How Jesus Meets the Sting of Abuse
Cross-Cultural Voices
Nov 11, 2025
Maisee Vang: And when it finally hit me what happened to me, I can just say that I was just completely disgusted. I was disgusted, I was ashamed, and everything went on in my mind of like, “Why did I allow that to happen to my body?” And I blamed myself a lot for allowing to happen to me at such a young age, even though I probably didn't even know what was happening to me at four or five years old.
And I went through my whole life covering this up, not telling anyone. And pretended like it didn't happen.
John Yoder: Hi everybody. Welcome to Cross-Cultural Voices. I'm John.
Robin Karkafi: And I’m Robin.
Maisee Vang: And I'm Maisee.
John Yoder: Robin, you were just here in Minnesota for the first time last week. Tell us about that.
Robin Karkafi: It was nice. It was nice. I visited a friend and we had we went to a wedding. So yeah, it was quite a drive there and back.
John Yoder: You drove?
Robin Karkafi: Yeah, from Toronto.
John Yoder: How long a drive was that?
Robin Karkafi: It's about 14 hours. Oh, 13, 14 hours. Yeah. Drive straight through. Yeah. It was fun.
John Yoder: Wow. I used to do that when I was your age. I'm not your age anymore.
Robin Karkafi: No. It gets harder every year. I do have to take breaks sometimes. How about you guys? What's new on your end?
John Yoder: Maisee, you had an adventure this afternoon with one of your children.
Maisee Vang: Yeah, like when you have five kids, it's so hard to remember all of their schedules. So I had a little scare this afternoon when my daughter did not come home on the bus with my other three kids. And, I was calling her school, no one picked up, called all her friends around, went to her friend's house, knocked on the door, and finally went to school and they were trying to help me figure it out.
And then they're like, “Wait, is she signed up for after school?” I'm just like, “Oh, I did sign her up.” They're like, “It starts today.” So they ran downstairs. And they went to check and they're like, “Yep, she's down there.” I was like, “Oh, praise God!” Because I was like, my heart dropped. I was just like, this has never happened before. So I was calling my husband and I was just like, your, our daughter's missing.
Robin Karkafi: That must have been scary. I'm sure it was.
John Yoder: I cannot imagine that you manage five young children between the ages of 3 and 10. I don't know how you do that.
Maisee Vang: Yeah. All through the strength and grace of God. To be honest, I was telling John, Robin, that I had all of my kids before I turned 30, so I'm currently 33 right now.
Robin Karkafi: Good for you.
Maisee Vang: Yeah, I praise God. Had them back-to-back starting at 22, and had my fifth one at 30.
John Yoder: Maisie, I'm thrilled to hear your story of coming to faith in Christ, and the way that you and your husband raise your kids. But there is pain in your past as well. And one of the things that you want to share with our audience is a painful piece of your past that many people never share about, which is a story of childhood sexual abuse.
And I just want to commend you for your openness and being willing to talk about that. So please just share with us what happened.
Maisee Vang: Yeah. First and foremost, I just want to, praise God. I don't think I would've been able to share this story if it wasn't for God's strength and peace for this. I just praise him that I'm able to share this.
And then my hope and prayer is that my story will be able to help other men or women who have been in the same situation as me. But yeah, to answer your question of what happened, so it started when I was four or five years old. That is when the sexual abuse happened.
And at that age, I didn't even really understand what it was. This perpetrator, who for privacy reasons I will not be disclosing who it is, but this perpetrator told me, it was just like, “Hey, this is something we're going to keep a secret.”
And and it happened over a course of almost two years. And so it really hurt a lot because it was just not a one time thing. And it got to the point where like when the abuse happened so often that as a child, you just were like, “Oh, like I don't know if this is supposed to be normal, but this person, this older person is telling me that, this is what we're supposed to do and I'm not supposed to tell anyone about this”.
And so the abuse happens for a course of over two years. And finally when I went to school, I no longer saw this person because I had started school. And as I grew older to understand like what actually happened to me that is when I started to understand like, “Oh, that's actually what happened to my body. This isn't normal.”
