Redeemed and Healed

I spent last week back home where I met with the lead prosecutor for the church trial of my abuser. As I boarded the plane the day of my meeting, I looked forward to the day that I will hop on a plane and go somewhere fun. My briefcase loaded down with legal documents, I sat in the window seat with my eyes closed, panning my soul for glimpses of God’s nearness as I settled into what the day would bring, asking God to be tangibly present at every turn. My mom picked me up from the airport, and we chatted, catching up on the kids and the end of summer, and she told me that she hoped that the days ahead wouldn’t be too difficult for me. I thanked her as we brought my things into the house, heading to lunch and then downtown for my meeting. It was raining hard as my mom pulled away from the curb, and I had to step over puddles of water to get to the sidewalk, moving quickly to meet the brisk walking pace of businessmen and women hurrying through the rain. The sounds became immediately muffled as I entered the revolving door and rounded into the building. Passing by the Starbucks at the entrance to this massive high rise, I remembered another time when God reached out to comfort me as I waited for a similar meeting to begin, and tucked that remembering under my belt as I continued through the lobby. As the elevator ascended to the 25th floor, I tried not to feel lonely or afraid, and as the door opened, I put the finishing touches on my game face as I checked in with the receptionist and took a seat in the waiting area.

Before too long, a law clerk, who I knew from previous visits, took my soaking wet raincoat and led me back to a conference room where I was to wait in privacy for the others to arrive. The room, although bright with artificial light, was an interior room with no windows and good sound proofing. I breathed in the quiet, grateful for the time to sit alone with nothing being asked of me, and wrote absent-mindedly in my journal, doodling a bit along the margins.

After some time, there was a knock on the door, and through it walked the prosecutor with whom I had come all of this way to meet. I remained seated but greeted him with a smile and a hand shake, wondering even then if I should have stood as he’d entered. We chatted briefly about my days’ trip, and then we began to talk about the case as we awaited the arrival of our third and final party – the adovacate assigned to me by the denomination in which I grew up. When she arrived I again remained seated as she paused by my chair to take my hand and kiss my cheek in greeting. The prosecutor handed out the meeting agenda, and briefly described the intent of the meeting. The first item was Introductions/Prayer, and he asked if I was comfortable with him praying. I indicated that I was, and that I would like to pray, and invited the advocate to join in as well. The prosecutor prayed for wisdom and insight and courage for all parties as the trial approached. My advocate prayed for me to feel comforted and emboldened. I prayed that God would have his way with every inch of the proceedings, and that truth would win the day and the days to come.

The next item on the agenda was for me to describe again, in detail, the details of my sexual abuse at the hands of my youth pastor. He took copious notes as I responded to his questions about dates, times, locations, specific types of sexual interactions, frequency, and duration, interrupting frequently with clarifying questions.

I have grown accustomed, during the last two years, to being questioned in ways that reduce the sexual abuse I experienced to a series of timelines - events separated into columns based on things like the type of sexual interaction, the location, and the frequency with which it occurred. When this line of questioning comes, I stay up in my head where the facts are stored, opening and shutting the files of memories with speed and efficiency, careful not to think beyond the surface of the question.

As I answered his questions, I felt relatively comfortable with him, considering the fact that I had just met him, and felt like he had a pretty good understanding of the subject of clergy sexual abuse. After he had touched on most of the factual stuff, he backed up to press in on some details. We were talking about various locations in which abuse occurred, and he was asking me about times when we had been in his car. He asked me if there was ever oral intercourse, and I indicated that there was. He then paused awkwardly, as if unsure how to pose his next question, and said “and it was for…….?” At first I didn’t get what he was asking, and I just waited for him to find the word he wanted, but then he asked again “and it was for….?” I felt the blood crawl up my neck, and my stomach sink to my chair as I realized what he was asking, and all that his question implied. I whispered “it wasn’t for me” in reply, and then watched his face, hoping that I had read his question incorrectly, but I hadn’t. His face immediately registered relief, and he made a note on his pad as he said, “oh, good, okay.” I quickly recovered and we went on with our meeting for the next several hours.

