Monday, July 7, 2025
The Blood Covenant
Monday, April 21, 2025
Easter/ Resurrection Break
Took a break from blogging during the season of Passover and Resurrection.
Spent my posting time on my Facebook page posting various aspects of the Crucifixion along with my distaste for the bunny.. If you think you might be interested, look me up on Facebook, Linda Rous. My page is public.
These particular posts run between April 13 and April 19 of this year (2025) on my Facebook page.
You will find information regarding Jesus in his last hours, The Supper, the crucifixion, the resurrection, bread of life, the sign on the cross, the Centurian, the tomb and more.
I'll be back soon with more from the editing of my book.
Tuesday, April 8, 2025
Innocence Lost
Chapter 2, God Was Close
Part 1, Innocence Lost Cont'd . . .
"Grooming" is what authorities call a child predator in the act of gaining the confidence of a victim. Making friends with a child by sharing secrets, little gifts and touching that begins with innocent hugs or sitting on their lap.
My "grooming" had been ongoing for a few months as this new "Daddy" of a stepfather wormed his way into my emotional needs as a fatherless nine year old. Then, I remember the exact moment he made his move. We were alone in the kitchen with verbal teasing.
It started with a tickle. Up to this point, I was the first of my siblings to eagerly accepted the new "Daddy" in our lives and the fatherly role he created for himself. Part of my cue I took from Mother who had accepted him completely as he slipped into his part of predator like a well trained thespian. Interesting thought: his verbal teasing of my brother had a different tone than that with me - almost challenging. Jerry seemed happy to have him around but there was no "click" with their relationship.
He had pinned me up against the refrigerator and his tickling turned to groping with his hands under my blouse. When he released me, the situation was very awkward as I tried to understand what had just happened. I was now forcing my laughter - in case I was wrong. What else was I to do; confront a grown up? I was only nine years old. Was I mistaken? Surely! But no. I was too dumbstruck to know what to do. Our home had changed, Mother was happier, bills were paid on time and he was friends with Pop and my uncle. These were not conscious thoughts in my young head but, rather, instinctive. What had just happened? Confusion, caution, fear and guilt ran through me. This wasn't right.
It accelerated from there. If I had known to protest and told on him, my entire life (my ENTIRE life and those around me) could have played out differently. One defining moment in the life of a ten-year-old dictated how I would relate to men the rest of my life. This was to affect, not only me, but how I related to men in my life and how they would relate to me in years to come.
His behavior was not confined to the bedroom. Frequently, he would make an excuse to take a drive in the car to the store, or to work to perform a forgotten chore. I was frequently coerced to ride along. For an adult to coerce a child is an easy thing. There was never mention of a side trip; we would just go and come right back. He could fool me with the promise of my brother going along but would change his mind when we were on our way out the door. Mother never learned to drive and could not afford a car, so the only time there was family transportation was the couple years my stepfather lived with us. This made a ride anywhere appealing - until I realized every excursion had the same agenda.
His abuse created a rage in me. I began defying him at every turn, arguing continually. He knew what I was doing at all times, badgering about how I did everything was his mantra; nothing was ever right. He questioned everything I did and I did everything I could to defy him. Physically standing over my shoulder and watching everything I did made me anxious. He never let anything go, always harping on everything I did and everything I did was wrong. I never had this sort of relationship with my mother, father or Pop.
Mother would frequently ask, "What's wrong with you?" "Why can't you get along?"
"He does so much for us." I even began arguing with her to defend myself. I really hated that. Prior to this marriage, we had an amazing relationship. I adored my mother and lived to please her. Now, she thought I was deliberately being hostile. I was but she did not know there was a reason. He was alienating me from my mother.
It was a common practice of his to wait for days, after I had defied him over something, until we had company. In the middle of the visit, he would bring up my insolence and harp on it. Public humiliation is something I detest to this day. It is an entire suitcase of rage in my emotional baggage.
For sexually abused children, there is always a feeling of secrecy or fear of someone finding out. Guilt is an overwhelming factor for a child. In defense of abused children everywhere, guilt is the main issue. A child's world is small and it centers on them. Even as an unwilling participant, we take the guilt on ourselves. We know it is wrong because of all the "shushing" and secret activities in the dark. Secrecy creates guilt. The bribery (he used to leave money on my nightstand after he was finished with me) was another clue that something was very wrong. You don't get paid for nothing.
The thought of that money opens that baggage of rage in me to this day. I hesitate to think I could have been encouraged to become a prostitute. You think? Instead, the opposite occurred. It has always been difficult for me to take money, or support, from a man. For most of my life, I have needed to be financially independent. Taking anything from a man left me feeling insecure and cheap. A responsible man will want to provide for his wife and will have trouble accepting my sort of independence. I insist on personal space, privacy and my own individual opinions.
