Deliver Me from Evil; This is My Story-This is My Song

By Meghan Foxx

For far too many years Meghan accepted her status as a victim of incest and believed she had circumvented any long-lasting impact on her life. She didn't know the emotional turmoil she felt resulted from narcissistic abuse. The torment left an indelible mark on her life that led to cycling relationships between lust and narcissistic abuse. Relationships mirrored the one that should have taught respect and love from a man - the relationship with her father. In this transparent and powerful memoir, Meghan invites the reader to walk back in time as she unlocks painful memories that were designed to confine her to a life of bondage. Her journey to healing begins when she senses urgings to leave her hometown after a long and successful career. Eager to settle in a new location, her excitement rapidly turns into disabling exhaustion as further stressful events command her time, energy, and attention. Her life shifts through a powerful spiritual transformation after divine messengers provide truths about her past. Compelled to embrace her spiritual beginnings, Meghan weaves together sound theology with biblical insight that sharpens her view to bring life into focus. Decades of false beliefs wrapped in fear begin to unravel as the tragedy of Meghan's childhood unfolds. Witness compelling news that provides clarity to her life, arouses understanding, and promotes healing. Walk with Meghan as she reveals evil beginnings and responds by declaring war on the enemy. Her spirit whispered: "The enemy wouldn't attack if something within you wasn't valuable. Write your story." Meghan retraces her steps and boldly exposes the god of this world, his tactics and strategies. In obedience to her inner spirit she writes a compelling story about the shame of abuse, her rebellious response, God's love, and the path to freedom and righteousness in Jesus Christ.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Feb 26, 2020
• ISBN: 9781645594826

Book preview

Please Meet the Family

My Mom, Betsy

With Dad, Mom birthed six rug rats: three boys and three girls. I’m that middle child we often hear about who felt invisible much of the time. The pecking order: Alan, Sharon, Marcie, Meghan (that’d be me), Lee, and Jack. Dad and Mom are deceased, as are Marcie and Jack.

Mom was a homemaker and lived much of her life in the small town of Wheaton, Illinois. She didn’t apply for her driver’s license until later in life and was usually at the mercy of Dad to take her shopping. We lived in a decent-sized ranch with three bedrooms, a small living room, kitchen, studio, and bath. Three boys slept in one room and the three girls slept in the other. Our home was also a perpetual work-in-progress as walls were removed or erected at all hours of the day or night. Project after project, Mom’s vision for our home was endless. These projects served as a diversion to the stressors of her life. She worked hard as a wife and mother of six children. She planted and tilled a good-sized garden, tending to it daily over the warm spring, summer, and fall months. Keeping a clean house free of clutter was a high priority for her. As I reflect upon her need for a clean and tidy home, and contrast it with mine, I understand that it was necessary for her to feel a sense of control over her environment. With little means but a creative talent, she did all she could to make our house a home. She was extremely shy and subservient in all her ways. I’ve spent much time reminiscing about the fifties and sixties when Mom was raising six children in a rural area. I know she had to have been so tired. She had a distracted husband and she was alone in raising her children. More than anything else in life, Mom sought love, joy, and peace in her home and in the lives of her family. I know she felt she failed on all counts.

Mom was a woman who regretted much about her life. I didn’t know this until I was in my fifties. I discovered that she spent time rewinding the tapes in her head, contrasting her actions with choices her children made. She often told me that I was a wonderful mother to my daughter, and she followed that sentiment by telling me how stupid and naive she was as a mother and how she simply didn’t know anything about raising a family. She grieved greatly over her life; it was so clear. For a woman whose motto to her children was to never look back, she spent most of her quiet time doing exactly that — and believing herself to be the epitome of inadequacy. I could see the intense turmoil in her heart. There would be no reassuring her of who she was as a person or as a mother. She didn’t know the source of her thoughts, but they weren’t hers. They didn’t belong to her. The enemy placed that mess in her head to rob her of all joy and peace. She didn’t know she had authority over the negative emotions. She suffered an entire lifetime, and so incredibly needlessly.

My Dad, William, aka Mr. Praise Time

An uncommonly known bit of information about Dad is that he married at age twenty-one and had two children, a boy and a girl. His then wife, Ethel, died of cancer when the children were in their early teens. I was too young to remember my stepsister, Carol, but my memory stored a snapshot of my stepbrother, William. Both lived in our home after their mother died. Soon they moved to California as neither was happy living in our home. Dad rarely heard from Carol or Billy, neither of them ever returned to Illinois to visit him.

