SOS to God E-Book

Elisabeth Lichtblau

• Herausgeber: novum publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 130

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

As a young girl, she took drugs, was sexually abused by a doctor, fell in love twice with alcoholic men and married them; both died young. She developed an eating disorder and suffered from depression for years. Elisabeth Lichtblau (born 1953) tells her life story in her autobiography in a sober but unsparing way. God plays a major role, but the book is not missionary. It encourages its readers to believe in its great power and never to lose faith in the good. "SOS an Gott" is a life story in which everyone will find themselves in certain situations. It is an encouraging story that shows that things can get better. It is a love story that also tells of the love for God and for one's own self.

Leseprobe

Prologue

When did I suddenly start to look at life backwards?

Everything was always geared towards:

"What's next?"

"What lies ahead?"

"What good changes will the next day bring?"

And suddenly ... everything is different.

I always expected a lot and was full of hope for the future. Above all, that things would get better in my life. And now?

Thoughts of the past and memories of things that seemed long forgotten are increasingly making their way up from within me and from now on have a stronger hold on my existence.

Added to this is the awareness of the finite nature of all things, including our own lives.

I used to think it would always go on like this, it would never end ... and suddenly?

Completely new thoughts and feelings arise out of nowhere.

Above all, time is running out.

Whereas in the past I had all the time in the world at my disposal, today I wonder how many more springs, Christmases, celebrations with my loved ones and new experiences I will have?

How should I use this time?

What else is important?

What do I do, what do I leave alone?

Does that happen for everyone?

Is it the inner clock in people that is now ushering in a new era in their own lives?

Everything rushes past me quickly. I want to hold on to a lot of things and not have to let them go. If I'm looking forward to something beautiful, it's already a thing of the past in an instant. It's a strange feeling.

I haven't really been able to get to grips with it yet. I don't feel at home here yet.

God probably arranged it that way, it is the course of all human life.

The only difference is that you are suddenly one of those who are now on the other side of the viewing process.

Aligning life with eternity takes on a new dimension.

Introduction

My life has been a very eventful one. What I have seen and gone through could fill at least three lifetimes.

Unfortunately, a large part of it was heaviness, fighting for survival, fighting with myself, fighting with others, fighting with circumstances.

But then also many blessings. I don't want to know how much preservation and the strength to get up anew every morning have been given to me "from above".

Sounds dramatic, and it had been.

My best friends, who have been with me for a long time, see me as a walking miracle.

As proof that there must be a God.

That prompted me to write this book.

It is certainly just one of many books, all of which report on the important experiences and thoughts of individual people. People who come to terms with their lives and reflect on them.

Every life is a book worth telling.

That is why I rejoice so much in the words from the Holy Scriptures, where God says that he sees everything that happens on earth. (Psalm 33:13+14; Jeremiah 32:19).

That all the tears that are wept will be caught in a large jar. (Psalm 56:9b).

Nothing and no one can get past this God.

Because we are so important to him.

Chapter 1

Scenes from early childhood

Oh dear!

Now it lies broken in four pieces in front of me, the freshly baked marble cake. Fear creeps up inside me, wondering what the consequences will be.

My parents have little money, we live in a cramped refugee house with my grandmother and great-grandmother and the cake has been saved for later.

My mother fled with her mother and grandmother during the Second World War.

Do I always have to take everything in my hands and explore?

With shaky hands, I try to put the pieces together to restore the original shape, at least on the outside. Well, the result wouldn't score me many points in a design competition, but maybe no one will notice, and I don't have to say that it was me who did it.

I leave the room and leave the cake and myself to fate.

There he is, lying quietly and beautifully in his basket. A little creature with blond curls on his head. From now on, he'll always be part of the family. They say he is my brother.

- Later, I was allowed to bid him farewell from this life in the same way. Sitting at his bedside, looking at him as he was on his way to leave this earth. Sleeping, gray-blond, thinning curls. After a long, serious illness. -

I developed spastic bronchitis when I was four years old. As I needed a change of air, I was sent for a cure.

