My Rainbow Story — Surviving Emotional Abuse, Divorce, & Cutting
I grew up as an only child in a suburb of Atlanta, GA.
I was a happy kid, but my parents always fought. This began to affect me as I grew.
Once at around 5, my parents had a fight that was so bad, my dad started packing his suitcase. I begged and pleaded with him not to go. To this day I don’t remember if he went or not, I just remember feeling so hurt and abandoned that he would consider leaving. And I couldn’t understand what my mom could have done that would make him leave. But he would blame it on her.
I remember being around the same age, and we went to a sandwich place to eat. On the drive home, my dad said, “Why can’t you be skinny like that waitress?”
I said, “Daddy, don’t you love mommy?”
I learned in that moment that if you were fat, you weren’t lovable.
Throughout my childhood, it was a rage fest. My dad was upset my mom would spend “too much money.” Their problems were “her fault.” But he was not loving her like Christ loved the church. He was verbally abusive and demeaning. I did not see them have fun. I saw her become dejected and depressed.
We went to church, but there were often arguments on the way. Things were said that were hurtful, but by the time we got to church we were expected to put on a happy face. I couldn’t reconcile what was going on at home with a loving God. Does God agree with this? Is this what a Christian home looks like? Later I learned it was not. We were Christians in name only.
As a child, I had horrible nightmares. I was afraid to go to sleep, so I suffered from insomnia. I often had a fire that was chasing me in my dreams, and I thought I would be burned up by the fire.
As I grew, I became very distant from my dad. I remember one time he came home from a work trip and all he wanted to do was watch golf. I stood in front of the TV so he would pay attention to me. He asked me to get out of the way. He was emotionally disconnected, and it seemed he wanted it to be that way.
Once when I was about 8 years old I was so angry about our home life, I kicked a hole in the wall. That was when my mom decided she would try to leave my dad, but she knew it would be difficult. She was a stay at home mom with no income. And he had the purse strings.
She tried to go to counseling to help things, but he fought it. If he was there, he wouldn’t talk about anything real, and said that it would fix their marriage if she would “lose weight.” Meanwhile my mom’s depression and mine grew.
As a teen, I started to find solace in music. My parents had gone through the divorce process, and it took a long, 3 years. My mom’s parents were actually on the side of my dad! That’s a story for another day.
I was feeling better since I was not in the horrible environment of my parent’s marriage, and I lived in a little apartment with my mom. I began to find some friends, and I remember having a relatively happy high school experience. However, I was still depressed, and did get into some darker things. I began to engage in what is known as “cutting.”
Cutting is self inflicting wounds on your skin with a sharp object. It is said that people cut because it is less painful to feel the physical pain of cutting versus the emotional pain you may have deep inside. I also began to write poetry. That was my outlet.
I had visitation rights with my dad, but I always dreaded it. If I disagreed with him or tried to stand up for myself, he’d say, “You’re just like your mom!” as if it was an insult. We were not on good terms, and he was always trying to give me Christian books. Looking back, I can see why I rejected that. How could God let me be treated like that and let me be hurt emotionally all my life and expect me to love Him? Though I remember making a decision to believe in Jesus at 5, (my dad led me in the prayer!) I couldn’t make sense of it in my head. I thought God was angry and distant, like my dad was. Later I learned that our view of God is greatly shaped by our parents.
At this time, a little less than a year after my parent’s divorce was finalized, my dad met someone. I had a hard time with the fact that he met someone so quick, but I told myself to be a big girl and be open to it.
“I think you’re going to like her,” my dad said, “She’s very fun.”
I met her, and she was very fun! She was extremely accommodating to me, because her dad had left her mom, and she had been impacted by divorce. She wanted to do fun things when we were around each other, and she would try to get me out of my shell since I was very shy.
Behind the scenes, I did not know how much she was doing to keep things afloat. When my parents divorced, my dad has lost nearly all of his business due to someone who took his accounts. My mom thought he was hiding money, (because that was a pattern in their marriage), but he truly didn’t have a lot of money after that. He also lost money in a bad investment. So when my stepmom came into the picture, they lived in a house that had been his office for years. The building was so old, it would turn her hair green due to what was in the pipes, so she had to wash her hair using boiled water. She worked and helped to pay for my child support. Thinking back now that I am older, I’m not sure if I could have done the same! She really didn’t even know me, and she was helping to support my dad’s ex-wife.
She would also notice whenever I would see them how I’d try to connect with my dad and he would ignore me. She tried to bring it up to him but he had a hard time understanding what she was saying.
They made it through that tough time, and my dad began to write a devotional just as email was getting popular. That email devotional grew to nearly a million subscribers at its height.
At around age 16, I went with my mom to a New Age healing workshop. I was looking for the REAL God, not the cookie cutter God I had experienced at the church I went to growing up.
I found some real stuff, but I realized it was false light. That’s a story for another day, but I realized I had put myself in spiritual danger by going to that workshop. I told my mom I wasn’t going back.
I had decided to go to college my senior year of high school due to a joint enrollment program offered at my school. As a result, I lost touch with a lot of my friends from high school. That summer, I was really depressed. I couldn’t make sense of my growing up years, and I carried lies from my upbringing such as “you’re not good enough” and “you’re unlovable.” I truly hated myself.
