Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in Him and He will do this: He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun.
-Psalm 37:4-6
In the first ten years of my life, I had many happy yet lonely times. I was not sure as a kid who I wanted to be-as if I had a choice or I could pick. I saw no value in being Indian. I was afraid of that side of me. So many questions of my worth went unasked and unanswered.
When I was three, my mom decided to end her marriage. My mother, a conservative Mennonite, was married to an Anishinabe, who was serving as a young minister at the church on the reserve. I was too young to know what a divorce was. All I knew is that I was with Mom.
For the next seven years, I felt different from all the other church kids. They all had two parents. Sometimes they would say, "Go ask your parents," and then suddenly remembering that I didn't have two parents, they'd say, "Oh, you don't have parents."
One Sunday when I was about five or six, our Sunday school teacher, a beautiful grey-haired lady, asked if any of us wanted to ask Jesus into our hearts. I did and I remember her smile and hug after I prayed. It was meaningful for me as a young child.
During my tenth summer, Mom and Dad decided to reconcile. I don't know all the dialogue that went on, but suddenly we had a dad and he was living with us again.
I longed for a father's love and acceptance but almost from the start, he began brainwashing me against my mom, eroding my trust in her. He also began sexually abusing me. It went from bad to worse, lasting about three years.
During that time, my dad attempted suicide. I remember it vividly because I was alone. Mom and my brother were gone to Minnesota, and I was left in charge of my sister.
He was not the only one playing with a death wish. I was desperate and full of hate. One night I kept a knife beside my bed, intending to end the abuse. I was going to do something drastic to my dad or myself. Fortunately I did neither.
Some time later, on the last day of school before Christmas, Mom surprised us by picking us up early from the school. When we were all in the car, she told us that she had a restraining order against Dad. We all breathed a sigh of relief.
During those three years that my father was in the house, there were many incidents of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse but nobody knew about this. Nobody ever asked me if anything was going on. When he left, though I didn't have to deal with his abuse anymore, I was so angry at everyone and everything. I deeply felt all the injustices of my young life.
On the surface, no one knew what was going on in my heart because I was a great liar and took great care in making many masks to please whomever I was with. Years later, I asked my mom why she made my dad leave. She said, "Something in the pit of my stomach told me to get him out of the house before something really bad happened."
That was God looking out for me.
I didn't tell Mom about the sexual abuse until I was 16. This was the harsh, raw beginning of my inner healing, but healing didn't come all at once as I still wrestled with myself.
Between the age of 13 and 18, I was very promiscuous with lots of boys in the youth group. My dad had made me believe the abuse was my fault and that I was worthless, that I deserved to be treated like this by him and boys in my life.
One day when I was 15, I was sent to my room instead of receiving supper because of my bad attitude, and I was so angry at mom, I grabbed my backpack and crawled out my bedroom window, certain that Mom hated me. I was running away to Winnipeg to become a prostitute since that was all I was worth; Dad had trained me so well.
A car full of drunken men from the Long Plain Reservation came slowly driving by. They asked if I needed a ride. I told them no and said I was just walking to my babysitting job.
That episode scared me to death. I know God spared my life at that very moment. I went home and crawled back through the window and cried.
None of my friends ever knew about the abuse. It was my shameful secret.
Throughout my troubled teen years, I was so confused and really had no one to talk to openly about what had been done to me. I wanted very much to be good. So with my limited understanding of Jesus, I got baptized at 16. I struggled with being good and being tempted to do bad things.
One of my first boyfriends guessed that I'd been abused because he'd also been abused by his older brother. He was a very special person on my journey. He later died tragically, and I grieved his death but not completely. My emotions were so locked up even the healthy ones couldn't rise to the top. I was an expert at corking up my emotions. I wouldn't allow anything bad or good to surface. Too scared to grieve all the injustices of my young life, I had no idea who would be there to pick me up when I crashed and burned. I was only 17.
In 1986, I met Mark. For a couple of months, Mark and I were just friends. As we grew closer, he treated me like no other boyfriend had. Mark didn't touch me for three months-not even hold my hand! I thought I must have had a sign on my forehead reading, "Don't Touch Me!" I was used to giving in to whatever my boyfriends wanted, to make them happy, thinking that was what my heart was truly longing for.
Mark had just returned from a Discipleship Training School with Youth With A Mission (YWAM). On Valentine's Day, he told me what his instructor Dean Sherman had said. A man should never say "I love you" to a woman if in the next breath he couldn't ask her to marry him. There on my mom's couch, Mark told me that he loved me.
I was stunned and so scared that I would mess things up, that I broke up with him shortly after. I pushed him away but still loved him deeply. I thought I didn't deserve him and that he was too good for me. I decided that I would prove to him that he could do better.