One of the six most terrible weeks of my young life. Terrible homesickness, strict teachers, terrible food.

Side table when you couldn't finish it, and a bad rage at my bed neighbor who was always whining and was so sensitive in my opinion.

First sensations of violence in my little human heart.

Experiences of violence from the outside but also fantasies of violence inside me.

I have fond memories of a nursery schoolteacher and a nurse.

We move to my father's birthplace. My parents have built a house there. The mountain air and the stimulating climate are good for my airways.

We have a bathroom with a stove that is fired once a week. Then the whole family can bathe one after the other in a beautiful modern bathtub.

What a luxury!

In the previous refugee apartment, there was only a large zinc tub that had to be filled with hot water from a kettle on the stove.

There is also more space for us children. We sleep with my grandmother in a large double bed. A room for everyone is not yet possible, as my great-grandmother also lives with us and we have sublet a room.

In the evening, when Grandma is not yet in bed, my brother and I make up scary stories about a wolf coming or a criminal entering the house. The whole thing ends with one of us saying: "Will you look after me?"

And the other answers: "Yes, and you for me too?"

"Yes."

Afterwards we are calmed and feel so secure that we fall asleep immediately.

Unfortunately, I'm not a good girl. For some reason, I like to annoy people in the village. I make fun of a lot of things, I'm a master at telling made-up stories, I don't do my homework but copy it from my cousin in the morning before class.

What's more, I daydream in class, can't pay attention and therefore often make the teacher angry. He sees my future at risk. Since I'm probably not stupid, he often turns up at my parents' house to discuss how I could be dealt with.

So, it's inevitable that the whole thing ends in disaster for me one fine Saturday afternoon.

I'm sitting on the swing, and my parents are cleaning the freshly planted strawberry bushes in our garden. As they are bent over the whole time, they can't see me.

I can't believe my ears when I hear my mother say to my father: "It can't go on like this! Our daughter needs a good spanking. You're going to take her tonight and give her a good thrashing. We can't go out in public anymore. Someone is always coming and complaining about her." (At that time, corporal punishment of children was a legitimate means of education).

An icy chill ran through me. I felt sick and panicked for the rest of the afternoon. I kept thinking about what would happen to me that evening. How could I escape this fate?

Then I started to pray: "Dear God, please don't let me get hit. Just let it pass me by."

I don't know what I promised him in return, but I think I decided that afternoon, with the sweat of fear stinging my clothes, to become a nice, sweet girl. To at least try and stop annoying people. Yes, maybe even apologize.

Evening came and Dad asked me into the bedroom. I walked as if to the scaffold, knowing what to expect.

My father was a gentle, kind person. He couldn't hit me, but he persistently talked about it. He also incurred my mother's displeasure as she believed that his words would have no effect.

The afternoon I suffered was punishment enough and a therapeutic lesson. It really did change me. From then on, I pulled myself together and tried to become a better person. I think I succeeded, at least for the most part.

All the girls in the village are already menstruating and have a proper feminine look. They already look so grown up, giggle a lot when they see boys and wear their hair in a modern short cut.

Only I still look like a little girl. Slim, hardly any breasts, with two long braided pigtails, even though I'm already 12 years old.

Because I get sick from time to time, my mother sends me to the family doctor to see if everything is okay with me. I always feel very intimidated around him because he is tall and strong and exudes something dominant and commanding. I sit there like a little sausage and answer his questions.

Then I was told to sit down on a strange chair (later I realized it was a gynecological examination chair).

GPs in remote rural areas were equipped for all eventualities of being ill. He also supposedly had specialist gynecological training.

I'm lying there now, legs up in the holders, thinking to myself: "What's he doing?"

It felt strange.

Did it have to take so long?

Was he rubbing back and forth down there?

Did such an investigation take so long?

I found it strange; it was unpleasant.

In my still very childish and naive mind, I would never have thought of anything sexual, let alone felt anything like that.

He then told me that I was still a little underdeveloped, but that this was no cause for concern.