As a father, Dad was often absent in our day-to-day lives and functions. He never attended school activities, nor did he ever read a report card. Mom attended parent-teacher conferences alone. He wasn’t home much in my early years, except at night and on the weekends. At those times, he’d be outside working on projects for the house. He had a God-given ability to build anything. He loved the outdoors, and from early morning to late at night on the weekends, he was usually outside working. Mom was always close by, handing him tools he needed or serving him hot coffee. I can still hear him yell to Mom, Betsy, get me the hammer. When Dad’s chores were done, he’d turn the volume on the television to high so that whatever game was playing might be heard in every room. He loved all sports, but in the summer, it was baseball I remember the most. I was usually on the floor in front of large box fan in the living room drifting off to sleep to the sounds of the fan and baseball, and to the smell of a roast or fresh bread baking in the oven. There wasn’t much else to do in a small town on Sunday afternoons.

Dad loved playing practical jokes on Mom, and he loved grossing her out. It got a bit old though. He regularly cut a hole in a paper plate, inserted his finger, poured ketchup on it, and showed the faux-looking severed finger to Mom as if he hadn’t pulled that prank many times before. He thought it was just too funny, but we eventually learned to ignore him. It never stopped him from trying. One day he severely injured himself, and his love of pranks backfired a bit on this day. Dad and Mom were outside laying drain tiles on a Sunday afternoon. He was cutting the tiles on our electric table saw, and Mom was digging a trench farther down our long driveway in preparation for the tiles to be laid. Dad suddenly began swerving and stumbling toward Mom, calling out to her. I was inside the house. I heard Sharon start to scream, and as I ran outside, I saw Mom helping Dad into the car. He was holding a towel to his face. Blood was everywhere. Something on the table saw broke, and the carbide blade shattered as it hit him in the face. As Dad was getting into the car, I saw him pulling pieces of the blade out of his face. I know he was in shock. As Mom told the story, Dad stumbled toward her, and as she looked up at him, she noticed he was holding his face and what seemed to be blood was running down his neck. She resumed shoveling, assuming it was another prank. As Dad got closer to her, he said, Betsy, look what I did. Mom looked up once again, and this time she saw he was badly injured. It wasn’t another prank. She rushed toward him. Sharon drove Dad and Mom to the nearest hospital, and for several hours, the family waited for news on Dad’s condition. Dad was in the emergency room before the plastic surgeon arrived three hours later. The emergency personnel were afraid the blade had cut his palate. The plastic surgeon placed eighty stitches on the outside of Dad’s face and eighty stitches on the inside of his face. The surgeon told my parents that had the blade entered his face a centimeter in either direction of his temple, he would not have survived. I remember looking at his face when he returned home that day; it was badly swollen, and I could easily see the large incision that extended from just below the eye to the chin. The blade had torn through his lips. Dad was in significant pain and was finding pieces of the blade in his mouth after he arrived back home. I don’t recall him ever pulling pranks on Mom after that accident. Dad didn’t have much fear and wasn’t a cautious man when working on projects in the home. He enjoyed working but gave little thought to safety.

Oldest Brother, Alan

I learned recently that Mom didn’t register Alan for school until he was age seven. Neither of us knew why, but I have some ideas based on conversations with Alan long after Mom died. Alan told me that when he started school, he was immediately advanced three grades because of his abilities. Learning this detail decades into my life makes me understand that there was much happening in my family that I didn’t know. Maybe it was because of the eight-year age difference between Alan and me. He spent much of his time working, was aloof, and still is an extremely private person. He, like many of his siblings, has kept the details of our lives to himself. Mom adored and respected him. She was the one Alan confided in all her life. And while they remained close until she died, he understood that I was the attentive daughter to our mom, as I kept a close watch over her.

On a visit to the Holy Land, my parents also visited Athens, Greece, where they met a young lady named Eleutherae. She made quite an impression on them when she said she dreamed of living in America and wanted a husband and a family. Alan made a trip to meet El, and at age twenty-six, he married her. They had one son, Jordan, but the marriage dissolved twelve years later.