* To be continued . . .
Sunday, March 30, 2025
Chapter 2: God Was Close
Part 1, "Innocence Lost"
Fathers, do not embitter your children - Col. 3:21 (NIV)
Do not have sexual relations with both a woman and her daughter - Lev. 18:17 (NIV)
> Snow falls quietly in massive, heavy flakes and crochets an opalescent blanket over the lawn. I'm warm inside as I watch from my office window. How silent and clean it is. Ever wonder how some people can live in such an amazingly wondrous world and only see the ugly?
> You will find this chapter disturbing; child abuse is always disturbing. Abuse of a sexual nature leaves canyon deep scars that never disappear.
> There is no need for details beyond what is needed to convey the meaning of the text. I will make every effort to keep my literary as tasteful as possible (if, in deed, it can be called "tasteful" at all). It would be great to inject some humor along the way, but the idea feels awkward in light of my subject.
> About the time I turned ten years of age, in an effort to provide her children with more, Mother remarried. It was a second marriage for her but a third for him. I don't think she truly loved him, not the way she loved my father. Not until this day; writing this text, at this moment, did I realize how much he looked like my father. Darken his hair and shorten him by six inches, they could have been brothers. He did lack the outward playful nature of my father.
> He had a good job and a car. We went on family trips. He made purchases at auction for the household and gifts for Mother. He was friendly with Pop. He didn't take us to church or say grace at the table. Looking back, I don't remember him ever saying anything about God - or Jesus. The family unit changed with a father figure at the head of the table during supper and breakfast on the weekends. Interesting: Pop had never took that seat preferring to stand and serve during meals. (I suspect Pop ate after all of us were finished.) He went fishing and hunting with Pop and my uncle who lived next door. His parents had a wonderful farm with lots of animals and I loved to visit there; darling, accommodating people.
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10 year old author |
> I was first to set the example of accepting him into a role that each of us children needed. I was the first to call him "Daddy". This thought sickens me today. That soon changed. I will not write his name because I came to detest the name whether borne by him or any other man. I came to sicken myself at his personal habits and preferences; like ketchup on eggs and sugar on tomatoes. To this day, I cannot bear to be in a room with a man smoking a cigar.
> This man made use of both my sister and me for a couple of years. There was never a thought on my part that he had involved her. As a child, I remember thinking, "At least he isn't bothering Karen". He frequently visited me at my bedside after the house was asleep and Mother was at work on late shift. Karen and I shared a room and that left her subject to my vocal pleas of "No, please don't, stop it, I don't want to." He would softly chasten, "Shhhh" "You'll wake your sister", "You'll wake your grandfather", "This is our secret." "We don't want anyone to know". "YOU"LL get in trouble."
* To be continued . . .
Friday, March 28, 2025
Chapter One, EPILOGUE
The memory of a moment stays with us for a lifetime - Unknown
We need not destroy the past, it is gone - John Cage
> It was the dawn of color television and the Howdy Doody show, Ed Sullivan, poodle skirts, saddle shoes, drive-in theaters, the jitterbug, jukeboxes and candy buttons on paper. The milkman delivered to your door and the family doctor still made house calls. Women stayed home, wore aprons and cooked Maypo for breakfast. It was convertible cars, the polio vaccine, home perms and Alaska became a state. It was Elvis, Mickey, Uncle Milty and American Bandstand. We caught pollywogs and fireflies, played hopscotch and jumped rope to Double Dutch. It was the magical time of childhood wonder and innocent discovery.
> Sorting through old photos and stirring memories reveals nothing especially noteworthy about my first eight years on this earth. My childhood seemed, then and now, not to be unlike any other child's.
> Adults have little understanding of the influence they possess on the lives of young children. In many ways, we become imprinted by those who are the strongest personalities in our young lives. It is said from birth to four are the years that set us on the course of who we will become. I am sure Mother, Pop and Mother Carmichael left their mark on me, in one way or another. Our development through early life is part nature but also part nurture.
I looked like a little boy without my bonnet.
> There were a few struggles for, and within, our little family. All families struggle with internal and external relationships. We learned give and take. Jerry and I were very close as children but, one occasion, our tempers were so riled during a physical altercation that we threatened each other with knives. Grandfather stopped that little drama before it turned tragedy. The next day, we were trying to fight each other's battles or defend against a common enemy. We grew through all of it.
> Back then, God was the invisible friend I talked to and the subject at church. My life was about friends, school, fishing, parakeets and dress up. Children are truly blessed to have their own world and a direct line to the ear of God. Children are indeed on God's priority list. Need prayer? Ask a child to intervene for you.