The perpetrator was giving me lies, saying this was supposed to be normal, and it was normal that I was to keep it secret. But as I grew older and went to school and I learned about all these things about, about our bodies and about sex and all these other things, like it's it just brought so much shame to me because I think I was probably around seven or eight at that time when it finally hit me, when I was just like, “Hey, I remember what happened to me at four or five years old.”
Because it was a course of over two years. It wasn't just once. It happened several times. And when it finally hit me of what happened to me, I can just say that I was just completely disgusted. I was disgusted, I was ashamed, and everything went on in my mind of like, “Why did I allow that to happen to my body?”
And I think I went into a state of like denial. Like I didn't I didn't want to remember that it happened, because I was so ashamed. But I didn't know that. I didn't know that it was shame, but I was very disgusted with my body. And I blamed myself a lot for allowing to happen that to me at such a young age, even though I probably didn't even know what was happening to me at four or five years old. And I went through my whole life covering this up, not telling anyone. And pretended like it didn't happen.
John Yoder: Maisie, you have done an amazing job of facing abuse, and many other people would do well to follow your example. Jesus also dealt with people who faced abuse. Maybe you haven't heard that before, and right now we’ll turn to our Bible lesson and see how Jesus spoke with people experiencing abuse. And then we want to come back and hear the rest of your story.
Dealing with abuse is one of the most difficult and one of the most neglected ministries of the church. A lot of Christians carry the wounds of abuse for years. They never tell anyone. Their scars aren't obvious. They don't show on the surface, but the pain is very real, and silence around that abuse makes it even worse.
The numbers are staggering. One in four women and one in thirteen men experience sexual violence. Two out of three sexual assaults go unreported.
Why is it that more survivors don't speak up? Many of the victims are afraid they won't be believed. Others are worried about the social consequences--they'll be blamed, ostracized, they'll have their reputation ruined.
Some of them are physically threatened by their abusers, and others are dependent on their abusers financially or in some other way.
A lot of survivors carry misplaced shame, like what somebody else did to them, defiled them. If you have ever been abused by somebody else, what that person did was a sin against God and a sin against you, and it defiled them, but it did not defile your moral character in any way. You were innocent in that process, especially for those of you who were abused in childhood.
You may not have the words to describe what happened. Shame easily comes in. It lies to you, and it says, “You could have stopped it. You must have wanted it. You must have even enjoyed it. You are damaged goods. No good moral person will want you.”
Now, years after the abuse is over, those memories can continue to trouble and harass you, damaging your relationships, your sense of safety, and even your sense of personal worth.
Maybe you've never heard Christians address this issue, but God cares very much about healing the pain of abuse. Here are the words of Jesus, from Matthew 18:5-6: “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fasten around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.”
Jesus is speaking very direct words to those who abuse others, even if nobody else ever knows about it. He sees every detail through the eyes of the abused, and he is very angry about it. He will not let the accuser off the hook. His words are very direct. You would be better off if somebody tied a rock around your neck and tossed you into the sea.
If you're the victim of abuse, maybe you've asked yourself, “Where was God when all of this happened?” Here's the reality. God was right there. He was present. He saw everything. He felt everything. And he became angry because that abuse desecrated the beautiful person he made you to be.
It's important for you to know that the abuser will not get away with it. Even if they were never caught. Even if they continue to live free and respected, they will face God's judgment. This isn't about revenge. It's about everything being set right. It's about a day when the lies will be exposed, and when the hidden things will come to light.
If you're the abuser and you've hurt somebody else, even if it was years ago, even if you got away with it, you are in big trouble with God. But there's good news. God forgives everyone who comes to him with a repentant heart. But you have to come clean. You have to apologize to the person you hurt, and to others who suffered because of what you did to them. You have to take steps to ensure you won't hurt someone else in the future. You have to break the curtain of silence and be painfully open about the hurt you've caused.
For those of you who are the victims of abuse, God calls you to the very difficult task of unconditional forgiveness. Even if your abuser isn't sorry. Even if they got away with it. The reason you need to forgive isn't for them. It's for you. Holding onto bitterness is poison for your soul.