Young boys are not meant to carry the types of anxieties, fears, and doubts that Alan bore. As I reflect on all he has told me the last several years, my heart breaks for what he endured as a young boy and as a young man. What causes a deep heartache is knowing that God didn’t intend for him to carry turmoil that didn’t belong to him. I suspect Alan always knew God had a bigger plan for his life, and I’m certain Alan knew the plan included broadcasting the gospel to millions of lost souls via a radio ministry. There’s much I could write about my brother. He always has been a righteous, kindhearted, and generous man. He recently told me about a rhema God gave him as he struggled to understand the issues of life as a young boy. He was bothered by the tragedies of life and wondered how a god of love could allow so many bad things to happen. This is the dilemma that the enemy serves to each one of us. Alan said that Ecclesiastes 12:13 was the answer he was given by God. He said this one verse answered the questions he had about life, and he knew it was from God because the verse coincided with his December 13 birth date, a date and verse he would never forget. Coincidentally, Mom’s birthday was December 14, and I’ve included that verse on her behalf as well.

Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep His commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil. (Ecclesiastes 12:13–14)

There’s a host of experiences and happenings I realize that I’ll never know about my family. It makes me sad. Alan carried tremendous burdens that only Mom understood. They leaned on one another. How disheartening it is to learn things about my siblings I never knew while we lived under one roof. It is a helpless, unsettling feeling in the heart, one that gives pause as I contemplate how things might have been different. It’s a realization that I may not have given it my all. Perhaps I wasn’t paying attention or asking questions. I don’t know why I didn’t seem to have a desire to know everything about my family. There was much I could have questioned. It’s hard to put into words how it feels to have a sudden awareness of issues in the family that once were muddled. So much about my family and about myself was more apparent after my retirement when Alan and I began engaging in conversation about our childhood.

Older Sisters, Sharon and Marcie

My two eldest sisters were separated in age by eleven months. Sharon clearly established herself as the boss as soon as she figured out that she could, and Marcie assumed the role of the accommodating and selfless sister. They attended church together when they were teenagers and participated in church group activities.

Sharon married at age eighteen. The threat of being drafted in the Viet Nam war was probably a common reason for early-age marriages at the time. One day, nearly eleven years after she married, Sharon met me for lunch. She was bothered by her husband not wanting a child. She knew the marriage was one of convenience, his convenience, and the marriage ended soon after that day we talked at lunch. I can’t recall ever being invited to lunch, but she wanted to talk that day. I remember thinking how odd it felt that she wanted my opinion. It wasn’t something she’d ever sought before that day. Sharon remarried a few years after her marriage dissolved, and she has one daughter and two grandsons.

The three- to four-year age difference between me, Marcie, and Sharon left me on the outside of their circle of friends. My interests were different as were my friends, and there wasn’t a closeness between my sisters and me growing up, or in the subsequent years. Marcie wasn’t happy to share a room with me when we were young, and she was often livid that I’d borrow her clothes to wear. I remember Mom being annoyed when Marcie would slam drawers shut most mornings as she was getting ready for school. Marcie fought with me continually, it seemed. I do know she was hopping mad when I wore her nylons. How was I supposed to know when I pinned the stockings to my panties that gravity would cause the safety pins to rip huge holes at the top of the nylons, making them unwearable? No doubt some of my actions rightfully upset her when I attempted to imitate my older sister.

After Marcie married and started a family at age twenty-one, I became the family photographer. I was the one interested in cameras and family pictures, and I often took photos when her family visited our home. As I got older, I realized that Marcie was a typical Suzie homemaker, raising three small children. I loved being an aunt. Marcie seemed happy to be raising children, baking cookies, making meals for her family, being a mom and a wife. I always suspected that Sharon also admired her, even though she remained the leader.

Younger Brothers, Lee and Jack

Lee and Jack were also close to one another in age. Lee and I were separated by a year and a half, and Lee and Jack by two years. They were so different from each other in likes and dislikes, mannerisms, beliefs, attitudes, and interests, yet Lee and Jack were close to and understood each other. When Jack did something Lee didn’t like, no one knew about it. Whereas when Lee did something Jack didn’t like, we all heard about it. Lee wasn’t the tattletale. He kept secrets. Lee was blessed with the ability to fix anything and make anything, much like Dad. His strong desire, it seemed, was to emulate Alan. Even as a young girl, it alarmed me when I discovered that Lee signed his homework with Alan’s name, assuming his brother’s identity at a young age. I didn’t piece this behavior together until recently. I buried many events witnessed as a young girl as did Alan. Alan began telling me many things I didn’t know long after Mom died. He told me recently that Dad often beat Lee, and he didn’t know the reason. What I soon understood was that Lee’s young spirit came into agreement with Dad’s disdain for him. The abuse Lee endured resulted in his creating a false self, rejecting his identity in Christ, and that led him down a path he was never meant to walk.

