A Journey of Forgiveness and Renewal

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I first interviewed today's guest, Mark Sowersby, on the first podcast I started years ago.

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His story of child abuse and how he overcame and learned to forgive his nightmare was powerful and encouraging.

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His book is amazing too.

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I guarantee you will be blessed by his uplifting tone of voice and his pastor's heart for sharing the gospel and seeing people freed from the bondage of unforgiveness.

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Be sure to share this episode with family and friends so they too can be blessed by the contents of this episode.

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Hey, Mark, it's so great to have you on the podcast.

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This is a different one from the last one, but I'm very excited to have you back on.

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You're such a fun and exciting person to talk to.

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Well, it's an honor to be here.

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It's always great to have a conversation with you and it's a blessing to be able to just show up, have a conversation, lift up the name of Jesus and just continue to have all that God has for us today.

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All right, Go ahead and tell us about your book Forgiving the Nightmare.

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What is it about?

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And yeah, go ahead.

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Sure, well, forgiving the Nightmare is my testimony, my story, my trials, my victory.

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That's found in my faith by Christ.

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But really it's a story of forgiveness and I called it forgiving the nightmare.

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And I'm using nightmare in a sense that everybody has a trauma.

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Everybody has something in their life that's tried to drag them down, hold them back, tried to trap them.

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Now my trauma, my pain was I was abused as a child.

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So from the ages of 7 to 14 years old, I was abused by my mother's husband, who was 20 years her younger.

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He would molest me and beat me and burn me and stab me and sell me to others.

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Obviously, it was a horrible and horrific time in my life.

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That was my trauma, that was my pain.

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But I know today that there are countless other traumas that people deal with addictions and deaths and sorrows and all kinds of things.

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So the story of Forgiveness Nightmare is not just about nightmares, not just about traumas.

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But how do we forgive those things that God calls us to forgive?

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You know, the Lord says forgive those who trespass against us.

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Well, how do we do that?

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What's that look like?

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So I wrote this book to explain my journey and to lean on my God and to share the hope that I found in Jesus Christ, that others may be able to be inspired and encouraged to say it's a real story about a real guy who learned to trust in Jesus.

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And your book is very profound and very hard to read because of what you had been through hard to read because of what you had been through.

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But it's also very encouraging and I loved the book despite the sad childhood that you had.

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But I am so glad that you wrote it and that you were so vulnerable about it, because this is something that I think a lot of people have been through, especially men, but they're not really willing to talk about it because they have the shame aspect, which is only from Satan, that he would make that a thing, because you can't be freed while you're feeling shame and guilt over something that happened to you like that.

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And I'm just I'm very thankful that you wrote this book, that you were so vulnerable and you were so willing to share your story, because it will help other people and it has.

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I mean you've been, you've been rocking it everywhere 700 Club, tbn.

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I've seen you on many different interviews, so you've been getting it out there, which is good.

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Well, thank you so much for your kind words and support and your encouragement.

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This story that pours out of me is really just the story of God.

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If anybody hears anything, I don't want them to think that I'm special, that there's something great about me.

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I'm not.

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I didn't wake up and say, hey, I'm such a good guy, I want to forgive people who hurt me.

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So I wanted my pound of flesh, I wanted my revenge.

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I felt anything that anybody would feel and that kind of dictated my life for a long time.

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But I also found forgiveness, and by finding forgiveness is I was set free.

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I was set free from the pain.

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I was set free from that hurt.

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Forgiveness really was liberating to me because I didn't have to wake up every day and put on that cloak and put on that hard shell.

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I didn't have to walk around being shackled to my abuser.

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You know, this journey that I call forgiving.

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The nightmare didn't start with me going, hey, let me forgive everybody.

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It started with me seeking the Lord, trusting in the Lord, calling on the name of the Lord, and as I sought the Lord, as I said, god, I want to know you.

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I don't need to know a religion, I don't need to know a congregation.

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I don't need to know those things, the denomination.

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I need to know you.

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And God was faithful to me and as I sought the Lord, the Lord would bring me to forgiveness, the Lord would bring me to grace.

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That's the story of Forgiving the Nightmare, that journey of the Lord teaching me and shaping me and leading me to be a man after his own heart, where God would bring me to a place of mercy and grace.

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Amen.

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That's the only true forgiveness is in Jesus Christ.

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If you try to find it anywhere else, you won't find it.

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It may be temporary, but something's going to come up, it's going to trigger that and then you're going to realize you didn't really have forgiveness.

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So it's very good, especially with the kind of thing that you went through.