The emotional energy you spend holding onto bitterness against your abuser is energy you cannot spend loving yourself and others. Your family and friends need you to be emotionally present with them. They need you at your best. And you can't do that if you're busy holding on to resentment about the past.
Forgiveness doesn't mean minimizing what happened. It doesn't mean forgetting what happened. It's not even necessarily reconciling with a person who hurt you, especially if they haven't acknowledged what they did. Forgiveness means letting go of your desire to hurt the other person, and entrusting vengeance to God.
Forgiveness is a process. It's not an event that happens in a single moment of time. You have to choose it again and again. The emotional side of forgiveness comes gradually over time.
One of the most important things you can do is find safe people with whom you can share your story. People who will believe you, who will walk with you through the process of healing. Those might be counselors, friends, pastors, a support group. Not everybody will listen to you or believe you or validate your story, but if you look, you can identify those who will.
God does not define you as a victim of abuse. He defines you as his son or daughter. And as you learn to stand by faith in that primary identity as his beloved son or daughter, your identity as an abuse victim will have less and less power over the way you see yourself.
So Maisie, it was a number of years after the abuse, before you finally open up and told anyone.
Maisee Vang: That is correct. And to be honest, I didn't tell anyone until I got married. And the person that, that I had come out to tell was my husband. It was during the first year or two of our marriage that, I knew that I couldn't go on with my marriage without telling my husband about this and confessing this to him, because I knew that deep down it did affect me, but I was afraid to tell anyone. I was too ashamed. I was afraid.
And so finally I think, and I believe that was God telling me that, “You need to tell your husband.” And so one night I worked up the courage to go to my husband. I think it was after we watched a movie. I got very disturbed after that movie, and something inside of me just told me, “You have to tell your husband of what happened to you, about your sexual abuse.”
And I went to him that night and I just told him. I was like,” Hey, like I have something very important to tell you that I've never told anyone before”. And, I told him what happened when I was four or five, and how the sexual abuse happened. And my husband was very loving about it. And he prayed for me, and he assured me that he still loved me and it's okay.
And at that time I also released forgiveness for the perpetrator. I think God put into my heart at that time that I no longer wanted to hold this bitterness inside of me. And so I when I had confessed that to my husband at the same time, I had prayed over this, and I had released forgiveness for the perpetrator because I believe that a part of me had been holding this unforgiveness for the perpetrator as well.
And so after that, I felt like I was fine. I was like, “God, I, you put into my heart for me to confess to my husband. I know that he's in prayer for me”. I released forgiveness for the perpetrator.
This went on several years. It didn't happen all the time But I went through several years, still having like anxiety and thoughts about what had happened. And I didn't quite understand why. I was like confused. I was just like, “God, like I told my husband, I released forgiveness. So what's wrong?”
I didn't understand what was wrong with me. So every time that, when those thoughts or those feelings would come, obviously I would pray over it. Pray that my mind and my thoughts would be protected.
But it was still very hard. I was still, internally, I was still struggling and, but I didn't feel comfortable telling anyone else other than my husband. I didn't feel like I didn't tell anyone from church. Several of my family didn't even know, and I just felt very alone in this.
And so I'll be very honest it wasn't up until maybe just even a month ago I was at a woman's retreat and during this woman's retreat, we really had time to reflect on everything in our life--all the things that has happened to us in the past. Any generational curses or bondages that we have. And I asked the Holy Spirit during that time and I was just like, “God, is there something, a part of me?”
Like I told God, I was like, I knew that the abuse still bothered me, but I didn't know why.
I was like, “God, I released forgiveness. What other part of me do I still need to heal from this?” And during that time it was when God fulfilled to me and he was just like, the word “shame” just came so clearly to me when I had prayed that, and God just revealed to me in that time that you have a lot of shame and because of that you cannot forgive yourself.
And so when he revealed that to me, I was like, okay. It's me. Like I've already released forgiveness, and I believe that at that time when I confessed everything to my husband that I have forgiven the perpetrator. But God just met me that night and he just soke to me.
