It wasn’t our circumstances, our situations, or our knowable or unknowable sins, but rather, what makes life worth living is in knowing we are saved by the grace of God and the grace of God alone through Jesus the Christ.

Apostle Paul stated he knew what it was like to be content in plenty and in want. Three times he lost everything he owned and was in and out of prison time and time again, yet he was the one that said, after struggling with the reality of his own sin, Who is going to save me from this body of sin and death? And then he said, Thanks be to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

That reality has hit me over my head again and again. It has been with me all along, every day of my life, but sometimes, my eyes are open, and sometimes I am blinded by giving up and giving in to my circumstances and situations. Then I focus so much on those things rather than upon the wonder and fullness of God present with me no matter what I go through. It makes no difference if I win or lose or fall somewhere in between; because of what Christ has done for me, I will always be a winner regardless of my circumstances or situations or what anyone else thinks of me.

I am blessed to have an ongoing list of the things that have given me a tremendous reason to know that everything in my life has already been redeemed. I want to list a few of these:

• Living in a neighborhood with friends at an early age.

• Having a sister who loved and cared for me.

• Having parents who did the very best they knew to do and always with love.

• Having my grandpa and grandma Jones, who taught me faith and understanding.

• Moving to a farm when I was six years old.

• Going to a very small grade school and getting one-on-one time with my teachers.

• Having a close number of friends and knowing we could lean on one another.

• Learning how to play baseball, football, and basketball and learning how to run.

• Being given the God-given gift of singing with ease and comfort in front of people.

• Going from being extremely shy to being extremely outgoing.

• Having to learn some things the hard way and learning other things the easier way.

• Having to go to church every Sunday because I was taken by my mother and father.

• Finding myself while in isolation and surrounded by millions.

• Being taught how to use a gun properly at a very early age, and yet still hating and loving them at the same time.

• Buying a pitch tent with a baseball friend while in the sixth grade.

• Learning what a true friend is through Bill Newton.

• Being blessed with the love of animals all around me.

• Being blessed with some rather unusual adults whom other people might have looked down on, special people who helped me to love all people no matter what they look like or what they are capable of doing or not doing.

• Never growing up with alcohol in the home or even within the family.

• Never hearing a close family member cuss until I was fourteen.

• Having music touch my heart at an early age.

• Finding a friend who brought the music out of me and encouraged me to continue to go forward with my talent.

• Being respected enough in high school to be considered everyone’s brother.

• Being blessed with girlfriends.

• Being blessed by the teachings of my mother about sex.

• Working in a hospital.

• Getting my first car and knowing the meaning of freedom.

• Helping my sister by drilling her for her nurse’s exams.

• Having the wonderful sense of humor in giving funny gifts to my sister.

• The disappointment of not being able to keep the scholarship I was awarded to enroll in a major university.

• Experiencing the great influence of Asbury University, both good and bad, for they showed me more of the grace of God working through some of the most unlikely people.

• Having the knowledge to know when God was leading and when he wasn’t, even if it was painful.

• Learning the difference between infatuation and love.

• Learning how to judge character and following it.

• Transferring to another small United Methodist University through my parents’ strength.

• Knowing when my major had to be changed.

• Having fun of breaking all the odd rules.

• Meeting Kathy for the very first time and knowing God was working through her.

• Having the reality check immediately about what the ministry was all about by being appointed to my own hometown. It is a lot easier learning the hard lessons fast and first.

• Getting to choose my in-laws by adopting them.

• Having my adopted in-laws as my best friends.

• Having compassionate and loving members of my congregations who give to me so unconditionally.

• Having the members of my congregation point out my faults.

• Making mistakes, for they taught me the most even when it hurt the most.

• Having the honor of touching other people’s lives in a positive way.

• Somehow almost never being intimidated by anyone in my life.

• Having the gift of laughter and humor.

• Having God bring Debra and her family into my life—a true gift of God!

• Knowing love wins over all!

• Knowing Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior.

The list is endless, which is who I mostly am, eternally grateful for this life and the life yet to come.

WHAT IN THE NAME OF GOD IS HAPPENING? (ALL THE INVISIBLE BUT VISIBLE SIGNS)

I T IS UNBELIEVABLE the number of times I have asked the question, What in the name of God is happening? Now, being a trained professional, I would have thought I would not have been so ignorant or naive, but I was right in the middle and left out without even knowing it or at least acknowledging it for years. I am certain that for some people, the signs were as visible as the day is long, but since I wasn’t looking for signs of any kind, they were bound to hit me over my head. I am extremely hardheaded, so that is exactly what happened to me. Like many people, I was only looking for what I wanted to see. Most of the time I was extremely happy and fulfilled in all I was doing, so what difference did a little bump here and there mean?

I never even expected that my wife of twenty-three years was a victim of incest, and I never wanted to even think about such a thing for this was the woman I loved and wanted to protect all my life, but it wasn’t something I could do. In order to understand, I have to look at my own background and the things I had been through to understand everything, especially why I chose to be so blind and hardheaded. What in the name of God was happening, and what was making me feel I was right in the middle and yet left out? Well, the truth of the matter is, almost no one lives a life without being victimized somewhere along the line.

All too often this world is so messed up, and many times that is what makes life so interesting. But there are those times when we can’t even begin to understand what drives people to do some of the most unthinkable things in this world. I am one person who never would have thought I would have had to deal with so many difficult issues in this life, but on the other hand, I wasn’t even aware of it and thought of it as being normal. I even had difficulty coming into this world, for when I was born, I had a calcium deficiency, and the doctor who delivered me told my parents that if I made it to age two, then I probably would live. I know now this must have been a terrible experience for my mom and dad because my mom had already been through a stillbirth and buried the baby right after he was born. Now I know she was probably scared to death and still in the grieving process when I was born with my problems. Maybe that is the reason I don’t have too many memories of my parents being overly affectionate, but many people of that generation didn’t give a whole lot of affection. Maybe the truth was I was not that loveable from the very beginning, for I have always been ornery. To help my calcium deficiency, the doctor gave me a calcium shot that did not take; it rotted out and left a scar on my right buttock, a scar that happened to be located right over my sciatic nerve. So I started out in this life with immediate scars that would affect me the rest of my life. I do believe though this physical scar made me a fighter that I would never have been.

The older I get, the more I am convinced that all families are dysfunctional to some degree and others to every degree possible. Even with the many people I have met in my life, I still have not met a perfect person, let alone a perfect family. When I was no more than one and two, I remember being around my father’s family more than my mom’s. I never knew why I hated being around my dad’s family, but I never liked one moment of being with the people whom my mom and dad said I was supposed to like, and yet I liked those whom they told me I was not supposed to like. You see how ornery I truly was?

It was funny because what they tried to protect me from was the foul language my uncle and his two brothers