> We are tested daily. The greatest trial in my first nine years was overcoming not having a father. When a parent leaves or gives up a child, that child's small world insists this is their fault. Children take these huge burdens on themselves. Until he left, I was "Daddy's Girl". After he left, I craved the comforting male attention I had grown used to. This had a huge affect on my life for many years to come and is still part (albeit smaller) of my emotional baggage. He left an unfulfilled hunger in each of his children. My sister and I yearned for the paternal presence that is the role model for a girl's choice of male relationships. My brother just wanted a father's guiding hand and approval for a "job well don, son".
> A large part of my character is defined by my mother's heart. It cannot be explained any other way - example is a great teacher. What do we know of giving, if not witnessed by us of those we admire? What does anyone know of compassion without suffering?
> I believe that God listened to this child from the first time I called on Him, wishing upon a star in the night sky at the very early age of 4 years. He hears every word from the lips of a child. Let me state right here and now, there have been a few times when I felt lonely, but I cannot remember any moment when I felt alone - ever.
> There are no coincidences, no accidents in God's perfectly ordered universe.. Everything in the life of a believer happens for a reason. As you continue to read my story, you will see why I have come to believe this way. Our lives come together in the end for a divine purpose.
* To be continued . . .
Monday, March 17, 2025
One Negative Thing
The only negative . . .
More About Pop
STORY: There was a winter when Mother could not pay the gas bill for our three-story Victorian house. Pop put a door on the kitchen and turned on the electric stove to use the oven for heat. We heated water on the stove and washed in the sink. We ate, dressed and did our homework in that one room. At night, we scurried to a large bed upstairs, where the three of us kids pooled our blankets and shared the warmth.
Saturday, March 8, 2025
No One Messed With His Grandkids
And . . . no one messed with his grandkids.
Friday, March 7, 2025
Eyes In The Back of His Hiead
One more person I want to relate to you before my story moves on from innocent childhood, is my grandfather who has had a profound influence on me.
I instruct you in the way of wisdom; I lead you in courses of fairness. Pro. 4:11
Blessed are those who find wisdom. Pro. 3:13
When our father left, we moved to the inner-city neighborhood I have previously mentioned. That is when Mother's father moved in. He practiced tough love, practical thinking and common sense. I was eight years old, headstrong and a bit spoiled. I had been "Daddy's girl" and put a lot of misplaced blame on my mother for him being gone. Children cannot understand the nuances of adult relationships in their small, self-centered worlds. I harbored some resentment for Grandfather in the place of male role model.
He had moved in to tend to us while Mother worked. This man took on cooking and tending his three grandchildren while Mother earned a living for us. This created a form of role reversal in our home. This was a good lesson that just because you are born into male or female gender does not mean you can't take on roles related to, or competing with the other gender. I grew up with this as a fact of life.
Everyone came to call him "Pop". He was respected by everyone who knew him. Whether you liked him or not, you respected him. His word was his bond. He looked you straight in the eye and shook your hand firmly. He was six foot in bare feet with massive hands, straight black hair and a hook nose. He was always squinting from the cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth. Oh yeah, he had a firm protruding belly you could set a tray on but you could not call him "fat".
He was a retired house painter and was the first person to instruct me about primary colors and how to mix them. By the time I was ten, I could run a chalk line and cut a baseboard with the best of them. I took pride in being neat and never needed a drop cloth if there was a brush in my hand. To this day, I have the neatest art studio I have ever seen.
Pop was indeed an "angel in disguise". He saved all of us from lives misspent. No telling what Mother would have done without him. He served God by serving his children and their children. Before and after helping us, he had and did live with aunts and uncles helping them in much the same way. I don't know that he owned a Bible, but he never spoke irreverently about God and he did speak of Him.
STORY: Pop teaching himself to make pie dough is a memory that comes to mind. I don't remember if he had a recipe but that dough got the best of him for a long time before he finally mastered it. He would knead it and roll it, and it would fall apart. He would knead it again and again and it would fall apart again - or fall apart while he was rolling it out. I saw him, on more than one occasion, throw that dough across the kitchen. It would fall to the floor and he picked it up and rolled it again. "The heat will kill the germs," he said. That is what he always said when he was cooking. He hated waste - with a passion. Later, he taught himself to make bread dough that seemed to be easier for him - he didn't have to use that rolling pin.
I remember that he would eat anything, like cooked dandelion greens with fat back, fried mountain oysters and was very fond of sopping bread in bacon grease for calf brain sandwiches. Uugghh! No matter what was shot during hunting season or caught from the lake in the summer, we ate it. He detested waste.