After I broke up with Mark, I went out on a couple of dates with this non-Christian who was eight years older than me. I couldn't be alone; I needed a man to want me. My self-esteem was totally tied up in being wanted for how I looked.
That summer, I signed up to work with YWAM in Alberta for six weeks. While there, I began the process of forgiving my dad. One speaker talked about forgiveness and the Father Heart of God. The last morning he said that he was canceling the afternoon class so that we could be alone with God. The speaker said God had shown him that someone in the room had now or in the past wanted to murder his or her father.
I knew he was talking about me.
That afternoon, wanting with all my heart to heal, I wrote my dad a letter and mailed it. It was a start.
Mark came out to Alberta to pick me up, and we had a nice day driving home. I was so nervous. He was going to be leaving to play hockey for the University of North Dakota, and I had one semester of high school left.
I came back from YWAM in Alberta with a new hope and excitement about living for God. I just didn't know what direction my life would take.
A week after arriving home, I went to the man that I'd dated before leaving for Alberta and told him it was over. I announced that I was going to live for God. But instead of walking out of there and out of his life, I stayed too long. A couple of hours later, I walked out of his home after having sex.
I was devastated at my choice to do what came most naturally to me-to give in. I got talked into something that I didn't want. I hated myself so much.
I cried myself to sleep for three months before I told anyone I was pregnant. I was so alone. I thought of suicide, but it went against everything I'd been taught about human life being sacred.
Mark kept writing me and telling me about his life at the University of North Dakota. He was happy for the experience I had in Alberta and wanted to support me in this spiritual part of my life.
I couldn't write him back. I was afraid he would see right through me.
I told my sister about the baby first, then my mom, then my brother. Last but not least, I told Mark before he came home for Christmas break. He drove home the next day. When I saw him, I started to cry, knowing that he knew the truth about me.
My mom invited him to our home for lunch. We stayed in my room all afternoon and talked. I cried a lot. I was so thankful that he didn't hate me and still wanted to talk to me. But the clincher was when Mark took my hand and asked if he could touch the baby. By this time I was already four months along. He knelt down and put his ear on my stomach and listened and said, "Yup, it's for real."
Mark quit the University of North Dakota. He went to El Paso, Texas, and built houses in Juarez, Mexico, with YWAM. He prayed and worked. He came home a month before my due date. Then off he went to plant trees in northern British Columbia. During this whole time we wrote and built back the trust we once had.
I finished my high school exams and would graduate in June. Mark was going to come home for my graduation.
My beautiful gift from God, Jonathan Paul, was born on May 7, 1988. Mark called me the day after he was born and wished me a Happy Mother's Day.
Mark came home for my graduation in June. I was at his mom's house, as she was helping me sew my graduation dress. We were waiting for Mark to arrive. Jonathan was sleeping in the crook of the couch all wrapped up in a receiving blanket.
Suddenly I smelled him! Mark's Polo!
I scanned the driveway. No car. I began looking around the kitchen and then came back to the living room and saw him. He had sneaked in the front door and was standing and just staring at Jonathan.
His mom and I stood there watching. Mark walked over to Jonathan and knelt down to have a closer look. He looked up at me and asked if he could pick the baby up. He did so gently and kissed him on the cheek.
Jonathan stretched and yawned. We all came together and hugged each other and just looked at JP. I will never forget that moment. I saw that Mark had a father's heart for Jonathan the first time they met.
Mark worked as a camp counselor for the rest of the summer. He came home mid-August.
The night Mark got home from camp, after I put Jonathan down for the night, Mark and I sat on my mom's front steps. He proposed to me there on August 18. I was so shocked, not expecting it at all.
During the night as I nursed Jonathan, I looked at my engagement ring by nightlight, cried and smiled. I never dreamed I would be loved so much that someone would want me to be his wife with an already made family.
During our pre-marriage counseling, I realized I needed help dealing with my past. Images haunted me.
One afternoon, I put Jonathan in his stroller and went for a walk. So afraid I would mess up my marriage with Mark, I cried out to God to help me. Just then I saw a high school friend who happened to be at her mother's house for a visit. As I walked past their home, they invited me in for coffee.
Rhonda asked what was wrong. She was a newlywed herself. I told her I needed help with what I was feeling about men and sex. She told me about a woman who helped other women who'd been abused. Three days later, I met with that woman. She became a significant person on my journey because she wasn't afraid to challenge me to want more for my life. She explained that I could change the past with the help of Jesus.
It was tough work slugging through the workbooks and books, but I was being healed and released from shame and painful memories.
It wasn't until a week before our wedding that I told Mark for the first time that I loved him. I was still so afraid he would reject me.
Mark and I were married on December 17, 1988, and it was the happiest day of my life to that point. I was only 19, but I felt ready.
