The Trial Week

The days leading up to the ecclesiastical trial of my abuser were surreal. I felt as if I was floating through, not the actual days leading up to the trial, but a blurry copy. Conversations seemed irrelevant and distant, and I robotically went through the days doing whatever seemed logical and necessary. The prosecution team picked me up from the airport and took me directly to a meeting in which we reviewed the schedules and details of the trial. We prayed together, asking for the resolve and strength necessary to walk through the next week. My parents picked me up from the meeting, looking pale, fragile and weary as they loaded my bags into the car. They seemed resigned to participating in a very difficult week, and were careful to take their cues from me, having no file on how to parent a child through something like this. We went out to dinner because that’s what my family does, and we talked about safe things mostly and laughed whenever we could.

Jesus, with skin on, arrived on Sunday afternoon by plane and a 1998 Volvo, in the form of my four prayer buddies who have been walking with me all along this journey. They are the kind of friends who don’t need to be taken care of, and don’t need to feel like they are taking care of me, and the kind of friends that think nothing of clearing their calendars and taking a road trip prayer assignment. We drove to the church in which the trial was going to be held, and prayed all around the property, asking for justice, for truth to overcome, and for me to be vindicated. I felt antsy and preoccupied, and was glad that my friends were on task and interceding on my behalf. We walked to dinner, some of us chatting, some of us not, and then came back to the safe house and spent more time in prayer and worship. As is always the case, the worship music brought me present to myself and my circumstances, and the tears came as my soul, for a moment, caught up with my head, integrating what I knew the morning would bring, with the reality of having to be present, and participative in it. As I have in other times of difficulty, like depositions or press conferences, I asked God to show me how it would be to walk into the trial room, see my abuser, tell my story, and respond to open-ended questions. The story that kept coming to mind was the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus went to pray on the eve of his crucifixion. Even though I knew certainly that my assignment was significantly easier than death by crucifixion, I felt the agony of waiting, and the overwhelming dread of the morning’s inevitable arrival. In my prayer, I saw Jesus, beaten, bleeding and exhausted, haul himself onto the cross and avail himself to his captors and ultimately to his Father. I then saw myself walk across the room and climb into a very big chair, availing myself to the trial lawyers and to the telling of my truth.