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Why Did God Give Me such a Terrible Childhood?
Dr. Carlfred Broderick, former president of the Association of Mormon Counselors and Psychotherapists wrote of a similar experience:
“I had a woman who came to me—the victim of a terrible family. Her mother was neurotic and stayed in bed all the time to get her daughter to do all the work. The daughter had been abused in about every way there was to be, [by her parents]—psychologically, physically, sexually. Besides that she had to do all the housework.”
She wasn’t a member of the Church at that time. In high school she met a gentle and kind young man who was a Latter-day Saint. She joined the Church, and they were married. He was patient and long-suffering with her and loved her.
Brother Broderick continues:
“Despite this, she had recurring bouts of depression and very negative feelings about herself because she had been taught by the people most important in her early life what a rotten person she was. It was hard for her to overcome that self-image. I worked with her to try to build her self- image.”
“One day she said to me, “You’re a stake president…” You explain to me the justice of it.” She said, “I go to church, and I can hardly stand it…When I see little girls being hugged and kissed and taken to church and appropriately loved by their fathers and mothers, I just have to get up and leave. I say, ‘Heavenly Father, what was so terrible about me that, when I was that age, I didn’t get any of that? What did that little girl do in the pre- mortal existence that I didn’t do so she is loved, so she is safe? Her daddy gives her priesthood blessings when she’s sick. Her mother loves her and supports her and teaches her. What did I do?’ Can you tell me that God is just if he sends that little girl to that family and me to my family?”Share
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