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It is key to have the absolute definition of forgiveness, because that is not easy to trust someone again, it's not easy to move forward from, and if you don't have absolute forgiveness, I don't see how you can survive.

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Well, I tell everybody, one of the first casualties of any trauma, especially child abuse or any trauma, is you stop trusting anybody or anything.

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And that's just a casualty of trauma, that you don't trust anybody.

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You don't trust people, places, preachers, teachers.

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You don't trust anybody because you're always waiting for the other foot to drop, you're always waiting for the bad to happen, you're always waiting for the pain to come.

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And you know and to be honest, I still have triggers, those emotions still can rise up, a certain smell, a certain sound, a certain air.

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I still have that.

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What I have to do is realize that God became bigger than my hurt.

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And I don't want to dismiss my hurt, I don't want to pretend like it was small or little.

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Believe me, it was the rudder that stirred my life for a long time.

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It was the shadow that was cast over me for a long, long time.

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But God got a hold of my heart.

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And when God became bigger, when God became stronger, when the sweetness of the word of God became louder than the hate of my abuser, when the grace of God became louder than how much I hated myself, god became louder than how much I hated myself and all those things started to just awaken in me.

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But again, it was the journey that brought me through that.

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I believe God could heal in an instant, in the twinkle of an eye, but my healing came through, like David said in the 22th Psalm, that I had to walk through the valley, my healing came through walking through that valley.

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I had to go through a growing period and I had to go through a refining period and I, you know, sometimes I wrestled with God and I shook my fist to heaven and I asked God the big questions like if you're so, if you're real, then why?

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And if you could do anything, then how?

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And you know you're so loving that.

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And of course I wrestled those things out.

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But God was faithful and gentle and kind and he just kept bringing me to him.

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So the worst part of my life, gentle and kind, and he just kept bringing me to him.

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So the worst part of my life, the abuse and the neglect it no longer had to be the sum of my life.

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I'm not a perfect man.

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My mouth fits my foot in it perfectly.

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Believe me, I think that goes for a lot of people.

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I have that problem too.

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Just ask my husband.

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Yeah, ask my wife.

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She'll tell you that too.

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Just ask my husband.

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Yeah, but, but you know, I think that god gives us a perspective.

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You know, god gives us a perspective of him.

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You know the bible says seek ye first the kingdom of god.

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And I had to seek ye first jesus, for the, for healing and for forgiveness and for grace.

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But when my perspective changed, when I didn't just see myself but I saw God, when my perspective of the situation changed, I began to heal.

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You know, there's three principles I talk about in my book, forgiving the Nightmare, and three principles that really helped me heal.

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And the first one is I had to learn what forgiveness was and wasn't.

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You know, sometimes, as you mentioned earlier men or anybody that goes through a trauma sometimes, if you forgive, you might think you're letting somebody off the hook, or you're agreeing, or you're supporting, or you're okay with what happened, and I would say forgiveness is not approval of the offense.

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Forgiveness is not approval of the offense.

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Forgiveness is not acceptance of the error.

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You know, forgiveness is not agreeing with the trauma, the sin, the pain.

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You can forgive and still call the cops.

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You can forgive and still say it's wrong.

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You can forgive and still seek justice.

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So forgiveness is not approval.

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Forgiveness sets you free.

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The second thing I realized is that forgiveness is not a one-time event.

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You know, I think that you have to constantly say I forgive and stand on the word of God.

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And as you mature and you get older, you forgive in different places of your life.

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And if the younger man forgave one way and as I get older I forgive a different way, because God becomes more and God's grace becomes more and I see God.

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And the third thing I remember is that you can have your healthy boundaries, you know.

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You can say I love you or I don't.

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You know, I just need my boundary.

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I forgive you.

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You know, maybe it's not love, maybe it's just forgiveness.

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I forgive you but I, you know, I don't have to hang out with you, I don't have to have a kumbaya moment with you, I don't have to do Thanksgiving dinner with you.

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So those three principles really help me understand what forgiveness is and isn't.

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Yeah, boundaries.

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That's an important one, not just in this situation, but in every situation.

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Sometimes you need to have boundaries with people.

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There's certain things that they're doing or saying that aren't good and they're not helping your life.

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You need to put those boundaries in place to keep your life and your sanity.

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That's true.

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That's true, and sometimes trauma steals that from you because it's a valuable issue, right?

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So we put boundaries because we value who we are, we value ourselves, we value our families, we value our faith.

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But when you've had gone through a trauma, the insecurity of trauma, the insecurity of pain, the brokenness of psyche and flesh and all that stuff, sometimes you think, well, I don't have the right to tell somebody, I don't have the, and you know that's a whole nother system of healing, you know.