After the meeting ended, I headed to the train with the commuter crowd, met my family for dinner, and participated in one family activity after another until I boarded the plane to return to my husband and kids, and our hectic schedule. I got up the next day and jumped right back into work. When friends asked me how I was doing in the aftermath of my trip I told them that I was doing fine, and wondered out loud if I was maybe still on an adrenalin rush heading for a crash of some kind. It wasn’t until this morning that my soul caught up with the rest of me and demanded some time. Morning met me with a feeling of utter exhaustion and pervasive sadness that I was hoping would fall away as I entered the rhythms of my work, but I kept finding myself staring blankly and sighing heavily, wanting nothing more than to lie down and sleep. I tried to take some time between appointments, but felt too anxious and too antsy to pray, and so ended up packing up and heading out early for my next appointment, kind of wandering around, trying to outwit my soul. Later on in the afternoon, sitting in my car between appointments, I called a friend who had called to ask about my trip home. We chatted a bit, and she asked me how I was doing, and I said that I felt so tired of being misunderstood. As my mind said it, my soul sighed in relief and agreement, and I felt my heart, mind, and soul nestle in more tightly together.

People always tell me that they understand about clergy sexual abuse – that it is never mutual, and that it is never the fault of the child, and I often allow myself to believe them. But, when the prosecutor asked me to clarify who was arousing whom during our interactions in the car, it spoke volumes to me about what he didn’t understand about clergy abuse and the nuances of one having power over another.

Others, lawyers and pastors included, have little choice but to respond to my story out of their own stuff, right where they are. The prosecutor obviously believes that sexual interaction between an adult and a child is only really abusive if the child is not feeling pleasure, implying that, if my body ever responded during the interaction, that I was in some way complicit. I, for years, felt that I was an exception to the rule that the child is never at fault, because I know that my body response during the abuse told me that it must have been something short of abuse. One of the most difficult things for abuse victims to accept is that the human body can respond to a physical/sexual stimulant without permission from the mind or the soul, and that, even if the mind and soul did give permission, they did not have the freedom, maturity, and cognitive resources to do so. During the few instances in which my body responded sexually to my abuser, before suppressing its ability to respond sexually altogether, my mind and my soul were horrified and riddled with utter shame and confusion at the incongruity of my body’s cooperation given the utter revulsion and resistance of my heart and soul. When I have gone to the Lord with this shame and confusion, each time, God has let me know that He created our bodies to respond to the touch of another, and that those scenarios represent choices that my body, the body of a child under the power and control of another, should have never had to make. The fault lies, not in my body’s response, but in the hands of the adult authority figure who thrust his adult, emotional, physical, and sexual needs onto my child body, mind, and soul, and the litmus test as to whether or not it was abuse goes no further or deeper than identifying the two people involved – an adult and a child – period.

The last few years of testimony and interaction with friends back home where I have been in the papers and in the news, have given me lots of opportunity to practice holding on to my own mooring in Jesus as people ask me questions and speak words of comfort that aren’t at all comforting. As the prosecutor probed about who was being pleasured during times in the car, the keeper of my soul was opening up attic doors, and pulling out bags of shame and complicity, dragging them across the rough dusty floor of my inner most thoughts and feelings. At first I was, in addition to feeling ashamed and alone, discouraged at seeing baggage I thought had been long ago dealt with and tucked away, as if the healing process is in some way linear instead of a lifelong process of fits and starts, with layers of hurt and lies believed being peeled away like an onion, with each new layer a little bit different in shape and contour than the others. I have been asking God to prepare me for next months’ trial, so that I can process the hard stuff in privacy with Him, and as in times past, he is faithful to respond. And so I should not be surprised as he is exposes another layer of my soul that is spotted with shame, and invites me to, once again, empty out each bag’s contents, allow him to wash each item with his truth and his touch, remove the luggage tag that says “repressed and hidden” and replace it with one that says “redeemed and healed.”