When the Call Comes
- Tammy Toney-Butler
- Mar 20
- 5 min read
When the phone rings, the text message says call me now. Will you be ready?
Ready for the news? The immediate change in your daily routine? The hole left in your heart where once the promise of a restored relationship remained. You now realize it’s over. The death of the fairy tale ending you tell yourself over and over as you recreate the false narrative in your head of how the restoration of all things will go.
At that moment, you realize that the relationship, although brief, included only a few phone calls and text messages, was all they were capable of giving, and that was the restoration process of the fragmented pieces of the broken vessel left behind. Left behind after childhood rape, childhood adversity, parental neglect, physical abuse, or them caught in the throes of active addiction trying to binge their way to happiness. Although fleeting, it’s all they had to hold on to.
When you realize the pain of cutting yourself never truly takes the ache in your heart away for what once was, could have been, was never to be, or only a fantasy you dreamed up to protect your bubble of love you tried so hard not to have burst. It was not the love you deserved, but a love nevertheless. You long for it, crave it, but now, with that phone call, you know, the farce of the fantasy you created in your mind to survive is over.
What do you do then? When all hope is lost? Where do you turn? What will bring you joy and remove the pain, sorrow, and profound loss of finally realizing you came from a broken family, one shattered by trauma? In order for you to thrive, you must move past the raw, gaping wound of the past and step into the promises of today.
If you allow yourself to dwell in the past, the what could and should have been, you become stuck. Stuck in a cycle of abuse, generational trauma, and lack when God is calling you to an abundant, purpose-driven life.
It’s in you. It’s always been in you. It’s what the devil tried to kill inside of you when the darkness visited your door.
You have a choice: dwell in the hell of the past or let it go and step into the future.
It takes two feet to be in today—one to stand firm and one to step towards the abundant life waiting on you.
Choose life; choose to step towards the positive and not the negative.
Dwell in the Light. When those phone calls come, and they will come, you need to be anchored on the Rock of Light, Christ. You will draw strength from Him to weather every storm and be victorious in Him.
Grief is a natural part of life, but you must not let a spirit of sorrow overtake you and spiral you down into the pit you dug yourself out of with the help of Christ, other believers, or your spouse.
When the phone call comes, you answer it with a Helper. His name is Jesus—the name above every name.
The news will not shake you. Instead, you will stand strong as the waves of loss hit you hard, and you will not drown in the sorrow that comes on you like a flood. You will refuse to let it destroy who you have become.
You will sit, reflect, cry, listen to worship music, have a friend pray for you, and most importantly, let the Holy Spirit hold you and give you fresh oil to walk out the day after the news comes.
Look to the Cross. Look to Jesus.
No one understands how complicated life is for a survivor of childhood rape, incest, familial human trafficking, parental abuse, or neglect. When the family, who is supposed to protect you and show you what love is, becomes fragmented, and the broken pieces cut you and open wounds that take years and years to heal.
The complicated mess of grieving when you lose a mother, father, sister, brother, or family member is exponentially harder.
You get triggered all over again; the darkness threatens to consume you and pull you back into the pit Christ pulled you out of.
It’s hard to explain how you still love and long for a mother or father or a family torn apart by dark family secrets most want to bury. Sadly, it’s in the hiding, the concealing, the attempt to maintain the false narrative that you are part of a loving family, a family that has your back, that actually causes you the most harm.
Their attempts at keeping a sinking ship full of wholes together in a tsunami of trauma responses, parenting in survival mode fails, and you end up the one they sacrifice to get themselves to a shore of perceived safety.
You are sacrificed as a child to provide a false sense of stability to them, and the cycle of abuse continues. Generation after generation of broken vessels, parenting in survival mode with trauma responses guiding them, and victim after victim left behind.
The cycle ends when you rise up, say no more. When you break out of the mold of your trauma self and break into the authentic self of whom God formed you to be when He knitted you together in your mother’s womb.
Break free! Break out! Break into whom God needs you to be to bring the Kingdom of Light, the Kingdom of Heaven, on earth, and live the abundant life promised to us all.
Today, I choose life, the promised land, and step into all God has called me to be.
I do it for my mother, who was destroyed by trauma.
I do it for my father, who was destroyed by trauma.
I do it for my baby sister, who was destroyed by trauma.
Get behind me, satan. You will not destroy another family on my watch.
It ends today. The victory is ours. We serve a mighty God. This is the year His children are protected. This is the year you come out of Egypt, and Egypt comes out of you!!
Blessings and Solidarity,
Tammy Toney-Butler
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