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So I think when people go through trauma, you end up wanting to be a peacemaker and you end up trying to fight through all these different aspects.

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So you know, I understand how hard it can be to say you know, value my health, I value my physical health, I value my spiritual health, I value my emotional health and I value my faith and I can have boundaries.

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But you know, when you've had your dignity stolen and you know, not only was my flesh stolen from me, not only was my innocence stolen from me, but also my dignity, my value, my self-respect.

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All that was stolen left me insecure, left me broken.

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You know, I had a view of myself that I was something on the bottom of somebody's shoe, that I had no value and as God started to restore me you know the Bible talks about love thy neighbor as you love yourself.

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I didn't love myself and I said Lord, how do I love myself?

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And Lord said love yourself.

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I didn't love myself and I said, Lord, how do I love myself?

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And Lord said, love me and I'll teach you how to love yourself.

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So as I started to love myself because God loves me, I started to value and be able to say I can have my boundaries.

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Yeah, I love that.

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Love God first, then you can love yourself.

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Our culture is so so wanting to love itself.

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It's not even funny.

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They're getting it wrong because they're not putting God first.

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That's true.

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Put God first, and then you will be able to know what true love is, and then you will be able to love yourself and others.

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We have a very skewed idea of what love is nowadays, and that just summed it up pretty well, mark.

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Thank you so much for saying that.

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Well, I hope it was clear and people could understand.

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But again, I think that value part, because trauma steals that part of us.

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Trauma steals our value, trauma steals our hope.

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Sometimes Trauma just brings us to a survival mode and not a thriving mode.

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We're just trying to get through.

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They say there's three ways that people handle this.

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You've heard of fight and flight, but there's a third one that I've read about and again, psychiatrists can talk far deeper than I can what's called the chameleon, where people just try to blend in what do I have to do today to survive?

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Do I have to be the funny guy?

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Do I have to be the jock guy?

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Do I have to be the geek guy?

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What do I have to do today to survive?

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And I think there's fight and flight and then chameleon, where I think a lot of times when we go through trauma we're just going okay, what is expected to me?

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That I'm protecting, that I'm being safe.

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But with God we can really discover who we are because we become born again and he is the lifter of our head and he is the lover of our soul and he does pour value on us, not because of who we are, but because of who he is.

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Yeah, yeah, that's very good.

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So how have you turned your nightmare and your book Forgiving the Nightmare into a ministry?

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Well, you know, we just gave it to God and, to be honest, when I wrote the book I thought, okay, lord, my family will read it you know, there might be a couple buddies of mine that read it and it was like it was like I just was burdened to write it down.

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It wasn't something I was like, hey, I'm going to write this book.

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It was just like, hey, I'm going to be right this book.

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But it was just like, okay, god, it's out.

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I just had to get it out of me and I, I spilled all over the pages and I wrote sentences that were like, you know, just a million mile long, didn't have a capital or a period or anything, I just poured out of me.

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And then, of course, my wife and editors and publishers.

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They made it really pretty and nice.

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So since then we've been able to first do what I do.

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We were able to go to churches and be able to speak in platforms and have altar times and pray with one another and, as we see that part of the ministry growing and of course we're still doing that, where it's not only speaking in my church here in Massachusetts and in Dudley Mass at Calvary Community Church, but we're speaking out at different churches and having those altar meetings.

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But we see this ministry growing in a sense for a couple of things, you know.

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First, we just made a short film that's in film festivals Right now as we speak.

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It's one scenario of the book.

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It couldn't be the whole book but it was one scenario that we kind of captured on film that we're telling that way.

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Also, we hope to have a workbook out soon so we could have a healing days or a healing seminar.

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You know there's probably somebody much more creative out there, they can title it better than me, but we hope to put a workbook together to kind of give people some steps.

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You know I've realized that there's probably about six, seven, eight, nine, 10 things that are very common in a healing journey, but they're not systematic.

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You know, my one might be somebody else's three, or their three might be my seven, or their seven might be my four.

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So it's not this nice clean cut one, two, three, abc, a systematic way.

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But there are very familiar things that people who walk through trauma and then are able to forgive go through the process.

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So we're trying to put that down into a workbook that we can send out.

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And again, I think we talked earlier in the pre-show that we have a second book coming out.

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My wife wrote it with me, so half of it was going to be really, really great.

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Her half is gone.

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You're winning brownie points tonight with her.

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If I wanted brownie points I'd just fold the laundry.