The next day, my mother asked me while I was sorting out the laundry what kind of blood I had in my underpants.

"Hm."

I said that I didn't know where it could have come from. Because it happened only once, we didn't worry about it anymore, at least not me.

I didn't get my period until I was 14.

Strangely enough, from then on, I always broke out in a sweat when I had to go to the doctor again. I was then very excited, even anxious, and happy when I could leave the surgery again.

Later, during puberty, I noticed that I couldn't build or maintain a relationship with a young man. As soon as I became close, especially physically close, I had to end the friendship immediately. This caused me inner distress, as I saw couples forming around me and felt like an exotic person in this respect.

My paternal grandparents were deeply religious people. It was nothing strange that we children often took part in Christian events, be it church services or "the hour", an evangelization or a camp.

One evening at an evangelization event in the church hall, I had the urgent need to spend the rest of my life with this Jesus who was being talked about there and made a conscious decision to become a Christian.

Afterwards, as I walked through the clear, cold winter night and looked up at the starry sky, I was filled with a joy that I have rarely felt in my life. I was so fulfilled that I even got my father out of bed and told him about my touching experience. He was delighted, but didn't really know what to say as he didn't have such an intimate relationship with his Creator at the time.

This experience gave me inner drive, joy and the feeling of being held and safe for quite some time.

I was involved in the church's children's service and later, after my confirmation, I sang in the church choir and led a youth group with the church nurse. I felt fulfilled and happy.

I even went to the prayer meetings, where only older brothers met (my grandparents had a pietistic background) and as a girl I certainly seemed like a foreign body there. But I thought nothing of it. It didn't occur to me that perhaps responsible prayer meetings were only attended by experienced elders.

They also didn't ask what I was doing here or say that I shouldn't come back.

I simply prayed along.

Chapter 2

Youth

Unfortunately, the secure, fulfilling life did not last.

I had an accident when I was 14.

After finishing my piano lesson, I was standing at the traffic lights in front of my piano teacher's house. A car sped towards me and drove straight into me.

I crashed into the windshield, which shattered, and was then thrown in a high arc over the fence into the garden of Mr. Kilian, my piano teacher.

There I woke up in the middle of a flower bed with his agitated, horrified face in front of me. Startled by the noise, he had immediately rushed out and called the ambulance.

I felt dizzy and felt warm blood running down my face. This was from the shards of glass from the broken windshield that had pressed into my skin, especially my scalp. Apart from that, I didn't have any visibly more serious injuries.

The examinations at the hospital revealed a concussion and I had to rest for a while. The worst part was removing the many pieces of glass. Fortunately, I didn't suffer any disfiguring scars.

Afterwards, I had to struggle with headaches and concentration problems, but I was still able to keep my cool.

I could easily have been thrown against the traffic lights and killed on impact.

Somehow this event, puberty and the challenges of being a developing, slowly growing person threw me off track.

Later, when I was processing my life, I realized that several constellations had probably played a part in getting me into very serious difficulties.

I wasn't aware of all this at the time and so I slowly slipped into a dangerous development.

A time of great upheaval began in society, especially among the youth of the time. The 1968 movement.

The advent and use of drugs was a major topic.

The questioning of everything that exists and the resulting rebellion and revolt against authority and all previously valid rules of life is another.

Parents, teachers, superiors, in fact anyone who wanted to tell you something was viewed skeptically, critically or dismissively from the outset. In this youthful storm and stress period, it was rarely checked whether someone could be right or even meant well and not bad for you.

The contraceptive pill came onto the market in the USA in 1960 and a year later in West Germany. By 1968, it was already enjoying greater popularity. This gave many women the opportunity to seemingly liberate their sexuality and achieve greater independence.

In many places, communes sprang up and a free, unrestricted sex life was possible. This was further fueled by the increasingly frequent use of drugs, which spread more and more among young people.

To belong and find recognition, you had to find your place in a group that suited you.

Strong or more stable personalities were able to live such a life and still successfully complete secondary school, study, enter professions and build an existence.