Jonathan was also a part of the wedding ceremony. After we lit the unity candle and signed all the papers, my brother brought Jonathan up to the altar and the pastor added another vow for Mark. "You are not only becoming a husband today but also a father. Do you promise to love and raise Jonathan as your own?"
Mark said, "I do."
Mark, Jonathan and I walked out as a family. My dreams had come true for both of us in a single morning.
While we were away with YWAM in 1993, I got a call that my dad was still abusing young girls. I was asked what I was going to do about it.
I prayed hard and God showed me Micah 6:8, "He has shown you, oh man, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God."
This was so clear to me that the Lord was requiring me to follow the directives in this verse. I felt free of my father and the baggage of the abuse, so I wondered why God wanted me to get involved in my father's life now.
I went to the RCMP and made a statement. Dad was arrested shortly after on his anniversary of ten years of sobriety. When the police told me this, I just wept. "This is too hard, God."
After a preliminary hearing, a trial date was set. My sister was subpoenaed.
When it came time for me to take the witness stand, I testified for two-and-a-half hours. The only time I cried during the trial was when the defense attorney accused me of being a very angry young woman who wanted to see my dad rot in jail for the rest of his natural life. I responded that that is not what I wanted but that I hadn't been an adult in this situation. My father was the adult and in control, and I didn't have to feel shame over this anymore. The shame was for him to bear. He was still my dad and I loved him but felt sorry for him.
My dad was found guilty of all that he'd done to my sister and me. He was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison.
Four years later, I was at a prayer gathering for Native Canadians in Winnipeg. Looking over the crowd, I suddenly spotted my paternal grandma, aunt, and my father. I broke down. I was paralyzed with fear of rejection and totally unsure about what to do. After I'd been away from them, crying, for 45 minutes, a friend from church came and told me if I wanted to see my family, I had to come now because they were leaving.
Racing through the crowd, I reached my grandma and aunt. Dad just said hello. He and I stood to one side, and I fully expected to be the recipient of his anger. But he took off his tinted glasses and looked me in the eyes.
"Cindy," he said, "Stony [prison] was the best thing you could have done for me."
You could have blown me over! I cried and laughed the whole way home.
A couple of months later, my dad apologized for what he had done to me.
The scars are there and always will be, but as Isaiah 43:19 says-"See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up. Do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert, and streams in the wasteland."
God showed me my identity was not a big "oops." God didn't make a mistake by making me Ojibwe. He made me just to be as I am.
I challenge you not to give up on what God has called you to do. It might seem insignificant but if God is telling you to do it, then it's not unimportant. It has a purpose in your life.
It's risky taking risks but take risks. It's always more fun to go on a journey with a friend than alone. God has taught me to trust Him; He means so much to me. He made a way for me when there was none.
Read more stories of help, hope, and victory through Christ in The Conquering Indian 2.
Creator God Wants to Be Your Friend
Do you know the loneliness, confusion and shame that Cindy Petkau felt?
We live in a fallen world; a world where sin reigns and men and women commit atrocities against God and each other.
And that is actually the reason behind Christmas. In a sinful world we have no hope of living up to God’s standard of being pure. But God wanted His humans to live in relationship with Him. So Christ came to earth as a baby and grew on earth to understand the world humans face—and to sacrifice His life so that we can know relationship with God.
Jesus Christ said in John 14:6 in God’s book, the Bible, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the father but through me.” Jesus is the Son of God and only by giving our life to Him, do we have access to God . . . and to the peace we all seek.
Are you feeling drawn to nurture the spiritual side of your life? Do you need help dealing with the difficult situations in your life?
You can find hope by opening your heart to God. Your prayer can be simple:
• Tell God that you want to accept His way to know true peace and joy.
• Tell Him that you know that without His help, you understand that you will be separated from God in life and death.
• Accept Jesus as God’s only provision to deal with your separation from Him.
• Invite Jesus, God’s Son, to take control of your life and place you in His care.
Your prayer might sound something like this:
Dear God, I accept Your way. I believe Your Son Jesus died for my sins so I can become part of the family of God. Because You raised Jesus from the dead,
I can experience harmony of life with Your Son as my Shepherd. I’m sorry and turn from my sins and ask You, God, to take charge of my life. I ask your Holy Spirit to come and fill me now with Your presence and power that I will live each day walking on Your Path. I offer this prayer to You through Your Son, Jesus. Amen.
If you have prayed the above prayer, we would like to hear from you. Write to us and mail it to (In the U.S.) Indian Life Ministries, P.O. Box 32, Pembina, ND 58271; (In Canada) Indian Life Ministries, P.O. Box 3765, Redwood Post Office, Winnipeg, MB R2W 3R6. We will send you some helpful information on how to walk the Creator’s Path.