On my 17th birthday, I was feeling particularly depressed. I didn’t have any friends to celebrate with, and here I was with my mom. She wanted to take me out to dinner. I felt like such a loser, with my mom being the only person who wanted to hang out with me! On the way to the restaurant, I pondered how I would end my life. I really wanted to leave the planet. I said to God, “If suffering is the only thing in this world for me, then I just want it to be over!”
As we pulled up to the restaurant, I saw the most beautiful thing. I had always loved rainbows growing up. They were my favorite thing. I loved the character Rainbow Brite as a kid. In high school, people called me that because I wore all kinds of colorful clothes, and put color streaks in my hair (which you were not supposed to do!)
Well, there was a huge, beautiful rainbow above the restaurant. I burst into tears, because it was the first time I really heard God speak to my heart:
“Charis, I love you. I have a plan for you. This is my gift to you, on your birthday.”
I could not stop crying, and my mom was wondering what was going on.
From there, I decided I wanted to learn more about God. I saw a book in a bookstore that popped out on a bookshelf by Joyce Meyer called, “How to Succeed at Being Yourself: Finding the Confidence to Fulfill Your Destiny.” That title stood out to me, because I lacked confidence. In that book, it described how grace is an unearned gift from God, and how it comes from the root word “Charisma.” Of course, that was highlighted to me, since that was partly my name! I was learning I didn’t have to work hard to earn God’s love for me, and there was nothing I could do to earn it on my own. It was a free gift.
On the other side of things, my dad had been getting connected to more spiritual people. He and his new wife went to a conference, and someone told them, “God is in the basement.” They wondered what that event meant, so they went down to the basement of the building.
There, a prophet was praying for people, and he prayed for my dad and his wife. “You have a daughter, and she has a gift for poetry. God has seen the tears you’ve shed in your bedroom on behalf of your daughter.”
Both my dad and his wife were brought to tears. When I met up with my dad a little while later, he told me about what had happened. I never told anyone (much less my dad!) I wrote poetry, so I knew it had to be God.
Eventually my dad had this prophetic man over to do a conference and he stayed at his house. I got to go over and he prayed for me. That was the most real, amazing prayer I had ever experienced. It was like liquid love was had fallen all over me. This man knew how much emotional pain I had been through over the years, but it was God speaking through him. I was sobbing, I could not stop crying. I had never experienced anything like that before!
I decided to find a church where I lived and attended school. The first day I was there, we were in worship, and I had my eyes closed. I asked God, “God is this where I should be?”
When I opened my eyes, there was a picture of a rainbow on the projector screen. I took that as a yes! I met one of my best friends at that church and we are still friends to this day. She was the maid of honor in my wedding.
From there, God did a fast track of healing in my life. There were lots of bumps along the way, such as the dynamic between my dad and I, and the complexities that divorce brings. I was prayed for by my dad’s pastor, and in his prayer he said, “You’re going to go to a school to learn about God.”
I did just that! I found a Bible college to attend that was nearby, and I went there for music arts because I was interested in being a worship leader. I connected to God so much through music, and whenever I would praise God it would help me so much with depression: “…to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He might be glorified.” -Isaiah 61:3
Eventually, I decided to attend the full time school of ministry there while working waiting tables. I learned so much about God and He healed my heart so much.
After being a member of the church there for a few years, I was asked to be a part of organizing a singles group. At that time, many of the single people in our church were pairing off. But as I got to know the guy who asked me to do the singles group with him, I realized how kind he was, even though he was not at all “my type.”
A little while later, we began dating, but we were always friends first — something my parents didn’t seem to be. And a year and a half after that, we got married. My mom had prayed to God, “Lord, even if you don’t send a man for me, please send a good man for Charis.” God answered her prayers. Our relationship was a night and day difference compared to my parents growing up. He was kind to me, loving towards me, treated me with respect — and no we did not agree all the time. But we worked things out.
My dad wanted me to go through a counseling-type program before we got married, so I did that, and that was also helpful for me to resolve a lot of the emotional wounds I experienced growing up. My husband and I also went through marriage counseling, which was also extremely helpful!
Many years into our marriage, my husband got really sick, then a couple of years later, I got really sick. You really understand what your vows, “in sickness and in health,” mean when they are tested! Now I help people in our health coaching business at itcouldhelp.com as a result of those experiences.
I guess my life message after having been through all of this is that God is likely not the God you may have experienced growing up, if you grew up in a legalistic environment. God is love, and He is also truth, yes, but He wants us to know most of all how much He loves us. As the For King and Country song says, “only He knows” what we have all been through, and He knows what it has taken for us to be where we are.
I learned that the lies we believe about ourselves are often rooted in traumatic experiences we have bene through as kids. Those can stunt our emotional growth so we’re not able to be mature and at peace. But! God can heal all of that. He might use a program or a church service to do it. But He wants us to live in the fruits of the Spirit in our lives.
One of my favorite verses is Romans 8:28: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”
The truth is, everyone has been called. It says that God has called ALL sinner to repentance (Acts 17:30). It’s up to us if we want to heed that call. God has given us all the gift of free will. It is up to us to decide.
Below are a few resources that I believe can help you get closer to God. There are also some video courses on this site that can help, as well as the daily devotional.
https://marjoriewhitley.com/prayer-ministry/
If God has blessed you through this ministry, please feel free to help us to continue, and support as you feel led!
Prism Ministries 