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That's a lot of decision, yes, but the book we're writing it's going to be a devotional book and we're calling it Letters to the Weary because Christ said if you're tired or weary, come follow me.

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So Letters to the Weary, to the same genre of people that deal with hurt and brokenness and sorrow, and I've kind of put the pastor hat a little stronger on, not just the testimony hat.

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And the one thing we like in our new book that we're calling the big question.

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After every devotion, my wife being a teacher and having an education background, she wrote a question on each one called the big question, and in that question is a question that comes out of the devotion that we hope will make people think and pray and process and write.

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So we hope that that big question will really inspire people and challenge people and to kind of go beyond just the words on the page but allow to become more of a process of a prayer.

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So excited about these things and again ministering to people and still speaking online and podcasts and television and having these things.

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So I hope that answered your question.

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Yeah, yeah, I mean it's great that you're getting it out there, you're sharing People are being healed from this abuse.

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It's good that you have been able to turn this into a ministry, that you are making strides to make it bigger and more out there.

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It's a necessary thing and especially, unfortunately, with the trajectory of how things are going, with what they're being taught in schools, the children and everything, I can see this really being something that is necessary in the future.

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Well may God be glorified.

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And you know it's funny you say that because I used to think, okay, I'll go to the church and the unsaved will hear this and they'll turn their heart.

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But I realized that when I speak about forgiveness, especially the forgiveness that was caused by trauma, I mean that we all have forgiveness journeys and stories and of course sometimes we got to forgive the guy who cut us off on the highway or stepped us on the line, and those are real, real processes of forgiveness.

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But when you have to forgive the trauma of somebody trespassing against you, that their actions change trajectories of your life, their actions changed trajectories of your life, that somebody's words, somebody's presence, somebody's sin caused your life to go in a way that was never a way you wanted it to go, and it has its ripple effects in you.

00:19:24.242 --> 00:19:42.519
And when I go to church and we talk that deep part of forgiveness, it's a lot of the Christians that they love God, they have a faith in God, They've received Christ as their Savior but yet they're still wrestling with this transformation and I realize that that's a lot of the people I'm talking to.

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A lot of people come to me and say Pastor Mark, I'm a Christian, I love God, I pray every day, I read my Bible, but yet I still feel trapped in this part of my life.

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Yet I still feel shackled.

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Yet I still feel tethered to the lie and the hurt.

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And I see God coming, even through his body, healing people.

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And we talk about all the fun parts of the ministry.

00:20:04.261 --> 00:20:06.929
I've been able to be on these shows and programs, but really the heart of the ministry is when I hear people go.

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I've been able to be on these shows and programs, but really the heart of the ministry is when I hear people go.

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I've been set free.

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I no longer see myself as that broken piece of hurt, but now I see myself as a child of God.

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And it's a process and that's what we talk about in the book.

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Right, I did not want to just say, hey, I went to church, I threw two bucks in the plate, I said a prayer and everything was perfect.

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It wasn't that way.

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God had to get a hold of me and he had to lead me to him.

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And then, when he brought me to his grace, his mercy, his word, through his spirit, then he would say, Mark, let's go move that mountain and let's forgive that nightmare, Amen.

00:20:47.425 --> 00:20:47.807
All right.

00:20:47.807 --> 00:20:49.829
Well, I have one more question for you.

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I want you to tell those who are in the current situation of abuse of any sort, even the kind that you went through, who are having trouble forgiving or they have not quite escaped and they want to know how on earth are they supposed to survive in the midst of everything?

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Give them some encouragement.

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Definitely will.

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I'll do my best to share my heart here.

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I'll definitely do my best to answer that question.

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The first thing I usually say to that is that if anybody has been through a trauma, trauma lies to us right.

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We live with our own head.

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We live with our own thoughts.

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The trauma is saying no one cares.

00:21:35.565 --> 00:21:39.280
The trauma says this is what people will think about you.

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They'll think you're weak, they'll think you're a fool.

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They'll think you're bad.

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They'll think you're wrong.

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They'll say why didn't you do this?

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And you should have done that and you should have thought you should have said no.

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And the trauma just compounds that negative feeling.

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So the first thing I say to people is that you're not alone.

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There's countless people in the community of faith that have been where you've been.

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Whatever your trauma is like mine is child abuse, addiction, whatever it is there's countless people out there that have walked the same road you have walked, that want to come beside you, want to give you hope, want to be a friend in your life.

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Now, they're not perfect people.

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Only one is perfect and he died on the cross for our sins.

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But there are people who care.

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They'll do their best to speak of the glory of God.

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They'll do their best to share the goodness of God.