He was self taught with the spoons, fiddle and harmonica. In deed, a great role model for being "self taught". He could cipher like a mathematician. He liked beer, occasional cheap wine and drank more as he got older. Pop had high blood pressure - no wonder. I wonder if the alcohol helped cut the cholesterol in his blood to be the only reason he lived as long as he did.
Photos are Author, Brother Jerry, Sister Karen
Circa: 1955
This man put food on our table, turned all his pension income over to my mother, planted a vegetable garden, cultivated our grape vine and peach tree to make juice and jelly, brewed home made beer, canned, hunted and fished to put meat on our table. I remember picking buckshot out of rabbit and squirrel during supper. He taught us how to gig a frog, fish with a cane pole and gather mushrooms. He canned and fished in summer and hunted in winter. For several years, he opened a neighborhood pizza shop with pinball games and sub sandwiches. He mastered bread dough but gave up on pies.
To be continued . . . .
This autobiography begins with "An Ordinary Childhood" posted Dec. 30, 2024
Sunday, February 23, 2025
Grandmother's House Cont'd . . .
Monday, February 17, 2025
A Two-Seater Outhouse
Wednesday, February 5, 2025
P.S. About Mother
Not perfect:
Tuesday, February 4, 2025
Mother Knew Her "Heathens"
and she loved them.
Wednesday, January 29, 2025
"You're Just a Bunch of Little Heathens"
She gets up while it is still night; she provides food for her family.
She speaks with wisdom and faithful instruction is on her tongue.
(Quotes from Proverbs 31)
> Naomi Bonnilee Radner (ficticious name) was my proud, fiercely independent mother. Since she was the greatest influence of my life, there needs to be enough about her that the reader can understand just how much of an influence. For such a woman to be my mother is evidence that God loves me.
> She was the middle child of nine siblings. I thought she was perfect and the most beautiful woman in the world. Raven hair and dark eyes with olive complexion that tanned to bronze in the summer along with her good proportioning, gave her the appearance of a doll. Five foot/two inches in stocking feet, she was always a lady and fiercely outspoken. A "tomboy" as a child, she could, and would, stand up to anyone. The proof was her nose; a wide flat nose that had been broken three times: first, tumbling from a tree, and twice from fighting. She frequently informed me that she once had a pretty nose - just like mine.
> She loved and missed my father to the day she died. After he left, with a teenage waitress, I remember nights hearing her cry herself to sleep. Their relationship caused her so much emotional pain that she made wrong choices more than once. She wore a tough shell about herself that kept her emotionally out of reach in order to protect that softest of hearts. One of Mother's proverbs: "You can't choose who your heart will love."
> Faithful and generous to a fault, mom was fond of telling us there was always someone worse off than we were. I remember a couple Christmases that we were required to give up a possession that was in good condition (preferably something we cared for.) This was how we were to learn sacrifice for someone else and the joy of giving. You do not give something that you yourself would not want and there was always something to replace it.
> Ever heard the teaching that you are to do as though you were doing it for/giving it to Jesus Himself - ? Mother was that example.
> She also had a lot of "proverbs" that were frequently repeated. "Tell me anything but a lie" and "You can do anything you put your mind to" are only two of the dozens that come to mind. My all-time favorite, "You're just a bunch of little heathens". When I was an adolescent, she was fond of telling me I was special. Mom was sure I was going to do something that would prove it. I needed to hear her assurances but took them as just a mother's love.
> Mother was a vain woman with a definite idea of how a lady should conduct herself and how she should dress. She grew up in a time when ladies wore hats and gloves to go shopping and television commercials showed housewives with hair combed, make up on and aprons over their dresses.
> Mom never went out of the house without makeup, hair combed and coordinated clothes. She detested jeans for women and bare legs were out of the question; stocking were required. All this from a girl who came from a large farmer's family who lived grew up climbing trees in the countryside.
> STORY: A particular day comes to mind when I was going to visit my grandfather in the VA hospital. I was a grown, married woman at the time. It was the 1960's, the age of "bra burning". I stopped at mother's house along the way. When I came in the door, she immediately demanded to know where I was going "like that". I responded "to see Pop". "Not like that, you're not" was her decree. She took me into the bedroom and "put" a bra on me. That was that.
> She was stylish and loved "layaway" for quality items. "You get what you pay for" wan another of "Naomi's proverbs". She would deny herself something if one of her children was in need but she did not deny herself. That was part of the lesson that taught us to respect her. "You have to respect yourself to get respect from others".
To be continued . . . .
Monday, January 27, 2025
The Tola Worm
(Taking a break from my biography to post something I want to share. Found this out during one of my personal Bible studies of the Psalms.)
Wednesday, January 22, 2025
A Small Family Unit
> The barrel chested father of my mother was a great mentor.