Jack was the one who loved to party, not giving much thought to responsibility. Mom purchased a house for him when he was age thirty so that he would be out of the house. She wanted him to assume responsibility. Jack had a hard time with that concept. Alan recalled when we’d visit neighbors when we were very young, Dad would show off Jack, showing favor, and not mentioning the rest of us who stood nearby. Alan developed a deep dislike for my father and for Jack. He watched Jack have fun while he felt burdened by responsibilities that didn’t belong to him. After many conversations with Alan the last few years, I learned how negatively Dad’s behavior impacted all our lives.

Mom’s Family

As a young girl, I didn’t understand why my friends had grandparents on both sides of the family, but I didn’t. Why didn’t Mom have family? When I asked her if she had family, she mentioned her mom and her grandmother. She clearly didn’t want to answer questions about other family members. If I persisted in questioning, she became irritated. My only remembrance of her talking about family was when she told me her mother died when she was age twelve, following the birth of her half sister. After her mom died, she was sent to live on a farm with her grandparents on her father’s side. Mom’s uncle Harry was her age and was the youngest of her dad’s family. Reminiscing about Harry and talking about her grandmother gave her great comfort, yet she was measured in her conversation. She adored her grandmother. Her grandmother was a cook on a military base, and she taught Mom to cook. Mom loved her intensely but never spoke of her grandfather. Decades later, I learned that she abruptly left her grandparents’ home at age eighteen, and never saw them again.

One memory I have of Mom was when I was a little girl and was in the kitchen with my parents one day. They were getting ready to leave the house. It was rare that they left the house without the kids, but this time they did. Mom was crying, something I rarely witnessed. When they returned, she was still crying. They were talking about a little girl, and Dad was trying to tell Mom that everything was going to be fine. It is a memory that hangs in the air without anything attached to it. I didn’t understand why she was crying. Decades passed before I learned what may have been so troubling to Mom so very long ago.

Dad’s Family

Dad was second to the oldest of nine children. He had seven brothers and one sister. His father and mother were Godly people, poor, and lived on a small farm near Wheaton. Dad seemed close to his father, but that view was an inaccurate perception I held at the time. My grandparents loved my dad and wanted to be close to him and our family. They often visited our home, about a half hour from theirs. When we visited their home, we’d just get settled in when Dad would announce it was time to leave. He had only planned to drop by to say hello. It wasn’t his intention to engage in any meaningful conversations with his parents. I recall Grandpa asking as we piled back into the car, What’s your hurry? I am wise enough to know that they relished the company. They craved to be near their children and grandchildren in their older age. Our short visits to their home were joyful events for them. They loved their children and their grandchildren and desired that Dad take an interest in them, talk with them, and make them feel needed. He gave the minimum of himself. I know Mom urged the visits because she loved his parents.

I wondered all the time why my family members didn’t interact with each other in the same fashion as our neighbors’ families. Other families enjoyed talking with each other, they respected one another, and they laughed together. These interactions were missing in our home. Communication in our home was at a bare minimum. I realized that history was repeating itself. Both parents lacked in communication skills inside our family.

Chapter 2

A Divinely Appointed Ministry

Initially spinning country music records at a radio station in Chicago, Illinois, Dad later became the general manager of the largest Christian radio station in Chicago. This job that my dad held late in life made the greatest impact on my life because God blessed him with an unusual ministry.

Young Alan was blessed with an immense talent in broadcasting, and God gave him the technical skills needed to operate a radio station. He has an engineering mind, and he kept the transmitters at the radio station on the air. Alan had a deep love for God and His Word plus a real hunger to know Him. He was a young man with the ability to interview Bible scholars, and a voice to match the task at hand. Staff at the radio station often found him reading his Bible during lunch breaks. He was the most serious-minded of our siblings and the most respected in our family as chief engineer and programming director. Sharon served as office manager and later sold advertising for the station. She shadowed Dad on sales calls he made to the advertisers so that she could learn