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So the first thing I say is that the enemy's a liar and his lie to the broken, to the one that's trapped, is that no one will know, no one will care.

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So it keeps us isolated.

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It keeps us isolated from finding help, from finding hope.

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It keeps us isolated from God.

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I don't want to go to that church.

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They're us isolated from God.

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I don't want to go to that church.

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They're full of hypocrites.

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I don't want to talk to that preacher.

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All he wants is your money.

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And it keeps us isolated.

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But remember the Bible says that Satan's like a lion that comes to kill, steal and destroy.

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A lion never attacks the herd, he only attacks the stragglers.

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And I think that sometimes, if the enemy can lie to us and keep us isolated by ourself, we're an easy target.

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There is help in community, there's hope in relationship, and so come together and find that Now, if somebody's in a place right now where they're trapped in abuse, hey I say, reach out, call the authorities.

00:23:30.734 --> 00:23:33.521
I know you're afraid, I know that it's like.

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Well, you don't understand how bad it will be.

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I feel trapped because of my children.

00:23:37.262 --> 00:23:38.829
I feel trapped because of finances.

00:23:38.829 --> 00:23:46.242
I feel trapped because but I'll tell you, no one should be being beat, abused.

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Call somebody.

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There's advocacy, there's support, there's groups out there that want to come and help you and they know how to do it.

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They know how to help you in the healthiest way.

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And so, if you're trapped in abuse right now, call the places where you'll find help.

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Reach out to the authority If that's the police, if that's another organization, but reach out for somebody that's going to come and protect you.

00:24:13.934 --> 00:24:18.487
But maybe you're like me and the physical abuse, the emotional abuse, is over.

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But now you're living in the wake of the anguish of the mind and I'll let you know that there's peace if you're willing to go through that journey.

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It's hard.

00:24:29.920 --> 00:24:32.961
I want it to be over in an instant.

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I want it to go to bed and wake up and say it's all done.

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But that journey took me a lifetime to be able to say I truly forgave those who trespass against me and know that I'm not saying that in a way that I've accepted what that person did or approving of what that person did.

00:24:49.248 --> 00:24:52.781
What I mean when I say I forgave, I mean that I gave it to God.

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God will not be mocked.

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God is a just God and he will protect me and honor me.

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So I turned my abuser, I turned the men who raped me, I turned them into the hands of God and I said God, have your way, and Lord, I died of self and I live in you.

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It set me from that anguish that I had all the time.

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Amen, well said.

00:25:17.919 --> 00:25:20.943
Thank you, mark, for coming on the show.

00:25:20.943 --> 00:25:33.784
If people want to get in touch with you to whether they wanted to join your ministry, if they wanted to have you come to their church, where can they go to get information?

00:25:33.954 --> 00:25:41.824
Well, the best way to get a hold of me is to go to our website at forgivingthenightmarecom forgivingthenightmarecom.

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If you go there you'll see an ugly mug of me and maybe see a couple of videos I made.

00:25:47.407 --> 00:25:51.905
But you can also reach out to me at mark at forgiving the nightmarecom.

00:25:51.905 --> 00:25:54.098
That's my email market, forgive the nightmarecom.

00:25:54.098 --> 00:25:58.103
Or if you're interested in the book, you go to the website or you go to Amazon.

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Maybe just go to Amazon, write in forgiving the nightmare and you can find the book and hopefully you know our new book is at our publisher.

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We're believing it'll be out before the end of the year.

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We're at the final cross and T's and dot and I's.

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That's when they ask you what shade of white do you want your pages to be?

00:26:17.103 --> 00:26:17.703
White, white.

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What kind of white.

00:26:22.240 --> 00:26:23.659
You know what I wasn't aware.

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There was more than one.

00:26:25.876 --> 00:26:32.176
I wasn't aware of that either, but we're almost there, so we hope to have that out very soon.

00:26:32.176 --> 00:26:43.926
But thank you so much, ann, for the opportunity to come and share my heart, share my faith, and I just just would say that I hope my story will inspire others.

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I hope my book points to the good book, not, and I hope that people don't say hey, look at Mark, you know I'm not anything but a pastor, a guy with a story of a God who's done an incredible thing.

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I had to learn to die and pick up my cross, but God has given me life, and life more abundant.

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Amen.

00:27:05.607 --> 00:27:09.445
Well, thank you again, Mark, for coming on and sharing your story.

00:27:09.445 --> 00:27:13.896
I'm very encouraged yet again from having you on my podcast.

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Well, the pleasure is mine.

00:27:15.318 --> 00:27:16.159
Thank you so much.