Because I can tell you that night I was, my anxiety was on the high. It was like I was being spiritually attacked everywhere. My anxiety was on the high. I was fighting inside internally, and God was just, God met me and God was just like, “I'm your Father, and I've always been here with you”. And I heard those words so clearly and he just reminded me. He was like, “Do you remember that revelation that I gave you that you know you have shame?” And it was at that time it just came to me. It was like, “You need to forgive yourself. You've forgiven everyone except yourself.”
And so I got up because at that point I haven't slept all night because my anxiety was just on the high and I got up to pray and I was like, I verbally forgave myself and I gave it up to God. And I was just like, “God, I acknowledge that this abuse happened to me. I will no longer try to act like it didn't happen”. And I know that I had a lot of shame over it. And I did not forgive myself for it, and I asked for forgiveness and I gave it up to God, and I said, “In the name of Jesus, I know that I am forgiven through the blood of Jesus.” And I forgave myself in that moment.
And it was at that moment that I was finally able to go to sleep because I was as if the enemy was just like giving me all this anxiety, like saying, “You're not healed.” But I knew that I was. I know the truth. The truth is that when you know the truth, you'll be set free. And so I was like, “I can get over this anxiety, I can get over this shame.”
And when I verbally forgave myself that night, that is when the anxiety disappeared and when I felt like the shame disappeared, and I began to replace all those lies, and as I continued to pray, I think one thing that God really revealed to me was that he was just like, “The lie that the enemy put in you through that shame was that you were too broken, you were too broken to be set free.” So I didn't believe that I could truly be healed, because I thought that it was too broken through that shame.
But then I am reminded that when we come to believe in Christ, when we put our faith in Christ, we are not put to shame. The Word of God says that. Praise God for that, because it was because of that night that when I came back, actually when I came back and we had that team meeting, John and Robin and John, you had introduced that the topics for this next series of podcasts will be on abuse, anxiety, and shame.
I was just like, God, are you telling me something? Because I will be very honest with you. I was not going to share my story on sexual abuse. I had planned to bury that deep down. I told one person that was my husband, but I had not planned to share this story. But I believe that me sharing this story of my sexual abuse on this podcast was all a part of God's plan.
Because who would've known that this next series would be on sexual abuse, would be on shame and anxiety? All the things that I had been struggling with and been experienced maybe just days or months be up until the podcast. And then I had that deep revelation with God right before. And I just want to praise God for giving me the courage and the healing in order to have the boldness in order to share my story and in truth.
And one thing I want to say is healing doesn't happen overnight. I believe that the more that I speak about my abuse, I'm healing every day. I am healing every day. And the Word of God says when you bring the darkness cannot overcome the light, right?
And so now I believe that God wants me to bring my story of abuse to the light. And when this story is brought to the light, the enemy no longer has a hold. And the darkness will no longer be able to overcome the light, because I've brought this to the light. And so that is my story, and why I believe God has given me the courage and boldness to share my story today with all of you.
John Yoder: And Maisie, we just want to thank you for your courage in sharing that. When you were a little girl, four or five years old, you did not understand what was happening to you. Later on as a teenager in high school, people explained the process, and you realized that what happened was not right, it was not normal. And you begin to experience those feelings of shame and brokenness.
But we want to affirm, as your brothers in Christ, that when you were four and five years old, you did nothing wrong. That the perpetrator did something evil that defiled him as a person. But that you were not. You were innocent in that process.
And we want to proclaim that you are no more broken than any of us. You are no more defiled than all of us are, through the fall. And through the blood of Chris,t and through your own confession, you are clean. You are pure in his sight, and you stand equal with all of us. We believe that God's forgiveness extends to you, and we believe that you are as lovable and desirable as anyone else.
Maisee Vang: Amen. I received that. I received that fully, John. And I've received the blessings from that and truly believe that I am made new through Christ.
John Yoder: Maisee, you've got an awesome story. We're so grateful you shared that with us today, and next time you're going to come back and continue your story, as we talk about shame. Many Christians are ashamed not just about abuse, but about many different practices and things that they've heard over time that certain people reject, that God does not reject.
And we want to talk about true and false shame, and how to be set free from that, and so we will talk about that next time. We'll see you then.
