Listen: Lavinia Wilson tells Ben McEachen about the abuse she suffered and what helped her to heal
By Ben McEachenTuesday 29 Mar 2022Hope AfternoonsRelationshipsReading Time: 2 minutes
What Lavinia Wilson lived through is the stuff of nightmares. But it happened to her and her sister, for real.
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As she recounts in her memoir Where’s the Red Button?, Lavinia was born “wrong”. Her father wanted her to be a boy, not a girl.
He wanted to continue the family name. Lavinia’s older sister was raised as a boy and Lavinia was “rejected”.
“From a very young age, I was at the hands of his abuse and torment,” Lavinia told Hope Afternoons.
“It was torture. There were moments when my life was in danger.
“I was a little girl so fearful that somehow I came up with the concept of running away when I was four… On this occasion, it was because of an attempted drowning.
“My father instructed my sister, who is three years older than me, to drown me. Hold my head under water.”
“There are many such stories throughout my childhood where my life had been spared and I can only put that down to the grace of God.”
The grace of God is not something Lavinia recognised as a child. That came much later, after one of the lowest points in her life, following years of being a ward of the state.
In Where’s the Red Button?, Lavinia recounts her painful childhood as well as the “incredible encounter” she had with the love of God expressed most fully in the gospel of Jesus.
Lavinia wrote Where’s The Red Button? to be able to share what led up to her introduction to God’s grace, and how it helped to transform her.
“People are captivated by the fact that, at this stage in my life, I am able to articulate a story of brokenness but not live in or speak from a place of pain,” Lavinia said.
“That hasn’t come overnight. It’s been a long journey of rediscovering my identity and rediscovering hope and healing.”
Listen to the full interview with Lavinia Wilson in the player above.
Source: amazon.com
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